RoundUp has long been considered a benign alternative to harsher weedkillers. After extensive reviews, most regulatory agencies–the US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and those of many other nations–have come to the conclusion that it does not cause cancer. So when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the UN’s World Health Organization, declared RoundUp a probable carcinogen in 2015, there was an international outcry. Shortly after, 184 plaintiffs in California filed a legal case against Monsanto, saying that the company failed to warn them about the risks of its product. Since then, in a separate suit, hundreds more plaintiffs have claimed that RoundUp caused their cancers, citing the IARC’s findings as evidence.
About that evidence: According to a new Reuters investigation, Aaron Blair, the scientist who led the IARC’s review panel on glyphosate, had access to data from a large study that strongly suggested that Roundup did not cause cancer after all–but he withheld that data from the RoundUp review panel. Weirder still: Blair himself was a senior researcher on that study.
I wonder if he is any relation to Rachel Carson, Ancel Keys, Michael Mann, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri or Trofim Denisovich Lysenko. I could go on but ….
That is not unusual. Despite all evidence that DDT was not a carcinogen, and did not represent a danger to
seabirds, the EPA banned it anyway. The problem does not necessarily rest with science, but with politicians
in various regulatory agencies and in the minority of scientists whoring for government research grants. An
honest scientist would tell the truth rather than become corrupted.
This is how we end up with people like Michael Mann (The Jerry Sandusky of climate scientists.) Go ahead fat
boy, sue me!
It would be funny if Monsanto sued Aaron Blair and the IARC, for putting out this false information.
The proper way to check pesticides over the long term is by looking at the cancer rates of people that are most exposed to them, i.e. licensed pesticide applicators, and you would likely find that their cancer rates are no higher than the general public. This came up during the ontario liberals plan to ban spraying for people who don’t own golf courses.
A few days ago, I tried to buy weedkiller to kill weeds at my father’s house in B. C. I figured it would be more effective than cutting them down with a lawn trimmer.
First of all, weedkillers are kept under lock and key at the store I was at. Then I was informed about all the safety gear I would have needed. (Hey, I just wanted to spray weeds, not take a shower in the stuff!)
When it became apparent that, essentially, the B. C. government didn’t want me to kill any weeds using chemicals, I gave up and left the store. Ah, but increasing the carbon footprint by cutting them down with a machine powered by a 2-cycle engine was perfectly acceptable, wasn’t it?
I guess we did it wrong in the old days, didn’t we?
I think the one thing in this world that the SCIENTIFIC METHOD has proven beyond ANY doubt is the inherent corruptibility of man.
Here in Edmonton, our virtue signalling city council decided to do away with herbicides a few years ago (so the children wouldn’t get cancer of course). This year weather conditions were perfect for a bumper crop of dandelions. The city’s plan was to mow playgrounds regularly before the weeds went to seed. With the efficiency we have come to expect from governments, they couldn’t keep up. Too busy building bike lanes, I suspect. Now the playgrounds are so overrun, the kids can’t kick a soccer ball more than a few feet and city council is in panic mode.
http://globalnews.ca/news/3522321/city-council-dandelions/
“I can show you locations where there are 50 to 60 plants per square metre and 18-inch dandelion stems, and if you kick a soccer ball, it’ll only roll half the distance because it gets impeded by weeds.”
Follow-The-Money Or inthis instance follow the Career/Studies/opportunites for advancement which May (this is the Word also Could-Be) which the Dark Democrat Bureaucracy buried in the United Nations and In the Progressive/Democrat/Liberal/and ISM Governments across North America.
Every “paying attention individual of average intelligence” understands the Middle-East Oil Despots/Terrorist Funding United Nations–supported by the European Union Bureaucracy-and the subordinate World Health Organization Minions will accept corruption as their Means of Advancement.
Yes, Lysenkoism is the prevailing scientific thinking these days. Think also Global Warming aka Climate Change.
To be fair, it does say on the Roundup label that if you accidentally get it on your skin you should go to the hospital emergency entrance.
It’s time to start culling the herd.
