I don't know what Monsanto did or didn't do and don't have any particular rooting interest for Monsanto, but I think it's worth noting that the published science for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate (the "weed killer" we're talking about here) is extremely flimsy.
Most publicity about "cancer" and "Monsanto" is traceable back to an IARC report that the World Health Organization (IARC's parent) essentially retracted. The report itself concerned dozens of different pesticides and herbicides and mentioned glyphosate only in passing. The studies it referred to equivocated about any link between glyphosate and human cancer.
(I'm going from memory here and someone will probably correct me on this, which will be great!)
It would be surprising if glyphosate turned out to be toxic, because it straightforwardly targets a metabolic pathway that plants have and the entire kingdom of Animalia lacks.
California recently added glyphosate to its list of chemicals that it's required to alert consumers about. But of course, that list is long and includes substances that virtually nobody controls their own exposure to, such as acrylamide --- a known human carcinogen --- which is universally present in cooked foods.
Finally, and this is obvious, but we're reading articles on a plaintiff lawyer's website. That's fine, but you're clearly not going to get the whole story from them. For instance, the lawyers are happy to leave you with a headline about Monsanto trying to "retract a cancer study". But they're of course going to leave out the fact that the study in question was the Séralini study, of "Séralini affair" fame; you can look this up in Wikipedia to see what I'm referring to.
While glyphosate is only questionable, Round Up itself, which includes a variety of surfactants, seems to have a more pronounced effect - both cytotoxic and mutagenic.
Many of the later documents in this dump center around formulated Round-Up's unexplained toxicity when compared to the survey of glyphosate studies in the literature, and a variety of understudied surfactants in the formulation.
There's a video where a Monsanto lobbyist spouts circular talking-points about how glyphosate was safe to drink, offered either Round Up or glyphosate and refused to drink it.
It's irrelevant if glyphosate alone is cancerous or not, because 99.9999% of deployment is via sprays like Round Up. The combined product, in both animal and human models, need thorough mutagenic research. It's just news shows don't want to give Monsanto free advertising or face libel laws, so they conflate the generic compound with the product.
This presents an interesting conundrum. Monsanto doesn't trust anyone who proposes a Monsanto employee drink a cup of Roundup because ostensibly they're afraid the cup is something other than Roundup. People who want to propose this "prove it" don't trust Monsanto to supply the cup of Roundup because they're afraid Monsanto will just give some colored, scented water that only looks like Roundup.
The actual Roundup product toxicity is from the inactive ingredients used as a carrier for the glyphosate [1]. Supposedly pure glyphosate itself is low toxicity. If (and this is a big if) the LD50 for humans follows mice models [2], at the highest amount of glyphosate required of 10,000 mg/kg, then the average human at 70 kg would require 700,000 mg of glyphosate to incur a 50% chance of a lethal dose. That is 0.7 kg solid form glyphosate, well over what we might find in a cup that is roughly diluted to the concentration levels one finds in the least concentrated form of Roundup. The lower end of the animal models is rabbits, acute dermal LD50, at 2,000 mg/kg, five times lower, 0.14 kg solid form glyphosate for that average human.
If there are 540 grams glyphosate per liter of Roundup R/T 540 Liquid Herbicide (the term of art is "540 grams acid equivalent per litre", please, some chemistry hacker out there correct my quantities, I'm sure I'm getting this wrong), then a US customary cup of this kind of Roundup contains 127.76 g glyphosate. I chose this kind of Roundup because it looks like the least concentrated. The rabbit LD50 toxicity translated to a 70 kg human is 140 grams. The mouse LD50 toxicity translated to a 70 kg human is 700 grams. That cup is uncomfortably close to those levels for me, if my numbers are close to the ballpark; I sure as hell wouldn't drink that cup if my numbers are correct. I welcome corrections.
> I think you'll find if someone who thinks you are evil offers you a glass of liquid of unknown providence you to would decline it as well.
This goes both ways - shouldn't we decline Monsanto's products, because they've shown they value profit over safety, and corporate control over farmer independence?
>There's a video where a Monsanto lobbyist spouts circular talking-points about how glyphosate was safe to drink, offered either Round Up or glyphosate and refused to drink it.
