> But mounting evidence, including one study published in February
The article boldly cites a paper by Gilles-Eric Séralini for "evidence" of roundup causing cancer. Seralini is a known fraud who has had multiple papers retracted.
The only reason this paper they cited was published at all is because it is published in a predatory journal that will accept anything as long as you pay the fee.
>World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen
Their definition of "probable human carcinogen" is laughably broad.
>Meanwhile, in November the European Food Safety Authority issued a report concluding that the active ingredient in Roundup was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.”
The EFSA is order of magnitude more reliable than a fraud like Seralini, so I am puzzled why it took so long for the article to mention this?
This position is mirrored by the EPA, Royal Society, and National Academy of Sciences.
The article then goes in depth to ride Seralini's dick and give attention to this quack. This is a shameful piece of "science" reporting, I expected better from The Intercept instead of this ignorant garbage.
Cooked meats are carcinogenic though (eg http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/di...) aren't they? So ... are you saying glyphosate is known to be mutagenic and likely to cause cancers or that the common understanding on cooked meats is wrong.
I'm not clear how the mutagenic properties reported in cooked meats appease "anti-gmo sentiments" as 'organic' meats are as likely to be cooked as others.
You're being very vociferous in your arguing perhaps you got carried away in your claims for Monsanto products?
"Of cancers that affect both men and women, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and the third most common cancer in men and in women."
It is one of the leading causes of death, but I guess compared to heart disease, you could say every other cause of death is relatively rare and can be dismissed.
The IARC calls _many_ things "probable human carcinogens".
I assume you drink alcohol (and if you don't it's likely not because the IARC classifies it as a "probable human carcinogen")?
Here's a quote that I think sums it up well:
"To take an analogy, think of banana skins. They definitely can cause accidents – but in practice this doesn’t happen very often (unless you work in a banana factory). And the sort of harm you can come to from slipping on a banana skin isn’t generally as severe as, say, being in a car accident.
But under a hazard identification system like IARC’s, ‘banana skins’ and ‘cars’ would come under the same category – they both definitely do cause accidents."
Of course, but you wouldn't say "banana skins don't cause accidents" if you wanted to tell the truth. You'd say "banana skins do cause a few accidents" and list the accident reports involving them per head of population using a reputable source independent of the banana industry (and give a comparison figure).
So, in this case one might say: [made up example] "the 'inactive' ingredient of Roundup has been shown as likely to cause cancer at the same levels as eating cooked meats".
Some people do/have reduced their intake of cooked meats in order to reduce their [perceived if not actual] cancer risk.
You're being very disingenuous throughout this entire thread. Your posts (specifically the "glyphosate/roundup" pairing) indicate to a layman like me that roundup is synonymous with gylphosate, yet through further reading I discovered that approximately half of it is glyphosate, and the rest is a combination of surfactants and whatever else.
> yet through further reading I discovered that approximately half of it is glyphosate, and the rest is a combination of surfactants and whatever else.
This is a recent development in the literature. The case for glyphosate being carcinogenic has been so widely tested and proven false that Seralini's group has had to shift focus to save face.
They then turned to POEA as a potential carcinogen, a widely used chemical present in commercial roundup (and many many other products).
They did this because surfactants are irritants, so their physiological effect can easily confound sloppy studies.
The result is a protracted grasping at straws so Seralini can prove his predefined conclusion that "roundup causes cancer". Bad papers published in crap journals to get media attention so Seralini can sell his book.
Well, it's a bit odd to call something like this which has been isolated and studied extensively "unknown" while giving a pass to the myriad uncharacterized things found in our food naturally.
It's not like being natural imbues anything with any guarantee of safety and wholesomeness, despite what advertising would have us believe. I mean, at this point, poison ivy is a lot more 'natural' in some sense than the average carrot and I know which one I'd rather eat.
You think that if farmers eschew Roundup you're going to have a better idea of what chemicals are on the crops you consume? Roundup is popular because it's potent, and it's potent because glyphosate is an elegant and powerful weed control solution. Most farmers who don't use glyphosate will use something less biochemically elegant, and those things are more likely to be harmful to humans, not less.
No, I read that part too, and I understand the concern --- but how is it less of a concern for other pesticides? The safety record on conventional weed control is... not great.
After college I did landscaping. Once I cleared brush that had been treated with Roundup, and broke into an itchy rash from head to toe. After that experience, I quite landscaping forever.
The biggest lie is that Roundup IS glyphosate. This false. Roundup is a chemical slurry of byproducts that happens to contain some glyphosate. Otherwise it would not be so cheap.
All studies thus far point to roundup/glyphosate being incredibly safe. Far safer than any alternative, including many "natural" ones. The LD50 for glyphosate is like a fucking kilogram for humans.
Really ?!?! Your biology degree is NOT ENOUGH ! You have NO training, NO education, and NO expertise on matters concerning pest control products. Your assertion is possibly the STUPIDEST we have ever heard ! That is all you know ?!?! You know NOTHING !
According to this[1], 51% of one of their roundup products is "Other Chemicals", so less than half is Glyphosate. It says to try and keep it off skin etc. Wouldn't surprise me if most formulations have... other ingredients.
You appear to be making a false equivocation, stating that Monsanto's Roundup is safe because glyphosate is safe. On the other hand there are lots of studies showing that Roundup appears to cause health problems, which are likely to be based on the additives. The study from the University of Caen:
So presumably you consider POEA to be completely safe as you said Roundup is safe and that, what, the medical authorities reported of here are either misreported or mistaken?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083 "There is insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate preparations containing POEA are more toxic than those containing alternative surfactants"
Surfactants, in general, are toxic. There is nothing special about POEA. Used properly, surfactants can be of good use and result in safe improvement of agriculture.
But you said, did you not, that Roundup - which is about 50% surfactants - was safe, safe to drink even. You compared it to drinking coffee IIRC. How is Roundup not toxic then?
My point is it's a politicians response - the questioner asked about harm and the answer was a shift to a specific form of harm so that drinking Roundup could be compared to drinking coffee.
It's perhaps strictly true, buy the manner is dishonest. Such an answer discredits the writer. The intent is to sow the idea that 'Roundup is less harmful to drink than coffee' even if the explicit expression was different.
It's safe enough to be used in hand-degreaser, hair coloring and toilet bowl cleaners.
Throwing around the term "safe" is not really helpful. Safe to handle is different than safe to drink and the truth is much more complicated than that. Nearly everything is "safe" or "toxic" the difference is in the quantity that makes it into our body.
This doesn't seem to prove it's unsafe unless you consider irritated skin a safety issue. In that case don't go outside as there are many things more irritating like say the sun (which actually causes cancer).
I don't know why one would consider skin irritation not to be a safety issue, you wear gloves when using such chemicals. Just claiming it is "safe" means people don't know they need to wear gloves.
The sun is cancer causing, but knowing that means we can take precautions. Claiming exposure to UV rays in the sun is not harmful would be foolishly misleading. Just because there are greater harms doesn't mean something is "safe", yes people have different cut-offs, so comparatives are good (which toxicologists seem quite capable of using; median lethal dose, etc.).
I consider sandpaper safe, yet it's also a skin irritant and I would not eat it.
"Safe" does not convey anything about wearing gloves or not, and the term should not be thrown around without understanding what is meant by it.
I think most people would say going outside in the sun is "safe", but most also know there is more to that than a binary "good" or "bad", "safe" or "toxic". You however seem to be using the term in binary form.
"causes a rash" (which is in the data sheets for the product - you did read those before you started working with it, right) is different to "kills you on skin contact" or "kills you if you drink it".
Worldwide very many deaths by suicide are caused by people drinking weedkiller, so moving to glyphosate should stop some of those.
I'm downvoting you (pretty much everywhere here) because you haven't provided any links to substantiate your dismissals and further you've come off rather uncivilly.
It's trivial to google the guy's name and confirm he's a self-identified anti-GMO crank with paper retractions. It's not reasonable to ask for citations on things you can easily confirm or deny yourself.
Really odd how articles criticizing a weed killer rile up such emotion.
Your response is a good part ad hominem and emotional attacks. Do you have any facts to back up your claims? Seralini is a fraud according to who? He is well respected and has won awards from the German Federation of Scientists. He has actually won court cases against special interests that have attempted to libel him. Seems that you were influenced by this libel.
And why should I trust your judgement over WHO on carcinogenicity?
Talking about "riding dicks" doesn't help your cause either. You come off as immature and it hurts your credibility. I'm surprised you've been voted to the top.
> I think people get riled up about this stuff because Monsanto is a particular bête noire of some leftish anti-science people.
