Why stretch in the first place? Why look for reasons to disparage a reporter for things he hasn’t done? Why don’t we just look at the actions of what this lackey idiot actually did, instead?
The only stunt performed was by the Monsanto lackey idiot who made the wild claim that one could drink a full ounce quart of this “harmless” substance. The journalist simply followed through and asked him to back up his wild claims.
The fact that you keep jumping on this journalist like a fly on shit says much more about you than anything about the journalist.
Strange how a new science like oncology or Keynesian economics can completely invalidate what “everyone knew as a fact for a thousand years”. It makes new things possible.
Maybe these scumbags wouldn’t say such stupid things if reporters did these things to them more often. Prepare, know the bullshit ahead if time, and ambush the motherfuckers.
Well, they say he isn’t their lobbyist, but that isn’t the same thing as not being affiliated. The problem is that think tanks exist to obfuscate that kind of relationship. Moore is prominently part of Greenspirit Strategies, a consulting firm for various industries, but it’s of course very hard to tell exactly who pays them.
The closest I’ve found in this case is a mention that he’s had some past association with Bayer, another prominent glyphosate manufacturer. However, there’s enough that makes plain their role as paid advocates of forestry and oil companies in a very similar way, and here his advocacy does align pretty well with both pesticide and GM companies.
All in all I think it’s easily past the point where the unlikely claim would be that he’s not shilling for some interest. I suppose you can question if Monsanto is the particular company pulling the strings, but seeing as how the answer is purposely hidden it’s not really an unreasonable guess.
You’re correct that it doesn’t prove Glyphosate is harmful, in the same way that if I were holding a smoking gun while standing over a dead body it wouldn’t prove I murdered anyone. But you can see how it sure looks that way.
A friend of mine served in the Peace Corps and described how the local villagers would damn up a river, then dump a huge mess of pesticide in there, which would kill all the fish and they could just scoop them out and eat them. Their logic was : “if it doesn’t kill you immediately, then it’s not poisonous.”
So he probably could have drank that glass of Glyphosate and been perfectly fine, but that wouldn’t prove it was safe, any more than a representative of RJR Tobacco smoking an entire pack of cigarettes for a TV interview would prove cigarettes are safe. In that sense this idea that people try to commit suicide with Glyphosate and fail is an attempt to obscure the real issue: long term exposure and the risk of cancer.
I think the guy said he’d have to be stupid to drink a glassfull.
I take it to mean that a glass is at least moderately toxic. A quart starts looking dangerous to me.
Good point.
I think drinking a component in pesticide and vomiting afterwards does speak of its toxicity. We may disagree, there are other reasons it could make you vomit, but still, he didn’t say it wasn’t toxic, he said it was safe.
I don’t think something that makes you vomit counts as safe.
I had to drink a barium compound before getting an MRI. It made me want to vomit. It was technically safe and a medical professional advised me to do it.
If I drink a pint of barium a day for several years, I will get cancer. That shit isn’t safe long term.
So once again: toxicity is in the dosage. Being able to drink a glass of Glyphosate only says that it’s not poisonous enough to kill you with that small of a dose. It says nothing about whether it’s safe to handle in the long term, which is really what the conversation is about.
There’s a bunch of people in here willing to just gleefully cackle about how a dude they assume is paid by an evil corp was caught in some sort of a lie by this brilliant reporter, but the truth is: Nothing of any scientific relevance was shown here. Watching this stuff without a critical eye is pretty much just as bad as watching Fox News without a critical eye.
I’m fairly sure my piss is toxic; anyone want to chug a glass and prove me wrong?
Glysophate may or may not be harmful; I’m inclined to say that, as with many other substances that we use on a daily basis, there may be negative effects associated with long-term exposure. So far, I’ve only seen incredibly dubious “studies” that contradict each other and I’m not willing to pass judgment either way.
Honestly, even if it were conclusively proven to be harmful that would only mean that we needed to weigh up the potential harm vs the potential good and look at ways to minimise exposure.
This report, however, is just noise. Unappealing is not the same thing as toxic and an unwillingness to ingest a substance has nothing to do with its toxicity, carcinogenic risk over long-term exposure or its potential usefulness in industrial contexts once we account for the risk of its exposure.
My piss kills plants but you could safely ingest a quart of it and be fine, although I doubt anyone would want to. Plutonium is ludicrously toxic, but has industrial uses that are perfectly safe once the danger is accounted for. Being unwilling to drink a glass of either substance says nothing about whether or not these substances pose a potential risk to the population as a whole.
Not many people suicide by cancer. Unless it’s part of one of their 5-year plans.
Man exaggerates about public health issue, reporter demonstrates he should not be taken literally.
Well, when you’re in PR and your response to this questions is “I’m not an idiot,” then you’re not really doing your job as a PR expert, either, as the message is basically that you’re not idiotic enough to believe what you just said even though you hope others will believe it. If you’re unable to communicate anything deeper or more insightful than “I’m not an idiot” while at an interview you have ostensibly prepared for, then in the very least you’re tremendously unsuited for your job at relating to the public.
So I am reading today on Forbes and Newsweek that this guy IS NOT a Monsanto lobbyist but a former Greenpeace member, Envrionut who is pro GMO crops, and a climate change denialist. He is a kook of the major order and the news media fucked up doing proper research as usual cause HEADLINES!. Not to say RoundUp (a HERBICIDE, god it annoys me to see it called pesticide cause it does not kill bugs) is safe to drink. It may be but I sure as hell am not going to and as I stated in another thread it is useful case I have things in the yard that I need to kill but are nigh impossible to dig out and it is designed to kill things, granted thats plants but not something you want to just drink causally.
I’m not trying to argue, but it is worth noting that both of those links to “glyposate poisoning” were to cases where the glyposate was mixed with other poisons – responding to the statement “C3H8NO5P is not poisonous” by saying “Au contraire, look at these persons poisoned by C6H16NO5PS” would be disingenuous if it weren’t for the fact that when most people see “glyposate” they think of the stuff on the shelf at the garden-store, not the pure compound. Furthermore all the papers linked from those links looking at poisoning with glyphosate-surfactant mixes have found that it is the surfactant what-done-it.
Also, The average amount of the 41% solution of glyphosate herbicide ingested by non-survivors was 184 +/- 70 ml (range 85-200 ml) holy cow! In drinking 85 to 200 ml of the industrial concentrate, they were drinking the equivalent of ~4.5 to 10.5 liters of the stuff one can buy in a spray bottle
I suppose strictly, if someone poured out 200 grams of table salt in a glass and then proceeded to eat it all in one sitting, they might kill themselves in the process. We must ban salt!
The point is that there wasn’t anything scientifically relevant in the original claim. Liars should be called out as such. The fact that you defend the liar and attack the debunker makes you liar-adjacent. Good luck with that. Rolling your eyes isn’t an actual argument.