> The bar tender reaches down at 5:16 and brings up a different glass than the one he pours the chemicals in so this is a snow job. The two glasses have a different shape too and the new glass is greener. This is so fake. Why do the guys sprying this crap wear spacesuits if it is so safe?
> Why do the guys sprying this crap wear spacesuits if it is so safe?
The guy on the street outside wears thick waterproof pants and thick waterproof rubber boots when he cleans the street with a pressurized water hose.
Water is generally considered safe [citation needed], but you still don't want to get hosed in it for hours on a daily basis.
- Constantly wet feet catch fungus and foot rot.
- Water lowers your body temperature, making you more susceptible to infection from and outbreak of common cold.
- Containing water contamination to an surface - instead of your clothes and skin - makes it easier to rid yourself of surplus water when taking a break.
- Wet clothes are highly impractical because they are heavy and shed water everywhere you go for hours after.
Same reason the doctor leaves the room when you take an X-ray. The issue isn’t one time exposure it’s repeated exposure.
The issue with roundup isn’t whether it’s safe if you drink it (most “safe” cleaners, etc will at least make you feel crappy if you just drink them - he’ll copper sulphate spray used for low level onset protection would send you straight to hospital if you drank it).
It’s a matter of cumulative exposure and time. Most cancers, even chemically induced ones take time to become large enough to be noticed and people get many different cancers naturally - if a small amount of roundup cause cancer immediately it would be gone already.
Much like Uber I take issue with the unethical behaviour of Monsanto in multiple areas. Maybe roundup is safe and could be used as icing at a five year olds birthday, but they shouldn’t be ghost writing papers for journals.
Also unethical is allowing someone to ghostwrite a paper for you and publishing it with your name.
The thing is, glyphosate/roundup is still a toxin.
It may be safe in low doses but I wouldn't exactly try to drink large quantities of something that is made for the only purpose to kill some animal/plant.
Sure! And this is a really good point. But then, how many of those surfactants (and other additives) are unique to Monsanto, versus things that are present in lots of other herbicides?
Again: fuck Monsanto, I guess? My interest here is mostly in the notion that glyphosate is toxic, since that, along with "glyphosate is genetic engineering" and "Monsanto sues farmers for growing seeds that blow onto their fields" falls into the bucket of "things the Internet very strongly believes about Monsanto, despite being based on very incomplete information".
That's easy: the track record of claims against Monsanto is not great. When people proclaim very strong opinions about Monsanto, it's been a pretty reliable signal to me that they're basing their opinions off questionable sourcing.
Monsanto Manufactured both PCBs and DDT well after the point they where known to be harmful. So, they had a negative reputation well before getting into biotechnology. Though with constant spinoffs and acquisitions it's arguable how consistent their corporate culture really is.
It's covered by the guideline that says "Be civil". Insinuating that someone else is a shill (i.e. lying for money) is deeply uncivil.
It's impossible to make a list of all proscribed behaviors and if we tried, people would take it as a license to do anything not on the list. So that's not the way it works.
As for whether the 'don't insinuate astroturfing/shillage' bit is enforced, try scrolling through https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR... and you'll find dozens if not hundreds of cases. Actually I've posted so many of these that my body rejects writing them and I have to trick myself into doing it.
It makes me wonder whether a lot of the more ridiculous arguments against Monsanto are actually just memes spread by Monsanto itself in order to discredit detractors.
It took until 2014, but eight out of nine pesticide formulations tested were up to one thousand times more toxic than their so-called active ingredients. So, when we just test the isolated chemicals, we may not get the whole story. Roundup was found to be 100 times more toxic than glyphosate itself. Moreover, Roundup turned out to be among the most toxic pesticides they tested.
> It would be surprising if glyphosate turned out to be toxic, because it straightforwardly targets a metabolic pathway that plants have and the entire kingdom of Animalia lacks.
Don't be so high and mighty about the science against glyphosate being flimsy, then throw out your own pet theory in support of glyphosate without any scientific studies. It's hypocrisy. Either you only support theories backed by strong scientific evidence or you don't. You can't have it both ways.