I bet there are hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats around the western world either trying to justify their existence and/or trying to bring us all down.
Find them, retire them, and without pensions if found their actions were malicious.
I am sick of it and also politicians who buy votes. If a voter is on government assistance, i.e. welfare when they could be working, their right to vote should be suspended (along with those is prison).
Term limits for those elected and public “servants”.
The trough is just too tempting.
And cut out funding to the UN.
Enough
Enough
Enough
Every restaurant in California has a notice that their food will cause cancer and birth defects. I can’t imagine pesticide companies not availing themselves of the same legal safeguards.
Japan uses 4 times the amount of pesticides per acre than the U.S.
What’s their cancer rate?
And Etobicoke (and the other T.O. suburbs I suspect) are covered in dandelions too because of the city banning herbicides.
It’s the dose that’s important, always. I remember working in a logging operation 40 years ago and some young loggers complained about having to ride on the same bus as the forestry crew who smelled like 2-4-D as they were applying it directly to weed species impeding seedling growth. The loudest mouth was always filled with chewing tobacco (nicotine being highly toxic and carcinogenic). The 2-4-D was diluted and a minute amount could still be smelled (the same smell as Weed-ex). The LD50 of pure 2-4-D is one fiftieth that of gasoline. I pointed this out to the complainers and asked them if they, like I had experienced a mouthful of gasoline at least once while siphoning it some time in their past never mind the continuous long term exposure in fueling. Roundup put an end to all that controversy not only because of its lessor LD50 but being odorless.
Ont Liberals are out front on this of course, banning Roundup, 24-D, grub bait and all other lawn and garden chemicals some years ago. The results are as predicted acres of public parks growing bumper dandelion crops. City parks departments employ the correct “organic” solutions to weed growth.
One result is that counter brand between US border points has shifted from alcohol to lawn chemicals; federal customs inspectors do Ont’s bidding and seize any prohibited chemicals.
Ont, leading the way in green self righteousness.
Here in Edmonton, our virtue signalling city council decided to do away with herbicides a few years ago (so the children wouldn’t get cancer of course). This year weather conditions were perfect for a bumper crop of dandelions.
So I’m not the only one who’s noticed that Edmonton’s developed a yellow streak…..
I live across the street from 2 baseball diamonds on the south side. When the grass isn’t cut, it doesn’t take long for those fields to have a distinctive bright yellow tinge. Similarly, the grass along Whitemud Drive is covered with dandelions.
The only places in my neighbourhood where there aren’t any are either private residences or apartments.
Every year … I ROUNDUP my yard and plunge the entire neighborhood into a … Silent Spring. The birds are silenced, mosquitos disappear, not a housefly in sight, neighbor pets expire, nothing but total DEATH … to everything in a 3-mile radius. Neighbor children contract rare diseases, neighbor women lose their hair, cats & dogs living together … real wrath of God kinda stuff.
Don’t believe me ? Just READ the CA Prop 69 WARNING label on the label. Next … Home Depot to be SUED out of existence for selling this environmental “toxin”.
In the words of Bernie Taupin … “… and all the science, I don’t understand, it’s just my job 5-days a week…”. Yeah, the “job” to file lawsuits against EVIL “chemicals”
Previously unreported court documents reviewed by Reuters from an ongoing US legal case against Monsanto show that Blair knew the unpublished research found no evidence of a link between glyphosate and cancer.
“link” = correlation.
All the studies, pro and con, are correlations and actually prove nothing. Similarly, people are not mice and rats, and those studies prove nothing.
Just because tall people play basketball doesn’t prove playing basketball makes them taller. That’s basically what these links and correlations are saying when passed off as proving anything. They’re shooting in the dark…from both directions.
brown bag science!!!
“To be fair, it does say on the Roundup label that if you accidentally get it on your skin you should go to the hospital emergency entrance.”
Of course this is CYA. First if you are a careless fellow then you should wear neoprene gloves. Second, if you got some on your skin, ask yourself how long it would remain on your skin until you got to emergency and got actually treated … how many hours? The common sense answer is to immediately wash your skin with lots of soap and water as Roundup is water soluble.
