A large long-term study on the use of the big-selling weedkiller glyphosate by agricultural workers in the United States has found no firm link between exposure to the pesticide and cancer, scientists said on Thursday.
Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), the study found there was no association between glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular herbicide RoundUp, “and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including non-Hogkin Lymphoma (NHL) and its subtypes”.
So California will rescind their requirement for a Cancer warning label on Glyphosate now? No, I didn’t think so…
butt butt butt MONSANTO!!!!!!!!!
Butt. That is exactly where the anti-GMO types have their heads. Luddite anti human progess is alive and doing very well in our society.
That study was funded by MONSANTO. Roundup is worse than 2-4-5-T DIOXIN.(agent orange. Another “safe” weed killer) MORON!
There was no funding from Monsanto for this study; read a bit and engage your brain before your keyboard:
Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), “internationally acclaimed as the source for the most up-to-date news and information from the fields of cancer research and treatment….”. Information about the NCI is available on the internet.
By the way the patent for glyphosate expired several years ago and Monsanto the inventor of the world’s most widely used herbicide was a small player in the manufacture of the product. Monsanto recently sold its interest in herbicide production to Bayer.
…Think for a minute…Both sides of the issue are corrupted by MONEY!
Question 1. Who funded the study?
Question 2. How “blind” were the experimental procedures and analysis?
Question 3. This study is on people who handled glyphosphate and not on people who consumed food treated with glyphosphate. Big difference. E.G. I can work in a tobacco field all day and never get lung cancer so I am suspicious as hell about the claims being made here.
I would like to see a publicly funded study exploring question 2 using scientists blinded from the results to eliminate the personal bias that infects 95% of scientists these days.
I am a huge “organics and renewables” skeptic. I am skeptical about most studies thee days especially those that deal with biological systems due to the unimaginable complexity involved.
So who would have to be funding the study for you to even consider the results as proof?
The chemical companies own western agriculture these days. No chemicals – no crop or at least a drastically reduced yield. If farmers in the western world quit using chemicals – the world starves.
A few years ago I was sitting in the bar with a few farmers. It had been a bad hopper year and guys were spraying. One fellow said things were so desperate he had even sprayed his yard. Said his dog damned near died from the effects of the spray. The dumb SOB had young kids at the time. All the ground nesting birds die from the spray. I know this is anecdotal but do you think for a moment that this stuff is safe?
Question 1. Who funded the study?
Genetic fallacy. Who funded the study is irrelevant. The study stands or falls on its own merits.
Question 2. How “blind” were the experimental procedures and analysis?
Read the article and find out.
Question 3. This study is on people who handled glyphosphate and not on people who consumed food treated with glyphosphate. Big difference.
You can’t breathe in tobacco while handling it. Your analogy is flawed.
In the largest long-term experimental study to date, the Canadian prairies have the highest rates of MS in the world, which by coincidence the rates of which in the population track over 98% correlation with tonnage of glyphosate applied in the region.
Glyphosate works by attaching a methyl phosphate to the glycine amino acid, so that when the sprayed plants take up glyphosate, glyphosate starts replacing glycine in the active site of an enzyme (EPSPS at position 96) that is required in the shikimate metabolic pathway, which eventually kills the plant. A protein essential to myelin formation (myelin basic protein) in the brain also has glycine in a conserved location. Indeed, there are a number of human chronic diseases which have as a driving factor failed enzyme activity with glycine in conserved locations. Note the Monsanto “safety” studies avoid all-cause mortality like the plague. If you want to lower cancer rates, drink arsenic.
Collagen protein has a high amount of glycine (about 25%). A recent study (in publication) has found that horses fed feed that contains glyphosate (from glyphosate-sprayed grain or GMO alfalfa, both of which have glyphosate in the plant proteins from glycine substitution), have elevated levels of glyphosate in the keratin in the hooves (which is made of collagen). The glyphosate alters the symmetry of the triple helix collagen proteins, making them brittle, resulting in hoof collapse.
A different study found that collagen extracted from the necks of MS patients and controls found significantly higher levels of glyphosate in the collagen of the MS patients. But the MS patients had no higher rate of cancer. Three cheers for Monsanto.
Forgot to mention that the study on horse hooves was an investigation into the cause of the increasingly common hoof collapse disease.
Ms rates were high decades before roundup was invented.
“Breathe in” tobacco? I thought it was the tar in tobacco smoke that caused lung diseases in smokers. Never heard of dangerous fumes, vapours, gases from live tobacco plants and/or drying tobacco leaves.
Tooner, I think the guy meant that there is a difference between handling glyphosphate with ppe albeit potential for skin exposure versus eating and metabolizing glyphosphate or its metabolites present in food. He was using tobacco handling versus inhalation as an analogy to point out the flaw in the study, which as others have pointed out is a glaring oversight ie all cause morbidity/mortality versus cancer alone. Overall, good discussion of the subject.
With RR crops, there is an even greater use of glyphospahte so I am quite interested in learning more about this stuff. As farmers. we are generally moral people and want to strike the right balance. Information transparency and quality is vital.
..and have been rising quickly, in lock step with glyphosate. Plainly there are other factors that also increase MS rates, such as insufficient sunlight and gut permeability.
(Sorry, I switched the correlation in rising rates for glyphosate tonnage and MS incidence (0.83) with glyphosate and autism (0.98). Both involve a myelination disorder.)
From a recent paper on glycine substitution: “Swanson et al. found a remarkable 0.98 correlation coefficient between the rise in autism rates in the USA and the use of glyphosate on crops (P-value ≤ 9.6 × 10–6). The correlation for multiple sclerosis was not as high, but still highly significant at 0.83 (P-value ≤ 1.1 × 10–5). IBD had a correlation coefficient of 0.94 (P-value ≤ 7.1 × 10–8) …” citing Swanson, N.L., Leu, A., Abrahamson, J. & Wallet, B. Genetically engineered crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health in the United States of America. J. Org. Syst. 9 (2014) 6–37.
But, but, but … if EVEN ONE PERSON feeeeels Ill or feeeeeeels their cancer was caused by their next door neighbors RoundUp use … then we need to BAN the product. Well … or at least $$$$PAY$$$$$ the Trial Lawyers big dollar Jury judgements against Monsanto. Just ONE innocent victim. ONE.
Corellation does not prove causation. Asthma increase could be due to may corellating factors not the least of which is the decline of fetus and infant mortality.
Gord
Have a look at
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Cute. When I read this it was a real ‘aha moment’ for me:
‘Japanese passenger cars sold in the US correlates to suicides by crashing of motor vehicles’