The reverse is true as well. Monsanto/GMO debates seem to be mostly about posturing/signaling, with the two sides throwing pseudoscience and FUD at each other and absolutely no chance of either side reconsidering their stances or taking a close look at the facts. It's more akin to the argument between different religious fanatics, and agnostics or non-believers don't have much to gain by getting in the middle of it.
A lot of it seems to be the anti-science folks who are against GMO's and the like, and Monsanto is a convenient bad guy. Most of the actual science and law doesn't seem to look that bad for them once you get past the "outrage!" articles.
Of course, like many a large company, they do have some ugly history in their past, and I'm sure they're not perfect, so I guess that makes it more convenient. However, yeah, it does make discussing specific things kind of difficult.
No one commenting here are part of the anti-science folks and you're unlikely to find them on HC. Meanwhile /u/searine is a well-known reddit mod for /r/GMO and his argumentative style of writing isn't new either. IMHO it's people like him who give the industry a bad name.
> Meanwhile /u/searine is a well-known reddit mod for /r/GMO
You flatter me.
But seriously. Stop by https://www.reddit.com/r/gmo . We actually try to be very inclusive of all opinions. So few people are interested in this topic that we really love to have everyone there. Usually its just kids asking for help on school projects...
>his argumentative style of writing isn't new either. IMHO it's people like him who give the industry a bad name.
See here's the thing. I know I won't ever change the mind of anti-science true believers. As a scientist, I've had to deal with climate change deniers, creationists, anti-vaxxers, and anti-gmo kooks. To me they are a lost cause.
However, I can impact how the audience views them. I may be crass, but I cite my sources, and I expose poor arguments. Deal with it.
One of the guidelines we have on HN that works well is: pretend like you're saying something to someone in person. You could certainly state a strong opinion that way, but it's less likely that most people would be outright rude and vulgar about it.
I think your're on firm enough ground, scientifically, that you can state things strongly without being crass.
I'm glad you're here and, as an expert in the field, able and willing to explain why an article has poor scientific reporting. But, I agree with davidw: we take the guidelines seriously. Please consider them when responding: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
These kinds of arguments may have force on Reddit, but they're verboten on HN. You need to engage the argument itself and not try to dredge things up about the arguer.
The "anti-science" epithet that tends to get thrown at the people who are against GMOs is a good example of this. We don't see people who are against the use of other technology labeled as such, even if they are on similar weak footing (IE, the AI-apocalypse folks). It's somewhat arbitrary which technology it's OK to be against when your reasons are weak, and which technology it's anti-scientific to be against when your reasons are weak.
It's not arbitrary, it's about arguing against a working and beneficial thing because of fear instead of any reasonable argument. That's why peope who are anti-vaccination also get labeled anti-science, as well as those freaking out about nuclear energy or cellphone radiation.
AI apocalypse, while plausible-sounding (at least to me), is still in the future. GMOs are useful here and now.
AI and automation (here and now) are probably a lot more beneficial to me than GMOs are (looking at Spain and Frances respective cereal yields, I'm not seeing a pressing need for GMOs). Yet I don't think it would benefit the discussion to start calling you anti-science just because you think the AI apocalypse is a threat while I think there's little evidence to show that it is.
What purpose would calling you anti-science serve, other than throwing an ad hominem attack at someone who I disagree with?
Because the main talking points against GMOs ignore the science around them, and are often antithetical to science itself. It's an accurate label. Regarding AI and automation, no one has made specific arguments, so it's possible the specific arguments could be anti-science.
It really depends on the talking points. There are certainly talking points that go against evidence on all sides - anti-GMO types ("GMOs cause tumors"), pro-GMO types ("Without GMOs a lot of the population would have starved to death by now"), people concerned about automation ("automation is occurring faster now that it's ever occurred before"), people concerned about AI ("Once we reach human level AI, AI development will grow exponentially"). If you decide to label anyone who's supportive of/concerned about/uninterested in GMOs/AI/automation/whatever anti-science simply because someone who is nominally on the same side with them is a crank, then you're going to end up throwing that insult at a lot of people who don't deserve it.
And I probably still wouldn't call any of the people in the examples above anti-science, even if their arguments fly in the face of available evidence. It doesn't further the conversation, it only insults the person you're arguing with.
I think your objection is that a person is being given a label, which I agree, that's usually not fruitful. But the sentiment must still come across: some objections go against not just the body of knowledge we have accumulated through the scientific process, but the basic philosophy of science itself. I'm also talking about specific positions or arguments, so I'm not concerned with your concern about over-labeling people.
Which is fine, but the posts I was responding to were labeling people critical of GMOs in general as anti-science, rather than labeling a particular argument as anti-science.
But even if you limit yourself to particular arguments that are contradicted to available evidence, the "anti-science" epithet will gets applied to the anti-GMO bunk ("GMOs cause tumors"), but not pro-GMO bunk ("without GMOs billions would have starved to death") or bunk about automation ("automation is happening faster than ever before").
It doesn't tend to be used to generally describe people who are making claims that are contrary to available evidence. It tends to only be used to attack people who disagree with the user on certain specific issues. It's more posturing and veiled insult than legitimate argument.
Then again, even if it was used in a intellectually honest and consistent way (which, again, it almost always isn't), it wouldn't be particularly useful. If someone is doing something that flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of science, address it directly ("How can we verify your claims?" "What evidence would you deem sufficient to decide that this is incorrect?"). Saying something is anti-science isn't useful; it only tells us that the speaker disagrees.
One problem with these discussions is that even questioning GMOs (whether you generally accept them or not) will get you labeled as "anti-science". Stifling inquiry is the real "anti-science" stance.
There are extremely powerful and moneyed interests that put a lot of effort into PR campaigns for their products and against anyone who finds fault with them, regardless of how sound the science is. Just because there may be subtle problems with a real scientific study on GMO safety done by a real scientist doesn't make the whole thing "anti-science". It's such a stupid label. Most scientific studies will reveal flaws with enough scrutiny.
Agreed. "anti-science" has become the scientific communities "racism" term. Generally applied to shutdown an argument without any real discussion.
Edit: consider any topic should have valid opposition. Does any valid opposition exist for GMO's? or is being critical automatically equate with anti-science? If you can't name a single valid opponent, then there is a problem. Either no one is challenging the science or anyone who is challenging the science is attacked. Either case would not be positive for scientific progress.
All fields and subjects should have identifiable opposition. Health studies, genetics have many scientist on opposing sides without anyone being labeled anti-science. Physics string theory, gravitational theory the same. However, introduce private companies with lots of money into the mix with some politics and all of a sudden all opposition is anti-science. What is truly anti-science is that there can't exist opposition.
I think that it's only in a few tech circles that being anti-GMO is immediately dismissed as anti-science. Living in Seattle, I run into a ton of anti-GMO people who don't have their false beliefs challenged. (And really, I can only do so much before I grow weary.)
The anti-GMO crowd takes a strong and extreme stance. They are against all lab-modified organisms! As someone with a biochemistry degree, I see that GM is a tool. Yes, it would be a bad idea to put proteins for peanut allergens into soybeans. Yes, the overuse of pesticides are a problem. (Although, GMOs probably use fewer pesticides: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/fewer-pesticides-fa... )
From my perspective, it's the progressives that are hysterically lying about GMOs. So I punch back firmly! Most of these people don't have a solid understanding of the central dogma of biochemistry.
If we were more rational beings, we would observe that whether we should use GMOs or not is simply an engineering problem.
I think you are speaking of anti-gmo as a culture vs. anti-gmo as science. It is like vegan's who adopt the diet for spiritual reasons vs. health reasons. The fact that some adopt a position or practice based on non scientific reasoning doesn't negate that scientific reasoning does exist for other facets of the subject.
IMHO, the "punch back firmly" attitude leads to reciprocation on both sides and a death spiral for any real dialogue.
As a culture, I believe that we are "punching back firmly" when it comes to vaccinations. California passed a law requiring vaccinations or a valid reason not to have one. Late-night comedy talk shows are mocking them. It sure as hell isn't polite, but measles isn't polite either.
I guess that I try to educate when I meet people in-person who are anti-GMO. The last anti-GMO person was a friend of the family at an engagement party-- I wasn't going to be mean about it. But I was firm and explained what kind of genes are moved over, and how it only changes a few things. And how that it's really cool that we're harnessing one piece of nature to help another piece of nature! I'll be aware to try persuasion over mocking.
This is a tangent, and I'm not a vegan, but you should be careful about conflating moral reasons with spiritual reasons. "I don't want to kill or cause the death of animals" is not a spiritual statement.
