In 2000, a landmark study claimed to set the record straight on glyphosate, a contentious weedkiller used on hundreds of millions of acres of farmland. The paper found that the chemical, the active ingredient in Roundup, wasn’t a human health risk despite evidence of a cancer link.
Last month, the study was retracted by the scientific journal that published it a quarter century ago, setting off a crisis of confidence in the science behind a weedkiller that has become the backbone of American food production.
...The 2000 paper, a scientific review conducted by three independent scientists, was for decades cited by other researchers as evidence of Roundup’s safety. It became the cornerstone of regulations that deemed the weedkiller safe.
But since then, emails uncovered as part of lawsuits against the weedkiller’s manufacturer, Monsanto, have shown that the company’s scientists played a significant role in conceiving and writing the study.
...“This is a seismic, long-awaited correction of the scientific record,” said Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, who is a pediatrician and epidemiologist and the director of the Program in Global Public Health at Boston College.
Dr. Landrigan recently chaired an advisory committee for a global glyphosate study that found that even low doses of glyphosate-based herbicides caused leukemia in rats.
“It pulls the veil off decades of industry efforts to create a false narrative that glyphosate is safe” he said. “People have developed cancers, and people have died because of this scientific fraud.”
...The retraction points to a wider problem of research secretly funded by industries like tobacco and lead, said David Rosner, co-director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University. “Shading the science to favor the corporate interest,” he said, was likely “the rule rather than the exception.” Journals needed to “press scientists more forcefully to identify conflicts of interest,” he said. “Huge financial interests are at stake.”
My main concern is the impact on gut microbiome and the practice of crop desiccation, which uses roundup not for preventing weeds but to kill mature crops so they are all ready to harvest on the same day instead of having some natural variability. This leads to detectable levels of glyphosate in the final product.
As someone who suffered from dysbiosis and autoimmune disease, it was absolutely debilitating and these diseases are an epidemic in the US. A quick search found a study showing impact of glyphosate on gut health in mice. So little is known about gut health as it’s so hard and expensive to do good science on such a complex system. The way you are phrasing your responses make it seem like the science is certain that glyphosate is safe, but that’s not the case, nor is that how science works. Who is going to fund expensive and complex studies to try to prove it unsafe? How much lobbying and funding is going into pushing studies and narratives that it is safe to protect a huge industry?
What part of 'the data right now' says certain. If we get plenty of new research which says something else which is replicated then great, but for now the current research says it's safe.
I pointed to current research showing otherwise. You ignored most of my arguments, such as that current research is skewed by incentives.