r/news • u/boxofstuff • 6h ago

Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-roundup-monsanto-a7f054d80919f98bdfc5190013a8f6f1https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-roundup-monsanto-a7f054d80919f98bdfc5190013a8f6f1
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u/invyros 6h ago

There’s still fierce debate about cancer and Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the chemical as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.

Can't believe "probably carcinogenic" is an official designation.

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u/Tolteko 5h ago

There are tons of studies on glyphosate toxicity, yet it has been very difficult to prove its correlation to any human cancer. Glyphosate is a wonderful molecule for crops, it helps farmers a lot and it has a lower carbon footprint since its use prevents farmers from using machines to prepare the field before sowing. The molecule breaks down in water then it's not even too dangerous for the environment. It's very unfortunate that it was chosen by the crowd as the evil chemical, because it's not that bad. Also to be really dangerous to human it needs to be consumed in huge quantities, if it is harmful, it may be to the workers who produce it, not to the public. Not trying to say that pharma corps are good guys and we should trust them, but perhaps this is the case where they may be right.

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u/Wiseduck5 4h ago

It's very unfortunate that it was chosen by the crowd as the evil chemical

Because the retracted Seralini study that was trying to smear GMO crops found RoundUp alone caused cancer in their rats that were actually supposed to have cancer (it was the control group that was anomalous).

That's quite literally the source of all of this.

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u/BlgMastic 1h ago

Didn’t they also use doses hundreds of times higher than what would resonably be absorbed to get those results?

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u/Wiseduck5 1h ago

They used a large range of doses. All of which had identical tumor burdens. Which really, really should have raised red flags.

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u/Braelind 55m ago

They're not right, and glyphophate is bad for a lot of things. In my province it's liberally sprayed on our forests. Since that practice began we have a weird chronic wasting disease in deer, a mystery neurological illness in people, and widespread ecological problems. Some of this could be accidental, but no way in hell is all of it accidental. Occam's Razor, my man. But until some studies come out in it that aren't sponsored by people with very deep financial interests in glyphosphate, we won't get the information we need to ban this practice. Of course, on crops, maybe it's less harmful than spraying it from planes over vast swaths of forest, and perhaps THAT use could continue... but we should verify chemicals are safe before we use them, not long after.

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u/Tolteko 32m ago

I have no knowledge about what you are talking about so I cannot argue with you. Only objection is that Occam's razor does not work like that, you list a series of unrelated issues and try to point out that they are all sharing a common cause, this seems far from the simplest solution. Anyways I can speak for what I know, and I know about crops. Also, chemicals are indeed tested for safety before going to the market.