Just consider that some individuals who have concerns with GMO's are not scientist themselves, but are referring to information that they have identified as a vetted scientific source. Which may or may not be true.
So, from their perspective, it is a science argument. Labeling their argument as anti-science is condescending in that it is received as a statement they are either not educated, have phobias of technology or their position comes from some religious or philosophical belief.
The elephant in the room with vaccines is a credibility problem within the industry. Until that is addressed, doubt the dialog is going to improve. Whether the following are all true or not is irrelevant, these articles represent the lost of public trust which I believe is at the root of the problem that is never discussed.
Sorry, semantics. I know they're are okay with corn that was bred using advanced breeding techniques. And bananas. But to hit you back with some semantics-- they're okay with certain transgenic organisms, like the yeast & mammalian cells we use for drug testing & production. I also bet they're okay with the glow-in-the-dark GFP kittens.
So to be more perfectly exact, let's go with: Transgenic crops.
>And why should I trust your judgement over WHO on carcinogenicity?
Because they don't have proof glyphosate is a carcinogen, just general harm classifications. Glyphosate is in a class of carcinogens similar to dietary meat, and other everyday minor exposures.
>You come off as immature and it hurts your credibility
Sometimes you have to be crass to put a spotlight on bullshit.
Read the article, it is not pointing the finger at Roundup's main ingredient "glyphosate". But they are putting toxic chemicals in their products without listing it anywhere on the label:
"POEA — officially an “inert” ingredient — was between 1,200 and 2,000 times more toxic to cells than glyphosate, officially the “active” ingredient."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083
"There is insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate preparations containing POEA are more toxic than those containing alternative surfactants"
Surfactants, in general, are toxic. There is nothing special about POEA. Used properly, surfactants can be of good use and result in safe improvement of agriculture.
> Sometimes you have to be crass to put a spotlight on bullshit.
The issue isn't being crass in the sense of profane, but of calling names and using uncivil rhetoric in arguments. You can't do that here. This holds regardless of how right one is, or believes one is, or how wrong someone else is.
Your comment history unfortunately includes a great deal of incivility, though not usually as egregious as in this thread. Please edit all that kind of thing out when commenting here. If you want, you can set the 'delay' property in your profile to give yourself up to 10 minutes to edit your comments before they appear to other users. (That's what I do.)
You have to understand that for many scientists, work like this is darn near akin to climate change denial. You can only repeat yourself so many times debunking this garbage before you start trying to be creative. And you can only be so creative before you go crazy.
*It's not exactly like climate change denial. There's still a small chance that glyphosates have serious dangers and there are always other chemicals, and combinations of chemicals to research. But that doesn't excuse the shoddy science and hysteria that swarms around these issues like flies on turds.
On WHO carcinogenicity---note that their "probable human carcinogens" include Red meat, Hot mate, Emission from household combustion of wood, etc. That doesn't mean the list is meaningless. They just say those are "probable" carcinogens in the literal sense, based on limited evidence on humans and sufficient evidence on experimental animals. It may be wise to avoid exposure to them more than necessary, but you don't want to take the list as if they're deadly chemicals or something.
RetractionWatch, who are well-respected in the scientific community, has seven posts discussing his work (http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-author/gilles-seralin...). I won't go into the detail of the retracted article, its subsequent republishing without peer review, or his various conflicts of interest around his books or the funding of his group by 'pharma' companies selling plant-based homeopathic products claiming to be able to 'detoxify' Roundup residues (there's some detail on this in his Wikipedia entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles-%C3%89ric_S%C3%A9ralini)
With respect to his 'court cases' - he won a defamation case against a journalist writing for a French magazine that had accused him of fraud and forgery. Incredibly few critics of Seralini have accused him of fraud; the court decision makes no statement as to the merit of what is the serious criticism of Seralini's work (in terms of the statistics, methods and analysis employed).
Regarding the German Federation of Scientists - he was awarded a 'whistleblower' award, not one for scientific merit. The jury/committee that awarded him this had a CRIIGEN board member (his host institution) and public supporter of Seralini as a member; there is not, as far as I can see, any information to suggest that she recused herself for this decision. The other scientist on the jury is a well-respected metrologist; all other members of the jury are legal professionals. For the sake of balance, the full decision of that jury is listed here - http://neu.vdw-ev.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Full-Reasoni...
On a personal note though - Seralini has several anti-GMO and anti-glyphosate books, releases papers in concert with documentaries, and appears to believe in 'detoxification' and homeopathic plant-based treatments in order to 'detoxify' Roundup residues. This behaviour and these views place him quite outside the usual behaviour of a scientist - it's simply not done that you write a paper and time it for an accompanying book launch and documentary release.
Maybe, but your post is overly emotional in a bunch of ways -- and worse, uses language that's really quite a turn-off, viscerally, in a technical forum -- and as such, doesn't exactly inspire me to follow up on any of your links. If anything, it leaves the impression that even if the Intercept article was sloppy (or worse), then most likely your analysis is engaging in some form of cherry picking or other rhetorical manipulation, as well... so why should I bother?
As my chemisty professor explained to me many years ago, its not the glyphosate that makes Roundup dangerous, its the byproducts and accidental ingredients.
Roundup is made from recycled chemicals. Every batch is different and some of it has lots of heavy metals.
I haven't looked into it, but I have always been curious about it. I would imagine that many chemical processes from industry have byproducts that are recycled and used in different ways. Putting them into cheap products like Roundup makes sense, from a pure business perspective.
It would make the MSDS fucking useless. Since these are regulated (at least, in the EU) I find it hard to believe that monsanto puts any of shit into a barrel, and some glyphosate, and then puts a Roundup label on it.
I do. It is dirt cheap.
Maybe you can trust the safety standards in Europe but here in the US, government regulation for food safety is notoriously bad. The FDA has been broken for years.
Your explanation is appealing because it fits Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." If you're right, then we're putting chemicals of unknown toxicity in homes everywhere. Do you have anything else to back up this assertion?
You stated "I was a biology major" in another part of the thread as justification for your claims, but you indicate that you got this information from your chemistry professor, not a biology professor. I'd say that's a bit deceptive in itself. On top of this, you can't seem to cite anything, and you are the only one here claiming this.
I challenge you to buy some Roundup and test it for heavy metals, then make the results available. Otherwise please do cite equivalent research.
> Every batch is different and some of it has lots of heavy metals.
This part may have been confused with glyphosate's ability to chelate metals? [1] ... I doubt any large company that's strictly regulated, and who employs professional chemists/chemical engineers, would have toxic impurity issues.
But it's possible that it's concentrating metals in the environment.
This 1998 MSDS does list polyethoxylated tallow amine as an inert ingredient, with an immediately adjacent note that it is a Hazardous chemical under the criteria of the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200).
I've used Roundup a little bit (not anywhere close to what would happen occupationally) and have always been more concerned with exposure to the solvent during application than any later exposure.
I'm not sure what the OSHA thing entails, I'm sure it means that employers would have to make information available to employees, but it isn't clear that it would require them to do anything more.
The linked article is largely about Ethoxylated Tallowamine.
If you believe that the US system for hazardous materials is effective, then no, it won't contain anything more than traces of other materials, because those things aren't on the safety label.
If you don't believe that the US system for hazardous materials is effective, why would you believe me either?
They are required to characterize the material in question. They don't say a bit of glyphosate and some other stuff we had around, they list the ingredients and give the proportion of each ingredient.
"But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health."
Why is the burden of proof on the public to show a pesticide is unsafe, rather than on the manufacturer to ensure (and publicly document, explain) that they have reasonable expectation of safety? Why is it hard/impossible for independent investigators to get samples? We're talking about our water (run-off) and food supplies here.
How can you prove a negative? Can you prove that you don't beat your wife?
The MSDS process does provide a rather comprehensive treatment of chemicals. It would be ridiculous to prove that every single chemical doesn't cause a rare pancreatic cancer. How do you test that? Human trials? It isn't the money'd interests, it just practical reality. These chemicals ARE tested to some extent.. It would be ridiculous for a company to have to prove their product doesn't cause any of 10,000 types of cancer, diseases or any other ailment.
Then you have pseudo-science forces working against "industry" regardless of facts. DDT is a great example of what happens when we let people like Rachel Carson have the unrestricted ability to effectively libel a product based on discredited science -- leading to malaria almost being eliminated to malaria killing millions of people each year.
Maybe activists ought to have their claims subject to regulation.. They are guilty of scientific fraud. Vaccines, DDT, GMOs, fracking.. They are opposed to those things not based on actual, credible and repeatable science but because pop culture "experts" want to sell books or movie tickets and organizations have a financial interest in promoting their "non-profits."
