Last week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals gave the EPA a time-out for bad behavior. In this instance, the EPA determined that glyphosate, the “bad boy” in RoundUp, likely poses no “unreasonable risk” to humans or the environment, yet bollixed up a few steps in their procedures underlying regulatory science. Why do bureaucracies believe they are exempt from the rules, the same rules that they make?
Roundup
A reader asked us to examine a recent opinion piece full of spurious claims about the weed killer glyphosate. The story further confirms that newspapers cannot be trusted to faithfully report the facts about pesticide safety.
Anti-pesticide activist Carey Gillam is beside herself because the public isn't worried about glyphosate exposure. Her complaint inadvertently and helpfully confirms that the anti-GMO movement has lost its sway over the food-safety debate.
The anti-biotech group GM Watch recently touted the results of a new study as evidence that the EPA has underestimated the risk posed by the weedkiller glyphosate. It's an illustration of what goes wrong when you force data to conform to a predetermined conclusion.
Usually an excellent source for science-based commentary, The Conversation recently published, to put it charitably, a questionable article about the dangers of the weedkiller glyphosate. What did the authors get wrong? Almost everything.
Facebook has proven itself incapable of reliably preventing the spread of "misinformation." If we needed more evidence, the company recently threatened to "restrict" the account of a prominent researcher for talking about science.
The "activist-legal" complex is real. One of the lead plaintiffs' attorneys, Timothy Litzenburg, was arrested for the attempted extortion of $200 million from a company involved in the production of Monsanto's Roundup. This same attorney collaborates with Carey Gillam and her anti-GMO organization U.S. Right to Know.
Irrespective of whether you believe Roundup or opioids demand corporate liability, it is worth considering how corporations shift liability to others while attempting to retain their profits.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, has been widely attacked as a human carcinogen — although there are few data supporting that charge. A recent study was unable to demonstrate any glyphosate in the breast milk from mothers living in agricultural areas — which should make anxious parents relax. But since the chemical isn't really a threat to human health, all we can say is "So what?"
A well-written and illustrative article in the Washington Post explains a great deal about the U.N.'s International Agency for Research on Cancer, and Monsanto's herbicide glyphosate, Roundup. It should be required reading for Americans concerned about the chemical, as well as GMO food. We'll explain.
Another critique of the recent misguided (at best) IARC evaluation of glyphosate agrees with our dissection of the numerous, ideologically-driven failures of science leading to their assessment that the widely-used herbicide is a likely carcinogen, ignoring new data.