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Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter For Some Safety Reviews (bloomberg.com)
Reader schwit1 writes: Dozens of internal Monsanto emails, released on Aug. 1 by plaintiffs lawyers who are suing the company, reveal how Monsanto worked with an outside consulting firm to induce the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology to publish a purported independent review
of Roundups health effects that appears to be anything but. The review, published along with four subpapers in a September 2016 special supplement, was aimed at rebutting the 2015 assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen (PDF). That finding by the cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization led California last month to list glyphosate as a known human carcinogen. It has also spurred more than 1,000 lawsuits in state and federal courts by plaintiffs who claim they contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from Roundup exposure. Monsanto disclosed that it paid Intertek Group Plc consulting unit to develop the review supplement, entitled An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate. But that was the extent of Monsantos involvement, the main article said. The Expert Panelists were engaged by, and acted as consultants to, Intertek, and were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company, according to the reviews Declaration of Interest statement. Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panels manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.
Devils Advocate, don't get all mad at me. What if Monsanto had submitted the paper under its own name? Would it stand a chance at being published? Would anyone actual take it seriously? It sounds nefarious, but what if they actually wanted what they view as legitimate information to be actually read by someone?
With that said, doing crap like that only further damages trust.
Even if they are proved to be dangerous. They won't fix it. And if you do sue them. It will be your tax dollars: For court fees. And the settlement will probably come out of your taxes. They know how to buy Lobbyists and manipulate laws. You can't fight big companies. Look what happened to Flint Michigan.. nothing. People cant move from their houses until they pay for utility repairs and their houses are not worth squat.
More money for lawyers. All they need is a few jury trials trotting out victims in front of sub 100 IQ jurists. It's the American way.
The Declaration of Interest statement was rewritten per McClellan’s instructions, despite being untrue.
Just a paragraph up:
Specifically, McClellan told Roberts to make clear how the panelists were hired--"ie by Intertek," McClellan wrote. "If you can say without consultation with Monsanto, that would be great. If there was any review of the reports by Monsanto or their legal representatives, that needs to be disclosed."
McClellan instructed them to disclose any contact. If they didn't, then that's not a fault of McClellan's instructions, and McClellan's instructions were not followed.
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Even if glyphosate turns out to be very carcinogenic, and Monsanto is successfully sued to the utmost, they will still have made a hefty profit on Roundup and its associated products. So faked safety reports are just a minor hedge, and if they fail Monsanto will still be golden in investors' eyes. Unless and until we as a society get serious about bankrupting companies that pull this shit, (and their investors too), it will keep happening, and will keep getting worse. We keep rewarding psychopathic behaviour, then moan about the evil in human nature, when the real evil is our failure to organize a proper fight. Sad.
I'm surprised this topic hasn't generated more discussion here. My guess for Monsatan's punishment, if anything at all, is a laughable slap-on-the-wrist fine and a made-for-TV scolding. Until heads start to roll and executives of these types of organizations are thrown into prison for crimes against humanity, these types of problems will continue flourish unabashed.
This is hardly "news" in that itâ(TM)s pretty standard for companies to fund "independent" research papers on their products, and of course the expectation is that these studies will be friendly to whatever thing they are studying. The bigger issue to me is that the majority of the public does not understand this is going on and has been since almost the beginning of time.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
DDT was considered bad too, but, years later it is found to be safe, but, don't tell that to the save the whales/bambi/tree hugger types. They will hit you with website after website saying how DDT kills this or that. Roundup has been used for almost 40 years. If it was THAT deadly, it would have showed up by now. Like I said, you can't have a peaceful meaningful conversation with the "animals first" bunch...they are always right, and anyone with an opposing view is a (insert one of their favorite terms).
Nothing works better. I'll sneak it in from Canada if I need to.
... another article regarding Roundup, Monsanto, and lax oversight by US EPA...
Internal EPA Documents Show Scramble For Data On Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide
The documents raise questions about how and why regulators for years have failed to require robust testing on what is the world’s most widely-used weed killer. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I bought some half cotton, half polyester laundry line not that long ago in a state a thousand miles away, and it had one of those "known to the state of California" carcinogen warnings. I'm starting to think if it's not vegan or EU level expensive, they slap it on anything plastic they want to encourage you to by the 10x more for 1/3 less hippie brand. Because let's face it, they don't actually produce anything; they're all designers, programmers, or actors; the rest of know this as "bullshit artists." Half have too much money that they can only prove digitally and the other half have none at all. If you're worried, I'm sure there's some vinegar and nut shell, bullshit brand you can waste your time on instead.
Thats all you need, but you need to be really careful with it. It'll kill any small plants that grow and the salt helps prevent plants from growing back. The soap helps it all "stick." It's actually an ancient military tactic to salt the ground of your enemies. We've use it in and along the driveways and it takes a few days to notice, but with this hot weather, maybe not.
Tell me, how does it pay to be a filthy discusting Monsanto shill ?
And what do you tell your kids when they ask you what Daddy does for a living. Do you tell them the truth ? Do you tell them "Daddy works for a big company that intends to take control of the entire food production in the world, to enslave the poor in developping countries, and that knowwingly poisons the entire population of earth for profits, just like the big tobacco companies do !"
Boy, your kid must be very proud of his dad.
Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panels manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.
The manuscripts were reviewed by contractors.
I wonder if any regular Slashdot reader has knowledge of the 10Ks that were filed by Monsanto during this period. Under Securities Law, the SEC requires that publicly listed companies like Monsanto complete a number of publications. The annual 10K includes a section, (Item 1A, Risk Factors) in which Monsanto should have been fully disclosing the risks that they were attempting to protect with the edits that they were inducing these "independent" specialists to produce.
If the "evidence" that was being claimed via these "independent" results were substantially different from what the company knew to be reality, then it is entirely within the realm of possibility that a class-action lawsuit could be raised by shareholders who could reasonably claim that they were materially misled.
Why am I focusing on this dimension first and foremost? Simply because we've seen how little large corporations care for the opinions of employees, of adversely affected clients, of the neighbours to their industrial plants, pipelines and processing centres or even the law. The only thing that really seems to worry a CEO these days is a posse of angry shareholders with the power to vote them out of their job.