It's good to see Europe taking the opposite approach of America with regards to Glyphosate. Forget the studies and just let time show us who is right and who is wrong.
All I do know is that humanity made it this far (15000+ years of agriculture) without such chemicals and we'll probably make it much further without them.
If you like Glyphosate, fair enough, enjoy! The rest of us might sit on the sidelines and watch this experiment unfold.
It's important to keep in mind that there are a variety of things that are different now from the preceding 15ky of agriculture -- the most important statistic being the one demonstrated by this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3a/Human_populat....
I think this is a false dichotomy where, if we don't use Monsanto, we will be forced back to the stone age. If herbicides are dangerous we should start putting resources towards further developing alternatives (like the weed-punching bot Bosch is working on)
Because it wouldn't matter and it would set a horrible precedent. Who's going to define and enforce what a "reasonable expectation of safety" is? The government, who has a revolving door with the same industry it's expected to regulate?
I prefer the system we have in place now, which is for the press (alternative, professional or otherwise) to alert people to a problem and they can decide how much risk they're willing to take.
Although, I do admit that approach won't work with Monsanto. They don't technically have a monopoly, but they're big enough that a reasonable alternative doesn't exist. But, they're big enough that attempts at regulation or law enforcement won't work either. One of the conundrums of our day, I suppose.
This is an "old" news from Argentina http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373134 where Monsanto pesticides were used and cancer affected many people in a specific population.
"We diluted the formulation 5,000 times, and some of the embryos died and some of them became malformed. I decided to inject pure glyphosate into embryos and we got the same result."
If you try both baseline concentration and 5000X baseline and get the same results, that would seem to indicate that glyphoshate was not causative in that experiment.
Environmental puritan wackos hate genetic engineering. Fight for science. Fight for food security. Fight against this rising tide of ignorance and scare tactics posing as science.
Where did I say that? You were listing good things to fight for. I was adding another one, not moving the goal post. You might exercising some charity and tone down your reactions.
All people are immature. Maybe we should stop trying to hide that, acting all proper. I talk that way as well, it's better than censwhoring your thoughts 24/7.
All people are also racist and those who say they arent usually are the most racist. That's a different discussion, but similarly applies.
It does no good to be afraid of being human. We are simian. We are an immature, racist, justifying species. So what? Embrace the grease. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Or maybe your precious AI will save you?
We are what we strive to be. Hacker News was, once upon a time, almost purely respectful even in the face of stark criticism or blatant dismissals. That, sadly, has changed.
Over many hours of awareness and training I would agree. But at the end of the day the elephant calls the shots, not the rider. Unless we learn to influence the beast more and more, and in all areas of our lives.
P.S. Is it just me who loves the rush of getting downvoted? The truth is almost always unpopular. Not saying that what I say is necessarily the truth, but it's a good sign :).
This strikes me as a plainly false equivocation - railing against political correctness or "acting proper" as a way of justifying being "immature, racist, justifying". But one can (and must, imo) agree that too much political correctness can be problematic and unproductive without accepting the next proposition.
> I talk that way as well, it's better than censwhoring your thoughts 24/7.
That works in personal conversation far more than it does on a large, optionally anonymous internet forum. The HN guidelines are the way they are for good reason, and we all need to follow them when commenting here.
So what you are saying is that we should censor who we are when we are on the web?
For some reason that sounds wrong. The web should adapt to us, not the other way around. That is one of the big things wrong with the web and the world today.
It comes down to Paul Graham not being creative enough to implement a system that can organize human ideas without resorting to police-state tactics.
I get it, it's a seemingly intractable problem. Not insulting the keymaster, Paul Graham, just challenging the idea that we should all conform to some webmaster's view of how the web should work.
I am not going to let supreme douchebags like Zuckerberg and Larry the Page dictate how we should think or behave, thank you very much.
I will never follow an out-of-touch techie ruling from inside the silicon valley bubble. Would rather go to war.
"
But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health.
"
For many tasks involving herbicide, there's a choice between these chemicals or labor intensive and exhausting use of heavy machinery and hand tools. There may some day be a proven link between Roundup and cancer. But there is a known high risk using more labor intensive methods. Agricultural work is one of the most dangerous occupations and it's due to tractor rollovers, falls, and lacerations. Suspending the use of herbicide would mean hundreds (thousands?) more gruesome deaths per year.
I've got a small coffee farm with some wild areas that I'm clearing and I started out wanting to do everything "organic". After 1 year it was clear that prepping land the old fashioned way would be significantly more hazardous.
They also forget about the energy costs and the subsidies. If we had to pay what food really costs agriculture might be considered the sexiest area to work in.
Also productivity, there would be a lot less food available without it, and I imagine it would be close to impossible to manage pests and diseases in a 200km wide one crop farm.
The US won't be affected, neither would be Europe the rest of the world well....
It's all nice when we talk about organic food and about being ok with paying 10$ for couple of ecofriendly organic fair traded tomatoes but some one in India won't be able to afford that, heck many people in the US won't be able to afford them either.
Banning GMO's is all nice and dandy but all what we do is push farmers to produce "premium" crops that can be sold at 10 times the price while producing 1/4th of the amount which would leave allot of people hungry.
A framer doesn't care how many people he feeds he only cares about the button line if he can make more money by feeding less people with organic food the fact the some one will go hungry won't really be in that equation.
This is missing the point. The choice you pose can only be made if we're all well informed and make that risk assessment, but we haven't been, so can't. Unless you can tell me how many people have died as a result of exposure to Roundup ( no one knows ), then I don't think your argument has any weight. As an aside, the farmers using these chemicals are the ones most at risk.
Companies claiming their products are safe, when they are not is the real story here, and how even when scientists were warning of dangers in 2001, those warnings were not heeded by regulators in a serious enough manner that it's taken this long to "prove" that the chemicals are unsafe.
What is your definition of "Safe"? Because, to a farmer, a huge piece of machinery that will shred you to pieces at a moments notice is much less safe than a chemical that might give you cancer in a few years.
That link doesn't say that Monsanto has sued California for
not wanting that users are waring about Roundup risks.
>...especially when it would have taken roughly the same amount of effort to compose the comment as to type "monsanto sues california" into Google.
Oh, no, I have done that, and the only thing that has appeared is that Monsanto has sued California because they don't want Roundup being classified as carcinogenic.
It is a totally different thing.
So, I ask for the source, because I don't find anything.
That link doesn't say that Monsanto has sued California for not wanting that users are waring about Roundup risks.
?
FTA: A listing would also require Monsanto and others offering products containing glyphosate to provide a "clear and reasonable warning" to consumers that the chemical is known to cause cancer, damaging Monsanto's reputation and violating its First Amendment rights, the company said.
This seems pretty simple. Monsanto sued California because of bad testing results on Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate. If the chemical gets added to the CA registry, then Monsanto would have to put the ubiquitous 'known to the state of California to cancer' notice on anything that contains it.
Yes, you're missing that is not the same "Monsanto doesn't want consumers warned" and "Monsanto doesn't want its products to be listed as carcinogenic and put labels that say it causes cancer".
Surely Roundup and other pesticides have instructions and safety warnings and procedures, isn't?
Agricultural workers die all the time using heavy machinery. If the increased risks from chemical exposure were similar in magnitude they would show up in epidemiological studies (which have been done).
I don't doubt that these chemicals could cause cancer, but if they do it's at a rate that prevents easy detection.
[Edit] -- And to be clear, I'm not advocating that Roundup is safe. Like everything in our food system it should be scrutinized and studied, trade secrets be damned.
"Agricultural workers die all the time using heavy machinery. If the increased risks from chemical exposure were similar in magnitude they would show up in epidemiological studies (which have been done)."
The heavy machinery that you speak of is used for a great many other things than simply weed/foliage control.
So aren't you going to have that infrastructure, and those risks, regardless of what you do with your weeds ?
The more serious problem with this line of reasoning is that the risks of the machinery are confined to the people doing the work, whereas the (possibly much smaller, but less understood) risks are potentially borne by the entire population around their use.
What if your neighbors don't share your risk analysis ?
The people who volunteer to be subject of those long-term studies tend to have little overlap with the demographic exposed to said chemicals. I.e., your average seasonal migrant who's going to work 8 years here then return to their South or Central American home. If they do stay here, they're more often than not seasonal migrants, sans documentation, not the type who'd volunteer to come into a university building twice a year for 20 years to be a medical subject of a study. (These guys likely don't even have base-level medical healthcare).
Not a medical oncologist but 2A chems are basically considered "yeah, we can't directly link this to cancer but even healthy adults will want to stay away from this stuff; don't even think about bringing children/elderly/people with compromised immune systems around it". Other chemicals that fall into 2A are tetra-{flouro|chloro}-ethylene[1] and dimethyl sulfate[2].
