As to the science: the original highly-questionable IARC determination has since been contested by both the European Chemical Agency and the European Food Safety Authority.
It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen. We have to rank-order risks in order to make reasonable choices in life, and glyphosate sits very low on that list compared to other industrial chemicals when you look at the evidence for mutagenicity or secondary carcinogenic mechanisms.
History tells it didn't work very well for us when the big guys said tobacco, asbestos, the Chernobyl cloud and PCBs were all safe and good.
Given Monsanto's pretty poor moral track record (improper accounting for incentive rebates, Agent Orange, terminator seeds, patent trolling...), it's only fair to be suspicious by default with them.
There are sensitive, objective and simple tests for determining whether or not a compound causes genetic mutations in cells (Ames test). There are tests for whether or not a compound induces chromosome abnormalities in mammalian cells. There are lifetime feeding tests for determining whether or not any cancers can be induced with wildly unrealistic dosing regimes. Lastly, there are epidemiological studies that monitor whether workers using glyphosate demonstrate increased occurrences of particular cancers.
For glyphosate, there is no evidence of mutagenicity or genotoxicity, there is no evidence of teratogenic potential in mammals. There are no statistically significant epidemiological correlations with exposure. Glyphosate is poorly absorbed by human guts, poorly absorbed by human skin, and does not accumulate in tissues.
This is the scientific consensus: there is no good evidence that N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine is a carcinogen, there is a mountain of evidence that it is not.
But at the end of the day, whether I'm arguing with GMO-skeptics or climate-change-skeptics, I can't prove that this scientific consensus is worthy of your respect. You can always retreat into a more hardline epistemological skepticism, you can always cast aspersions at the entire enterprise.
You can't determine generational toxicity from LD50 profiles. You are simplifying everything way too much.
Glyphosate is an analog to glycine. You know, the building blocks for proteins. DuPont did a study in 2007 that shows glyphosate is integrating in protein structures. Does that not worry you?
Glyphosate is also a chelating agent. Glyphosate impacts the shikimate pathway, and is said to be non-toxic because humans do not possess the shikimate pathway. Yet the shikimate pathway is present in bacteria, archaea, and eukarya, and all of them are harmed by Glyphosate. Do we have bacteria in our guts utilizing the shikimate pathway? Yes we do.
You are running with the base assumption that Monsanto is benevolent and honest. This is where your cognitive dissonance stems from.
I will discuss unknown unknowns later on. Firstly, in terms of cognitive dissonance, I believe that the charge is premature. You seem to have missed the fact that he was referring to himself as one of those researchers, and he most certainly did not mention LD50 profiles. A quick check of his profile:
> I'm a synthetic biologist. I did some of the early work in optogenetics as a student. Now I work on industrializing the genetic engineering of cells.
It seems unlikely to me, given that context, that he routinely simplifies the topic too much.
Your questions about glycine, protein structures, chelating, and shikimate might be really good ones. I wouldn't know. However, your preamble provides a strong disincentive to answering them.
In terms of errors in reasoning, confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance, I wonder if this is a common reinforcing structure; that is, if people generally prefix questions with a preamble hinting at the permissible responses in order to ward off the experience of cognitive dissonance. I might do it myself. That's just a passing thought. Concretely, regardless of motive, you've signalled to him quite strongly that any answer he makes will be futile, for persuasive purposes, and probably pissed him off a bit.
> You are running with the base assumption that Monsanto is benevolent and honest. This is where your cognitive dissonance stems from.
Your conclusion returns to the theme of rejecting what he has to say. His very first sentence was literally "I'm not asking you to believe anything from Monsanto." Having demonstrated that you will not pay attention to what he says, you then reaffirm that anything he says contradicting your opinions is the result of cognitive dissonance. I do not think that anyone who was paying attention to your words would, at that point, bother to reply.
With regards to "unknown unknowns," you should appreciate that you are speaking to a domain expert. By contrast, you are reasoning through a trust calculus on first principles. That's fine, but he has education and experience that represent a multi-generational attempt to address those "unknown unknowns". Detecting unknown unknowns and turning them into known unknowns is one of its primary occupations. It is manifestly erroneous to equally weight the "unknown unknowns" with "everything else" at all points and times, especially if that means privileging them over known unknowns.
You appealed to Occam's Razor in your previous comment. Here we have a dispute about material fact between a genetic scientist and a (known unknown) random person on the internet, regarding the risks of a substance as a carcinogen. I want to stress again that that's fine. However, I think it would benefit you to be self-aware enough to realize exactly which resolution of the dispute Occam's Razor suggests to your audience. If you demonstrated such awareness, you might be taken more seriously.
You can't enunmerate unknown unknown, but you can plan for them. Simple things like let things fail and no single point of failure have built in protections against unknown unknowns. Its hard to argue this without using Taleb's ideas, which GMO advocates don't like.
