Slashdot Mirror
Common Weed Killer Glyphosate Increases Risk of Cancer By 41 Percent, Study Says (theguardian.com)
A broad new scientific analysis of the cancer-causing potential of glyphosate herbicides, the most widely used weedkilling products in the world, has found that people with high exposures to the popular pesticides have a 41% increased risk of developing a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The Guardian reports: The evidence "supports a compelling link" between exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides and increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), the authors concluded, though they said the specific numerical risk estimates should be interpreted with caution. Monsanto maintains there is no legitimate scientific research showing a definitive association between glyphosate and NHL or any type of cancer. Company officials say the EPA's finding that glyphosate is "not likely" to cause cancer is backed by hundreds of studies finding no such connection.
But the new analysis could potentially complicate Monsanto's defense of its top-selling herbicide. Three of the study authors were tapped by the EPA as board members for a 2016 scientific advisory panel on glyphosate. The new paper was published by the journal Mutation Research /Reviews in Mutation Research, whose editor in chief is EPA scientist David DeMarini. [...] The study authors said their new meta-analysis evaluated all published human studies, including a 2018 updated government-funded study known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS). Monsanto has cited the updated AHS study as proving that there is no tie between glyphosate and NHL. In conducting the new meta-analysis, the researchers said they focused on the highest exposed group in each study because those individuals would be most likely to have an elevated risk if in fact glyphosate herbicides cause NHL.
But the new analysis could potentially complicate Monsanto's defense of its top-selling herbicide. Three of the study authors were tapped by the EPA as board members for a 2016 scientific advisory panel on glyphosate. The new paper was published by the journal Mutation Research /Reviews in Mutation Research, whose editor in chief is EPA scientist David DeMarini. [...] The study authors said their new meta-analysis evaluated all published human studies, including a 2018 updated government-funded study known as the Agricultural Health Study (AHS). Monsanto has cited the updated AHS study as proving that there is no tie between glyphosate and NHL. In conducting the new meta-analysis, the researchers said they focused on the highest exposed group in each study because those individuals would be most likely to have an elevated risk if in fact glyphosate herbicides cause NHL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
That's 41% relative increase. This means that if you take two people who have an equal chance of getting this cancer, and one is given a "high exposure," they are now 41% more likely to get this cancer than the other, unexposed person.
So if *everyone* got a "high exposure" the rate of this particular form of cancer would increase from 19.4 per 100,000 to 27.4 per 100,000.
That's still an eye-raising increase, but try to keep it in perspective. This does NOT mean 41% of people exposed get cancer.
=Smidge=
... until after the patents have expired.
Monsanto had 26 years of selling Roundup with no 'generic' glyphosate competition. In that time, not a word was published about carcinogenic properties.
But for the past 15 years or so, these stories have been dribbling out, and now they're becoming a flood. It's almost as if someone wanted to discredit the now-generic product in favor of a newer, still-patented alternative.
Key phrase: "people with high exposures to the popular pesticides"
On a related note, inhaled dihydrogen monoxide can be fatal and cause death within minutes without prompt medical assistance.
Where did you get your stats? The actual incidence of this kind of cancer is closer to 2.4% for men and 1.9% for women. (https://www.cancer.org/cancer/non-hodgkin-lymphoma/about/key-statistics.html). That means that exposure to glycophosphate increases it to 3.38% and 2.68%, respectively. That's about an extra 1/100 people. 41% in this case seems to be pretty damn significant.
I don't respond to AC's.
According to the paper they did not. They took 5 other studies that did not show an increased risk. Then they took only the very highest people from each report, and which varied by each of the previous studies, and compared them to those not in the high exposure and got a 41% increase. In other part of the report they did show that prolonged exposure to 100% glyphosate raised the rate of increase; round up is 18%.
I suspect many are defensive on this as this topic is littered with misinformation from activists. This isn't the first study to come out against it, but I hesitate to call those studies as they were basically propaganda that didn't hold up on closer inspection. I've already seen enough here on this study to highly question it and I have no horses in this race.
Because you may be able to discern a pattern that is not revealed in any single isolated study. To turn around an old folk saying, instead of seeing individual trees, you suddenly start seeing a forest. Each tree will still be its own entity, but you suddenly have a large pattern that each individual tree didn't provide a clue for.
There was something similar in clinical psychology and in psychiatry a few years back, regarding autism. A team performed a meta-study of various autism studies, and found a pattern of across-the-board reduced life expectancy for people with autism, around 5 years lower than the global average life expectancy. None of the individual studies had shown a hint at such a large pattern, but all of a sudden there it is. None of the follow-up studies currently being done is showing any signs of refuting that. If anything, it looks like it will get worse, as we get more data from less developed nations.
Meta analysis of other studies are _extremely_ dangerous. They can be much cheaper, and are much more easily distorted, than collecting real data with detectable, reproducible results. To cite your own example, are any of the newer studies actually measuring life expectancy for people with and without autism? Or are they also meta-analyses, receiving funding becuase the contemporary fascination with autism? And since the definition of autism has been malleable, and the rate of diagnosis of it has effectively doubled between 2000 and 2014 according to the CDC at https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/aut... , how has that distorted the results?
i see monsanto has been reading the old tobacco industries playbook and how they handled the cancer claims (until they no longer could).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.