You can certainly do things 'organically' without having to use Roundup[3]. Some of my hippie friends decided to buy distressed properties in Maine and 'do it all by hand' co-op style. You won't be supplying Walmart and making money hand over fist, you won't be able to use all your land all the time, but at the same time you won't be practicing short-term maximization (a mentality that directly contributed to the first Dust Bowl).
2: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfate) Dimethyl sulfate is carcinogenic[7] and mutagenic, highly poisonous, corrosive, environmentally hazardous and volatile (presenting an inhalation hazard). It is considered a potential chemical weapon.[13]
3: Note that RoundUp is a Monsanto trade-name with a chemical composition that changes nearly, if not every, year due the rapid immunity weeds tend to develop against it. While wildly lucrative, its ecological impact is not unlike the overprescription of antibiotics (antibiotics indiscriminately kill good & bad bacteria :: RoundUp will kill other plants [i.e. not just weeds] that grew in tandem with those other plants to enforce "checks and balances" with a secondary-effect of allowing the rampant proliferation of more harmful weeds)
edit: RoundUp ORIGINAL(tm)[4] (emphasis added) is primarily glyphosate. That's what you get at Home Depot at 5% to keep your lawn nice, green, and dandelion-free. Industrial RoundUp is a) ~40% b) has the warning
Wear appropriate protective clothing to prevent skin contact. Applicators and other handlers must wear long-sleeved shirt, long pants, shoes plus socks and protective eyewear". (Again, that's the 'original' formulation. Farmers (at least in South America, I have no knowledge outside of that region, but I'd be willing to bet practices are similar worldwide) use special formulations, often designed for a specific region.) Regardless, glyphosate is still 2A[5] and just because you use it once a season on your lawn at 5% doesn't mean it doesn't cause cancer. If you smoke a cigarette once a year after getting sloshed on New Years eve, your odds of cigarette-related lung cancer increasing are quite slim; if you've been smoking two and a half packs of Reds for 40 years, on the other hand...
> Note that RoundUp is a Monsanto trade-name with a chemical composition that changes nearly, if not every, year due the rapid immunity weeds tend to develop against it.
What's the point of the genetic modification to seeds if they can just breed resistant crop? Do they change the genetic modification frequently too?
The herbicide in Roundup has been glyphosate ever since they introduced the product.
Re your edit: The stuff you are calling industrial Roundup is intended for mixing with water before application. It's sold as concentrate to simplify shipping and storage.
They do seem to vary the additives they use in order to change the treatment properties of the Roundup (better absorption or faster drying time or whatever).
> Not a medical oncologist but 2A chems are basically considered "yeah, we can't directly link this to cancer but even healthy adults will want to stay away from this stuff; don't even think about bringing children/elderly/people with compromised immune systems around it
Healthy adults should want to stay away from red meat?
> For many tasks involving herbicide, there's a choice between these chemicals or labor intensive and exhausting use of heavy machinery and hand tools.
Or these chemicals and other, much nastier, chemicals.
> But there is a known high risk using more labor intensive methods.
Which is a different kind of risk. The kind you can mitigate against with training and safety features and the kind people can choose to opt out of. You can choose to work at Walmart instead of a farm if the farm won't compensate you more for the added risk, you can't choose not to eat food.
...or patience works, too. We have been slowly prepping our land by cutting the plants we don't want as soon as they flower. That way, all the non-germinated seeds from prior years are used up, so we don't have a resurgence when we get a good rainfall. And no more seeds fall, as we kill them plants at that sensitive point in their lifecycle when they have expended all their energy, but not yet produced new seeds.
Over 3 years, the weeds are mostly gone, leaving us just with what we have sown, and doing it this way builds plants that naturally "win" vs. weeds, in our particular soil and microclimate.
Futile? Not really -- we have wind and neighboring fields. And sure, some weeds pop in, so you still do have to weed gardens, and do the culling of flowering weeds each year. But their numbers do decrease each year.
This argument that the alternative to using Roundup is thousands of deaths per year from tractors rolling over would be laughable, if not coming from a paid shill.
Tractor roll over deaths were eliminated by the 3-point hitch in the 1940's.
188 comments
[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 233 ms ] thread> But mounting evidence, including one study published in February
The article boldly cites a paper by Gilles-Eric Séralini for "evidence" of roundup causing cancer. Seralini is a known fraud who has had multiple papers retracted.
The only reason this paper they cited was published at all is because it is published in a predatory journal that will accept anything as long as you pay the fee.
>World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen
Their definition of "probable human carcinogen" is laughably broad.
>Meanwhile, in November the European Food Safety Authority issued a report concluding that the active ingredient in Roundup was “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.”
The EFSA is order of magnitude more reliable than a fraud like Seralini, so I am puzzled why it took so long for the article to mention this?
This position is mirrored by the EPA, Royal Society, and National Academy of Sciences.
The article then goes in depth to ride Seralini's dick and give attention to this quack. This is a shameful piece of "science" reporting, I expected better from The Intercept instead of this ignorant garbage.
Edit by request :
EFSA : http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302
EPA [PDF] : https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/rere...
NAS : http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-s...
Safety of POEA : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083
Your daily coffee is probably an order of magnitude more carcinogenic than any glyphosate/roundup exposure.
You consider IARC to be "quack-science"?
They are using general classifications to infer potential harm. Glyphosate is in the same class as cooked meat.
This is also likely political posturing to appease anti-gmo sentiments.
I'm not clear how the mutagenic properties reported in cooked meats appease "anti-gmo sentiments" as 'organic' meats are as likely to be cooked as others.
You're being very vociferous in your arguing perhaps you got carried away in your claims for Monsanto products?
I'm saying that glyphosate is probably less carcinogenic considering it has less evidence of mutagenesis than meat.
And despite millions of tons of meat being consumed by the kilogram per week, we see relatively low levels of colon cancer.
We eat several dozen orders of magnitude less glyphosate/POEA. The conclusion then, is obvious.
"Of cancers that affect both men and women, colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and the third most common cancer in men and in women."
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/colorectal/statistics/index.htm
People are eating kilograms of meat a week, and colon cancer is far from the leading cause of death.
Remember dosage is important!
I assume you drink alcohol (and if you don't it's likely not because the IARC classifies it as a "probable human carcinogen")?
Here's a quote that I think sums it up well:
"To take an analogy, think of banana skins. They definitely can cause accidents – but in practice this doesn’t happen very often (unless you work in a banana factory). And the sort of harm you can come to from slipping on a banana skin isn’t generally as severe as, say, being in a car accident.
But under a hazard identification system like IARC’s, ‘banana skins’ and ‘cars’ would come under the same category – they both definitely do cause accidents."
http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/06/14/diesel-fu...
So, in this case one might say: [made up example] "the 'inactive' ingredient of Roundup has been shown as likely to cause cancer at the same levels as eating cooked meats".
Some people do/have reduced their intake of cooked meats in order to reduce their [perceived if not actual] cancer risk.
For all intents and purposes, it is.
> yet through further reading I discovered that approximately half of it is glyphosate, and the rest is a combination of surfactants and whatever else.
This is a recent development in the literature. The case for glyphosate being carcinogenic has been so widely tested and proven false that Seralini's group has had to shift focus to save face.
They then turned to POEA as a potential carcinogen, a widely used chemical present in commercial roundup (and many many other products).
They did this because surfactants are irritants, so their physiological effect can easily confound sloppy studies.
The result is a protracted grasping at straws so Seralini can prove his predefined conclusion that "roundup causes cancer". Bad papers published in crap journals to get media attention so Seralini can sell his book.
It's not like being natural imbues anything with any guarantee of safety and wholesomeness, despite what advertising would have us believe. I mean, at this point, poison ivy is a lot more 'natural' in some sense than the average carrot and I know which one I'd rather eat.
Glyphosate probably is safe, by itself.
After college I did landscaping. Once I cleared brush that had been treated with Roundup, and broke into an itchy rash from head to toe. After that experience, I quite landscaping forever.
The biggest lie is that Roundup IS glyphosate. This false. Roundup is a chemical slurry of byproducts that happens to contain some glyphosate. Otherwise it would not be so cheap.
PROVE IT.
All studies thus far point to roundup/glyphosate being incredibly safe. Far safer than any alternative, including many "natural" ones. The LD50 for glyphosate is like a fucking kilogram for humans.
>After college I did landscaping
After college I did a Phd in genetics.
If Roundup was only glyphosate, it would be safe. It is made from recycled chemicals. That is all I know.