My understanding is that the danger of glyphosate is one step removed from direct action on "human" cells, so bringing up metabolic pathways is a straw-man argument. The suspected danger is from disruption to the symbiosis of the entire human system, including the ~10x bacterial cells for every human cell that can be killed by glyphosate.
If this effect is real, can you link to animal studies conclusively demonstrating it? Because obviously we've been feeding a lot of rats a lot of glyphosate.
Note how the press release on this study, from Kings College London, done in 2017, calls it "the first to show a causative link between consumption of Roundup at a real-world environmental dose and a serious disease condition."
Here's a possibility. The scientific social networks consist of people who's research is paid for by the same corporations/government agencies with inherent conflicts of interest.
Yes. Every credentialed scientist in the field is bought and paid for by Monsanto. Only the computer scientists can be trusted. That sounds about right for HN logic.
> Yes. Every credentialed scientist in the field is bought and paid for by Monsanto.
I only raised a real possibility that is not factored in the two bullet points. Conflict of Interest. We assume that scientists are somehow immune & should not be questioned, particularly when there is evidence contracting their conclusions.
Nothing to do with HN logic. From what it looks like, you are far more of the HN maven than I am...
> I think it's prudent to wash vegetables to clean off any herbicides and other chemicals even if they are "known" to be harmless.
you're gonna have a real hard time getting all the chemicals off your veggies using dihydrogen monoxide, what with its high boiling point. i suggest using formaldehyde instead.
High boiling point of water is irrelevant for solubility of veggie chemicals. What matters is hydrophilic/hydrophobic qualities. My suggestion would be to start with water, GI through methanol, acetonitrile, chloroform and end up with a good fatty oil, maybe olive oil. Remember to rinse if the oil with soap as the final step.
Or maybe get some veggies that don't have the chemicals on them in the first place?
> It would be surprising if glyphosate turned out to be toxic, because it straightforwardly targets a metabolic pathway that plants have and the entire kingdom of Animalia lacks.
Biochemistry is not that simple. My favorite example is n-hexane, the linear hydrocarbon with 6 carbon atoms. It is more toxic than any of the other small alkanes; about 3 times as toxic as n-pentane, with 5 carbons, but also less toxic than n-heptane, with 7 [0]. Why? I don't know if anyone knows, but seems like it must have something to do with the exact size of the molecule. Maybe it's just short enough to fit someplace and just long enough to cause a problem when it's there.
The point is, so much of biochemistry is about how molecules fit together in 3-D space. This is not something that's easy to predict. Your line of reasoning here is just not valid.
So this seems like a deflection to me. As I've said before, my dad thought his non-hodgkins lymphoma was due to roundup and you shouted me down saying glyphosate hasn't been shown to cause cancer (though there are certainly a bunch of people who disagree with that).
The real point is that it is not glyphosate we're talking about, it's roundup. And it would appear that the cocktail of whatever makes up roundup may not be fine. So please address that, not glyphosate.
The fact that the metabolic pathway glyphosate mainly targets in plants doesn't exist in mammals does not preclude it being carcinogenic by other biochemical mechanisms.
Most publicity about "cancer" and "Monsanto" is traceable back to an IARC report that the World Health Organization (IARC's parent) essentially retracted. The report itself concerned dozens of different pesticides and herbicides and mentioned glyphosate only in passing. The studies it referred to equivocated about any link between glyphosate and human cancer.
(I'm going from memory here and someone will probably correct me on this, which will be great!)
It would be surprising if glyphosate turned out to be toxic, because it straightforwardly targets a metabolic pathway that plants have and the entire kingdom of Animalia lacks.
California recently added glyphosate to its list of chemicals that it's required to alert consumers about. But of course, that list is long and includes substances that virtually nobody controls their own exposure to, such as acrylamide --- a known human carcinogen --- which is universally present in cooked foods.
Finally, and this is obvious, but we're reading articles on a plaintiff lawyer's website. That's fine, but you're clearly not going to get the whole story from them. For instance, the lawyers are happy to leave you with a headline about Monsanto trying to "retract a cancer study". But they're of course going to leave out the fact that the study in question was the Séralini study, of "Séralini affair" fame; you can look this up in Wikipedia to see what I'm referring to.