“All the studies, pro and con, are correlations and actually prove nothing.” Yes, correlation is not “proof”. HOWEVER, in the absence of correlation there is no cause.
Success in playing (professional) basketball is correlated to height and other physical abilities but there is no correlation to eating Wheaties. Eating your Wheaties will not result in a successful career in professional basketball any more that using Roundup will result in cancer for the user….. because there is no correlation.
It’s an organic salt coupled with an amino acid. Our DNA is amino acids. This was Monsantos best product. Kill all the grass and weeds and resow within days. The herbicide gone
…any more that using Roundup will result in cancer for the user….. because there is no correlation.
Impossible to say, there haven’t been experiments to prove that. It’s use is based on faith.
Exactly, and the same response to cal2’s comment.
I have gotten RoundUp on my hands many times over the years and just took the sprayer hose or tap water and rinsed it off.
The phoney leftist idiot shtick doesn’t play very well in this format or for the blog’s style. Maybe just posting your real views under a permanent sock-puppet name instead would work better to make your points?
If they really cared about the bees, they would be growing clover. It’s a much better choice for lawns as it out-competes other weeds and bees love it.
So where is the statistical proof, Creepy Clown? And for the record, my late father (who did not die of cancer, by the way) was a research officer in a University Agricultural Engineering Department and did some of the original field tests on Round-Up. He was a fan, being the son of a prairie farmer, and all the aid it provided with wild oats.
Do you know anything at all about wild oats and why they are so hard to kill, Creepy Clown? They can lie dormant for up to seven years, and then come back to life and re-infest a field in a single year. The tail of a wild oat is like a bi-metallic strip, and can allow the oat seed to corkscrew itself into a depression or crevice in the ground by coiling and uncoiling as it goes from wet to dry and back again. And they have zero natural enemies – nothing wants to eat them.
So, Creepy Clown, how do you feel about going out into a field, and selectively picking a wild oat from in among the grains that you want to keep. Dandelions are not the problem for a prairie farmer. Do you know how long it would take to cull wild oats by hand from a section of grain (one square mile of land). Do you even know the difference between the good grains and the bad? My uncles had 16 sections of land and grew barley, wheat and rye. You can go to the Prairies and volunteer to do the purging, but they would politely refuse, and then go into town and talk about the interesting visitor from the city. City dwellers don’t get it, but they all want cheap bread, pasta, and other produce and have absolutely no clue as to how it is produced.
Or how about toxic hogweed in New York? If you pick it without gloves, it can blind you. And most people can’t tell the difference between it and the benign variety. Round Up, despite your vituperative comments, serves a very real purpose as does DDT. And yes, Rachel Carson lied and her lies led to the death of millions of people around the world from malaria. If that is virtue, I will stand with people that don’t lie about science.
Respectfully,
A prairie engineer.
Wild oats is easy to control…seed it to grass. Eating grains will eventually kill you, anyway. The Egyptian mummies, when autopsied, showed severe cardiovascular disease. Wheat was their main staple.
And modern semi-dwarf wheats are much worse, the gliadin protein accidentally created in it’s development causes an opioid-like stimulus in the brain to hunger, in turn insulin increases which causes fat storage. The average extra calories eaten per day is about 400, leading to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. At plague levels nowadays…
Deut 28…
“Impossible to say, there haven’t been experiments to prove that. It’s use is based on faith.”
I’m wondering what part of ‘the study showed that there is no correlation between using Round Up and cancer’ you didn’t understand.
And in terms of direct experiments, I’d be willing to bet that there have been plenty of tests dousing lab animals with glysophate in large doses….. also without correlation to cancer.
But then go ahead, believe what you want. I know that you believe Monsanto is EEEEVIL and wants to kill us all.
I’m wondering what part of ‘the study showed that there is no correlation between using Round Up and cancer’ you didn’t understand.
As pointed out previously, a correlation, or lack of, isn’t proof of anything.
And animals are not people.
Public corporations are neither evil or good, they have no soul in charge. Like animals, they only consider their stomachs.