Is this a joke? So are apples, people and cats.
No, I don't have any links to back it up.
[1] http://www.monsanto.ca/products/Documents/roundup_transorb_m...
It also says:
Skin irritation Rabbit, 3 animals, OECD 404 test: Days to heal: 14 Primary Irritation Index (PII): 2.2/8.0 Moderate irritation. FIFRA category III.
Surfactants, such as (POEA used in roundup) are known skin irritants. They are used to help absorption of glyphosate in plants.
Skin irritation is a very well characterized reaction to contact with any kind of surfactant.
>POEA was recognized as a common inert ingredient in herbicides in the 1980s, when researchers linked it to a group of poisonings in Japan. Doctors there examined patients who drank Roundup, either intentionally or accidentally, and determined that their sicknesses and deaths were due to POEA, not glyphosate. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herb... cf http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx800218n, http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx200072k) //
So presumably you consider POEA to be completely safe as you said Roundup is safe and that, what, the medical authorities reported of here are either misreported or mistaken?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083 "There is insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate preparations containing POEA are more toxic than those containing alternative surfactants"
Surfactants, in general, are toxic. There is nothing special about POEA. Used properly, surfactants can be of good use and result in safe improvement of agriculture.
But you said, did you not, that Roundup - which is about 50% surfactants - was safe, safe to drink even. You compared it to drinking coffee IIRC. How is Roundup not toxic then?
People who work with it in fields should be careful. Consumers have a thousand other things more dangerous to worry about.
Safe when used properly.
>safe to drink even.
Never said that.
FWIW the context was ability to harm humans in any way; you were responding to a person saying they'd been given a rash after using Roundup.
>>"A good portion of which can do serious harm to life. Therefore "unknown" is the issue." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715508, goda90)
>"Your daily coffee is probably an order of magnitude more carcinogenic than any glyphosate/roundup exposure." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715557, searine)
Which I'll accept was not quite what I thought you'd said.
Will you admit that you've claimed roundup to be "incredibly safe"?
Also that in response to someone claiming it was harmful that your response, in context, suggested that coffee was more harmful?
He didn't say "more harmful", he said "more carcinogenic". That is a very specific form of harm.
It's perhaps strictly true, buy the manner is dishonest. Such an answer discredits the writer. The intent is to sow the idea that 'Roundup is less harmful to drink than coffee' even if the explicit expression was different.
Throwing around the term "safe" is not really helpful. Safe to handle is different than safe to drink and the truth is much more complicated than that. Nearly everything is "safe" or "toxic" the difference is in the quantity that makes it into our body.
Poison Ivy is a skin irritant but that doesn't make it a cancer agent.
The sun is cancer causing, but knowing that means we can take precautions. Claiming exposure to UV rays in the sun is not harmful would be foolishly misleading. Just because there are greater harms doesn't mean something is "safe", yes people have different cut-offs, so comparatives are good (which toxicologists seem quite capable of using; median lethal dose, etc.).
"Safe" does not convey anything about wearing gloves or not, and the term should not be thrown around without understanding what is meant by it.
I think most people would say going outside in the sun is "safe", but most also know there is more to that than a binary "good" or "bad", "safe" or "toxic". You however seem to be using the term in binary form.
Actually, you need to prove that Roundup is safe.
The burden of proof should be on those introducing new agents into the ecosystem; not on those who are affected by the chemical agent.
See https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Iatrogenesis
It could be possible that more than Roundup was sprayed. No one told me. I should have guessed why the bushes were brown!
I've gotten rashes all over my arms clearing brush that wasn't treated with anything.
Worldwide very many deaths by suicide are caused by people drinking weedkiller, so moving to glyphosate should stop some of those.
https://www.lakerestoration.com/pdf/GlyphosateMSDS.pdf
There are risks when working with it in large quantities. That is much different than having any risk in food.
Because it is the widely publicized scientific consensus. But if you insist.
EFSA : http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302
EPA [PDF] : https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents...
NAS : http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-s...
Safety of POEA : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083
Your response is a good part ad hominem and emotional attacks. Do you have any facts to back up your claims? Seralini is a fraud according to who? He is well respected and has won awards from the German Federation of Scientists. He has actually won court cases against special interests that have attempted to libel him. Seems that you were influenced by this libel.
And why should I trust your judgement over WHO on carcinogenicity?
Talking about "riding dicks" doesn't help your cause either. You come off as immature and it hurts your credibility. I'm surprised you've been voted to the top.
Yeah, whatever else is true in his comment (and I think most of it is), I didn't care for that at all.
I think people get riled up about this stuff because Monsanto is a particular bête noire of some leftish anti-science people.
BTW, the guy in question is very definitely controversial and has an Agenda with a capital A.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair
The reverse is true as well. Monsanto/GMO debates seem to be mostly about posturing/signaling, with the two sides throwing pseudoscience and FUD at each other and absolutely no chance of either side reconsidering their stances or taking a close look at the facts. It's more akin to the argument between different religious fanatics, and agnostics or non-believers don't have much to gain by getting in the middle of it.
Of course, like many a large company, they do have some ugly history in their past, and I'm sure they're not perfect, so I guess that makes it more convenient. However, yeah, it does make discussing specific things kind of difficult.
You flatter me.
But seriously. Stop by https://www.reddit.com/r/gmo . We actually try to be very inclusive of all opinions. So few people are interested in this topic that we really love to have everyone there. Usually its just kids asking for help on school projects...
>his argumentative style of writing isn't new either. IMHO it's people like him who give the industry a bad name.
See here's the thing. I know I won't ever change the mind of anti-science true believers. As a scientist, I've had to deal with climate change deniers, creationists, anti-vaxxers, and anti-gmo kooks. To me they are a lost cause.
However, I can impact how the audience views them. I may be crass, but I cite my sources, and I expose poor arguments. Deal with it.
One of the guidelines we have on HN that works well is: pretend like you're saying something to someone in person. You could certainly state a strong opinion that way, but it's less likely that most people would be outright rude and vulgar about it.
I think your're on firm enough ground, scientifically, that you can state things strongly without being crass.
AI apocalypse, while plausible-sounding (at least to me), is still in the future. GMOs are useful here and now.
What purpose would calling you anti-science serve, other than throwing an ad hominem attack at someone who I disagree with?
And I probably still wouldn't call any of the people in the examples above anti-science, even if their arguments fly in the face of available evidence. It doesn't further the conversation, it only insults the person you're arguing with.
But even if you limit yourself to particular arguments that are contradicted to available evidence, the "anti-science" epithet will gets applied to the anti-GMO bunk ("GMOs cause tumors"), but not pro-GMO bunk ("without GMOs billions would have starved to death") or bunk about automation ("automation is happening faster than ever before").
It doesn't tend to be used to generally describe people who are making claims that are contrary to available evidence. It tends to only be used to attack people who disagree with the user on certain specific issues. It's more posturing and veiled insult than legitimate argument.
Then again, even if it was used in a intellectually honest and consistent way (which, again, it almost always isn't), it wouldn't be particularly useful. If someone is doing something that flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of science, address it directly ("How can we verify your claims?" "What evidence would you deem sufficient to decide that this is incorrect?"). Saying something is anti-science isn't useful; it only tells us that the speaker disagrees.
There are extremely powerful and moneyed interests that put a lot of effort into PR campaigns for their products and against anyone who finds fault with them, regardless of how sound the science is. Just because there may be subtle problems with a real scientific study on GMO safety done by a real scientist doesn't make the whole thing "anti-science". It's such a stupid label. Most scientific studies will reveal flaws with enough scrutiny.
Edit: consider any topic should have valid opposition. Does any valid opposition exist for GMO's? or is being critical automatically equate with anti-science? If you can't name a single valid opponent, then there is a problem. Either no one is challenging the science or anyone who is challenging the science is attacked. Either case would not be positive for scientific progress.
All fields and subjects should have identifiable opposition. Health studies, genetics have many scientist on opposing sides without anyone being labeled anti-science. Physics string theory, gravitational theory the same. However, introduce private companies with lots of money into the mix with some politics and all of a sudden all opposition is anti-science. What is truly anti-science is that there can't exist opposition.
I think that it's only in a few tech circles that being anti-GMO is immediately dismissed as anti-science. Living in Seattle, I run into a ton of anti-GMO people who don't have their false beliefs challenged. (And really, I can only do so much before I grow weary.)
The anti-GMO crowd takes a strong and extreme stance. They are against all lab-modified organisms! As someone with a biochemistry degree, I see that GM is a tool. Yes, it would be a bad idea to put proteins for peanut allergens into soybeans. Yes, the overuse of pesticides are a problem. (Although, GMOs probably use fewer pesticides: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/fewer-pesticides-fa... )
From my perspective, it's the progressives that are hysterically lying about GMOs. So I punch back firmly! Most of these people don't have a solid understanding of the central dogma of biochemistry.
If we were more rational beings, we would observe that whether we should use GMOs or not is simply an engineering problem.
IMHO, the "punch back firmly" attitude leads to reciprocation on both sides and a death spiral for any real dialogue.
As a culture, I believe that we are "punching back firmly" when it comes to vaccinations. California passed a law requiring vaccinations or a valid reason not to have one. Late-night comedy talk shows are mocking them. It sure as hell isn't polite, but measles isn't polite either.
I guess that I try to educate when I meet people in-person who are anti-GMO. The last anti-GMO person was a friend of the family at an engagement party-- I wasn't going to be mean about it. But I was firm and explained what kind of genes are moved over, and how it only changes a few things. And how that it's really cool that we're harnessing one piece of nature to help another piece of nature! I'll be aware to try persuasion over mocking.
This is a tangent, and I'm not a vegan, but you should be careful about conflating moral reasons with spiritual reasons. "I don't want to kill or cause the death of animals" is not a spiritual statement.
So, from their perspective, it is a science argument. Labeling their argument as anti-science is condescending in that it is received as a statement they are either not educated, have phobias of technology or their position comes from some religious or philosophical belief.
We also have to recognize that we often get things wrong and that's why in a free society people are free to choose what they consume and should have knowledge of what is in a product. http://www.investors.com/politics/capital-hill/how-settled-s...
The elephant in the room with vaccines is a credibility problem within the industry. Until that is addressed, doubt the dialog is going to improve. Whether the following are all true or not is irrelevant, these articles represent the lost of public trust which I believe is at the root of the problem that is never discussed.
https://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/vioxx/vioxx-p...
At 6:30, mentions over 132,000 lawsuits filed against industry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5OuzB9L48&feature=youtu.be...
Vaccines protected from lawsuits http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/March-2011/No-Pharma-L...
No, they are against all transgenic organisms. They are often quite fine with all the other existing lab-modified organisms.
Of course, this may be an awareness problem.
So to be more perfectly exact, let's go with: Transgenic crops.
Monsanto is also a particular bête noire of lots of pro-science people working in the same industry.
For a tech-industry comparison, think of the worst views of Microsoft at the height of its monopoly.
Unfortunately, some people use (sometimes legitimate, sometimes not) issues with Monsanto to attack the idea of GMOs generally.
Because it is the widely publicized scientific consensus. But if you insist.
EFSA : http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4302
EPA: https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/glyp...
NAS : http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/national-academy-of-s...
> Seralini is a fraud according to who?
Every scientist I've ever talked to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair
>And why should I trust your judgement over WHO on carcinogenicity?
Because they don't have proof glyphosate is a carcinogen, just general harm classifications. Glyphosate is in a class of carcinogens similar to dietary meat, and other everyday minor exposures.
>You come off as immature and it hurts your credibility
Sometimes you have to be crass to put a spotlight on bullshit.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27015139
Just published, meta-reviews are generally best, and the authors are pretty well-regarded.
"POEA — officially an “inert” ingredient — was between 1,200 and 2,000 times more toxic to cells than glyphosate, officially the “active” ingredient."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15862083 "There is insufficient evidence to conclude that glyphosate preparations containing POEA are more toxic than those containing alternative surfactants"
Surfactants, in general, are toxic. There is nothing special about POEA. Used properly, surfactants can be of good use and result in safe improvement of agriculture.
The issue isn't being crass in the sense of profane, but of calling names and using uncivil rhetoric in arguments. You can't do that here. This holds regardless of how right one is, or believes one is, or how wrong someone else is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Your comment history unfortunately includes a great deal of incivility, though not usually as egregious as in this thread. Please edit all that kind of thing out when commenting here. If you want, you can set the 'delay' property in your profile to give yourself up to 10 minutes to edit your comments before they appear to other users. (That's what I do.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOVBOwbqcT8
Glyphosate is in the same list as drinking hot mate or red meat.
The IARC list doesn't asses risk, just states that some substance is potentially carcinogen.
*It's not exactly like climate change denial. There's still a small chance that glyphosates have serious dangers and there are always other chemicals, and combinations of chemicals to research. But that doesn't excuse the shoddy science and hysteria that swarms around these issues like flies on turds.
RetractionWatch, who are well-respected in the scientific community, has seven posts discussing his work (http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-author/gilles-seralin...). I won't go into the detail of the retracted article, its subsequent republishing without peer review, or his various conflicts of interest around his books or the funding of his group by 'pharma' companies selling plant-based homeopathic products claiming to be able to 'detoxify' Roundup residues (there's some detail on this in his Wikipedia entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles-%C3%89ric_S%C3%A9ralini)
With respect to his 'court cases' - he won a defamation case against a journalist writing for a French magazine that had accused him of fraud and forgery. Incredibly few critics of Seralini have accused him of fraud; the court decision makes no statement as to the merit of what is the serious criticism of Seralini's work (in terms of the statistics, methods and analysis employed).
Regarding the German Federation of Scientists - he was awarded a 'whistleblower' award, not one for scientific merit. The jury/committee that awarded him this had a CRIIGEN board member (his host institution) and public supporter of Seralini as a member; there is not, as far as I can see, any information to suggest that she recused herself for this decision. The other scientist on the jury is a well-respected metrologist; all other members of the jury are legal professionals. For the sake of balance, the full decision of that jury is listed here - http://neu.vdw-ev.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Full-Reasoni...
On a personal note though - Seralini has several anti-GMO and anti-glyphosate books, releases papers in concert with documentaries, and appears to believe in 'detoxification' and homeopathic plant-based treatments in order to 'detoxify' Roundup residues. This behaviour and these views place him quite outside the usual behaviour of a scientist - it's simply not done that you write a paper and time it for an accompanying book launch and documentary release.
Maybe, but your post is overly emotional in a bunch of ways -- and worse, uses language that's really quite a turn-off, viscerally, in a technical forum -- and as such, doesn't exactly inspire me to follow up on any of your links. If anything, it leaves the impression that even if the Intercept article was sloppy (or worse), then most likely your analysis is engaging in some form of cherry picking or other rhetorical manipulation, as well... so why should I bother?
Roundup is made from recycled chemicals. Every batch is different and some of it has lots of heavy metals.
I challenge you to buy some Roundup and test it for heavy metals, then make the results available. Otherwise please do cite equivalent research.
You would think that someone would have tested it, but I cannot find the information anywhere. An MSDS sheet will not list trace ingredients.
If you Google this, mostly you only get junk results. Its not easy to find this out. As I said, all I have is what my chemistry professor told me.
This part may have been confused with glyphosate's ability to chelate metals? [1] ... I doubt any large company that's strictly regulated, and who employs professional chemists/chemical engineers, would have toxic impurity issues.
But it's possible that it's concentrating metals in the environment.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/
Heavy metals are a problem with sewage based fertilizers.
http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF
I've used Roundup a little bit (not anywhere close to what would happen occupationally) and have always been more concerned with exposure to the solvent during application than any later exposure.
I'm not sure what the OSHA thing entails, I'm sure it means that employers would have to make information available to employees, but it isn't clear that it would require them to do anything more.
I would like to know what other "inert" ingredients are commonly found in it. Also, is it true that it contains heavy metals?
If you believe that the US system for hazardous materials is effective, then no, it won't contain anything more than traces of other materials, because those things aren't on the safety label.
If you don't believe that the US system for hazardous materials is effective, why would you believe me either?
"But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health."
http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/tradesecret.html
Also, note that in the MSDS dated 1998 that I linked above, the surfactant is identified by name.
http://www.roundup.ca/_uploads/documents/RoundupUltra2Liquid...
I believe it it listed in OSHA database as non-carcinogenic.
The MSDS process does provide a rather comprehensive treatment of chemicals. It would be ridiculous to prove that every single chemical doesn't cause a rare pancreatic cancer. How do you test that? Human trials? It isn't the money'd interests, it just practical reality. These chemicals ARE tested to some extent.. It would be ridiculous for a company to have to prove their product doesn't cause any of 10,000 types of cancer, diseases or any other ailment.
Then you have pseudo-science forces working against "industry" regardless of facts. DDT is a great example of what happens when we let people like Rachel Carson have the unrestricted ability to effectively libel a product based on discredited science -- leading to malaria almost being eliminated to malaria killing millions of people each year.
Maybe activists ought to have their claims subject to regulation.. They are guilty of scientific fraud. Vaccines, DDT, GMOs, fracking.. They are opposed to those things not based on actual, credible and repeatable science but because pop culture "experts" want to sell books or movie tickets and organizations have a financial interest in promoting their "non-profits."
All I do know is that humanity made it this far (15000+ years of agriculture) without such chemicals and we'll probably make it much further without them.
If you like Glyphosate, fair enough, enjoy! The rest of us might sit on the sidelines and watch this experiment unfold.
That's an argument to "the way it's always been done", which is not very effective.
http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Something-s-just-not-right...
I prefer the system we have in place now, which is for the press (alternative, professional or otherwise) to alert people to a problem and they can decide how much risk they're willing to take.
Although, I do admit that approach won't work with Monsanto. They don't technically have a monopoly, but they're big enough that a reasonable alternative doesn't exist. But, they're big enough that attempts at regulation or law enforcement won't work either. One of the conundrums of our day, I suppose.
If you try both baseline concentration and 5000X baseline and get the same results, that would seem to indicate that glyphoshate was not causative in that experiment.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-gm-corn-rat...
I start on Wikipedia and then move to referenced sources. Next I move to Google Scholar, sorting by citations.
Cochrane reviews are about as good as it gets, but it looks like they don't have anything on glyphosate: http://www.cochrane.org/
All people are also racist and those who say they arent usually are the most racist. That's a different discussion, but similarly applies.
It does no good to be afraid of being human. We are simian. We are an immature, racist, justifying species. So what? Embrace the grease. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Or maybe your precious AI will save you?
Good luck my rational human friends.
We are what we strive to be. Hacker News was, once upon a time, almost purely respectful even in the face of stark criticism or blatant dismissals. That, sadly, has changed.
P.S. Is it just me who loves the rush of getting downvoted? The truth is almost always unpopular. Not saying that what I say is necessarily the truth, but it's a good sign :).
Pussified zombies ;).
That works in personal conversation far more than it does on a large, optionally anonymous internet forum. The HN guidelines are the way they are for good reason, and we all need to follow them when commenting here.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11715730 and marked it off-topic.
For some reason that sounds wrong. The web should adapt to us, not the other way around. That is one of the big things wrong with the web and the world today.
It comes down to Paul Graham not being creative enough to implement a system that can organize human ideas without resorting to police-state tactics.
I get it, it's a seemingly intractable problem. Not insulting the keymaster, Paul Graham, just challenging the idea that we should all conform to some webmaster's view of how the web should work.
I am not going to let supreme douchebags like Zuckerberg and Larry the Page dictate how we should think or behave, thank you very much.
I will never follow an out-of-touch techie ruling from inside the silicon valley bubble. Would rather go to war.
" But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health. "
http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/tradesecret.html
In the US, it has to be a legitimate trade secret, not just something they don't feel like disclosing.
I've got a small coffee farm with some wild areas that I'm clearing and I started out wanting to do everything "organic". After 1 year it was clear that prepping land the old fashioned way would be significantly more hazardous.
So many people forget about the human costs of agriculture.
It's all nice when we talk about organic food and about being ok with paying 10$ for couple of ecofriendly organic fair traded tomatoes but some one in India won't be able to afford that, heck many people in the US won't be able to afford them either.
Banning GMO's is all nice and dandy but all what we do is push farmers to produce "premium" crops that can be sold at 10 times the price while producing 1/4th of the amount which would leave allot of people hungry.
A framer doesn't care how many people he feeds he only cares about the button line if he can make more money by feeding less people with organic food the fact the some one will go hungry won't really be in that equation.
Companies claiming their products are safe, when they are not is the real story here, and how even when scientists were warning of dangers in 2001, those warnings were not heeded by regulators in a serious enough manner that it's taken this long to "prove" that the chemicals are unsafe.
When you're well informed about the risks you can take precautions or change your behaviour.
Monsanto has taken California to court to prevent such warnings on Roundup.
Source for this?
Aside: I get the sneaking suspicion that some high amount of "source?" requests are a more polite way of calling BS.
...especially when it would have taken roughly the same amount of effort to compose the comment as to type "monsanto sues california" into Google.
>...especially when it would have taken roughly the same amount of effort to compose the comment as to type "monsanto sues california" into Google.
Oh, no, I have done that, and the only thing that has appeared is that Monsanto has sued California because they don't want Roundup being classified as carcinogenic.
It is a totally different thing.
So, I ask for the source, because I don't find anything.
So, I repeat, source?
?
FTA: A listing would also require Monsanto and others offering products containing glyphosate to provide a "clear and reasonable warning" to consumers that the chemical is known to cause cancer, damaging Monsanto's reputation and violating its First Amendment rights, the company said.
This seems pretty simple. Monsanto sued California because of bad testing results on Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate. If the chemical gets added to the CA registry, then Monsanto would have to put the ubiquitous 'known to the state of California to cancer' notice on anything that contains it.
Therefore, they sued to stop this from happening.
Am I missing something?
Surely Roundup and other pesticides have instructions and safety warnings and procedures, isn't?
I don't doubt that these chemicals could cause cancer, but if they do it's at a rate that prevents easy detection.
[Edit] -- And to be clear, I'm not advocating that Roundup is safe. Like everything in our food system it should be scrutinized and studied, trade secrets be damned.
The heavy machinery that you speak of is used for a great many other things than simply weed/foliage control.
So aren't you going to have that infrastructure, and those risks, regardless of what you do with your weeds ?
The more serious problem with this line of reasoning is that the risks of the machinery are confined to the people doing the work, whereas the (possibly much smaller, but less understood) risks are potentially borne by the entire population around their use.
What if your neighbors don't share your risk analysis ?
You can certainly do things 'organically' without having to use Roundup[3]. Some of my hippie friends decided to buy distressed properties in Maine and 'do it all by hand' co-op style. You won't be supplying Walmart and making money hand over fist, you won't be able to use all your land all the time, but at the same time you won't be practicing short-term maximization (a mentality that directly contributed to the first Dust Bowl).
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinog...
2: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfate) Dimethyl sulfate is carcinogenic[7] and mutagenic, highly poisonous, corrosive, environmentally hazardous and volatile (presenting an inhalation hazard). It is considered a potential chemical weapon.[13]
3: Note that RoundUp is a Monsanto trade-name with a chemical composition that changes nearly, if not every, year due the rapid immunity weeds tend to develop against it. While wildly lucrative, its ecological impact is not unlike the overprescription of antibiotics (antibiotics indiscriminately kill good & bad bacteria :: RoundUp will kill other plants [i.e. not just weeds] that grew in tandem with those other plants to enforce "checks and balances" with a secondary-effect of allowing the rampant proliferation of more harmful weeds)
edit: RoundUp ORIGINAL(tm)[4] (emphasis added) is primarily glyphosate. That's what you get at Home Depot at 5% to keep your lawn nice, green, and dandelion-free. Industrial RoundUp is a) ~40% b) has the warning Wear appropriate protective clothing to prevent skin contact. Applicators and other handlers must wear long-sleeved shirt, long pants, shoes plus socks and protective eyewear". (Again, that's the 'original' formulation. Farmers (at least in South America, I have no knowledge outside of that region, but I'd be willing to bet practices are similar worldwide) use special formulations, often designed for a specific region.) Regardless, glyphosate is still 2A[5] and just because you use it once a season on your lawn at 5% doesn't mean it doesn't cause cancer. If you smoke a cigarette once a year after getting sloshed on New Years eve, your odds of cigarette-related lung cancer increasing are quite slim; if you've been smoking two and a half packs of Reds for 40 years, on the other hand...
[4] http://greenhouse.ucdavis.edu/pest/pmsds/Roundup.PDF [5] https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVo...
What's the point of the genetic modification to seeds if they can just breed resistant crop? Do they change the genetic modification frequently too?
Re your edit: The stuff you are calling industrial Roundup is intended for mixing with water before application. It's sold as concentrate to simplify shipping and storage.
They do seem to vary the additives they use in order to change the treatment properties of the Roundup (better absorption or faster drying time or whatever).
Healthy adults should want to stay away from red meat?
Or these chemicals and other, much nastier, chemicals.
Which is a different kind of risk. The kind you can mitigate against with training and safety features and the kind people can choose to opt out of. You can choose to work at Walmart instead of a farm if the farm won't compensate you more for the added risk, you can't choose not to eat food.
Over 3 years, the weeds are mostly gone, leaving us just with what we have sown, and doing it this way builds plants that naturally "win" vs. weeds, in our particular soil and microclimate.
Tractor roll over deaths were eliminated by the 3-point hitch in the 1940's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_hitch