Whenever you study a complex subject, you have to be aware that there are things you might not know about. And there are also things you might not know you do not know.
That's an unknown unknown.
You're making light of a very serious issue among scientists and science. An honest scientist keeps looking for the unknown, a dishonest scientist (to himself) stops looking, and then it becomes dogma.
This guy thinks he knows it all, but he does not, and he does not even realize that there could be things he does not know. When you do that, you can easily switch from doing science, to (accidentally or deliberately) start pushing an agenda.
Of course that doesn't mean the organic industry is doing things properly nor does it mean that this type of culture doesn't some other negative side effects.
But globally, I'll bet on the farmer cooperative that want to avoid pesticide to be less evil than a mega corporation that produce the Agent Orange. Does that sound silly ?
I really don't get how much you are willing to reverse this attack from Monsanto to organic sellers.
Sure nobody is perfect. And yes, the whole debate is tainted by pseudo science and bad faith. But come on, it's not even on the same scale.
This sounds reasonable. /s
Do you have an example of anything that accounts for the possibility of unknown unknowns? My guess is if you do, then all it will take to "debunk" it is someone with a bigger imagination.
EDIT: bad comma
It's actually quite the opposite.
You start from what you know and what you control. From that you can assess what you can mess up. The scale, the consequences and likelihood of it.
E.G: if you are using a very potent instable new explosive, you have much more unknown unknowns that if you are manipulating a well well know concentrated acid.
Now starting from here you know what the cost of what you don't know could be, and else can choose measures to mitigate that such as more research, bigger safety coefficient, additional staff, insurance, etc.
When we blame a company for not taking in consideration unknown unknowns, it usually means they just tried to build the very minimal legal requirement to put it on the market and make money. They may have known that it was risky, but they didn't bother.
Perhaps this is just semantics but I have always thought of "unknown unknowns" as being in that mirky realm of "every single possible thing".
Perhaps I should have been more charitable and less pedantic, which is honestly hard for me to do when I see someone passionately argue against something I thought was a scientific consensus.
But known unknowns and unknown unknowns are not the same things though. known unknowns are a space you can account for. It's easy to put a number of it. unknown unknowns not so much, and dealing with it is more a matter of morality than science. You can't scientifically deal with something you can hardly define or quantify.
What about GMO-skeptics that belong to the scientific community?
People who care should really look into why GMOs are banned in the EU.
Do you have a link to any individual nation state bans being based on scientific evidence rather than public/media outrage? Because the EFSA has been against the bans.
E.G: I think GMO have a fantastic potential. It's a powerful technology. And like any powerful technology, it has a huge potential of destruction as well.
And I don't trust the people making money with it to take the necessary precautions to avoid a catastrophy. There are so many past and present events where money won over the benefit of the human specie.
I trust people like you, that are dedicated to analyze things and share conclusions.
But between you and the public, there is an army of people whose job is to hide/distort informations that will make them loose money, and show off informations that will make them win money. And they are better are it that the public is at critical thinking.
You talk about climat skepticism, and it's a good example of a generalized propaganda that entities with an interest in fossil fuel and live stock keep pushing. And it works. There are people that doubt climate change. There are leaders that act on it.
When there is an obvious conflict of interest in an entity of huge influence, one should ALWAYS be suspicious by default. The entity has to prove, over, and over again that it's doing the right thing.
Right now entities are usually, as they grow, turning into systems that buy PR campaign to tell you they are doing the right things instead of doing it.
Let me pull out this little gem from the WHO archives: http://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf
In there you can read the statment from the tobacco industry:
1. That medical research of recent years indicates many possible causes of lung cancer.
2. That there is no agreement among the authorities regarding what the cause is.
3. That there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes.
4. That statistics purporting to link smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life. Indeed the validity of the statistics themselves are questioned by numerous scientists.
Like I said, they are very good at controlling the story.
Defending them because that's the intellectually moral thing to do - while I understand that's something intelligent reasonable people wants to do - is not working in our favor.
Now you tell me that up to now, nothing is hinting that N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine is dangerous. But Monsanto still decided to have research about it ghostwritten. Such behavior is an alarm signal to me, and should trigger new investigations and tests for the next 10 years.
We should always remain vigilant of unappreciated risks, both health and ecological, from existing practices and chemicals. However, scientific studies are not cheap. In a world with an endless supply of serious problems, we have to prioritize research spending on science and engineering that's likely to actually improve life for the most people. Redoing the same experiments we've been doing to death for decades probably isn't the best use of limited science funding from a purely utilitarian standpoint. Industrial agriculture has quite a few more serious public health issues than glyphosate. (e.g. antibiotic abuse in animals)
That's... odd.
I'm wondering what will be the next stuff like that.
Will we learn in 30 years that milk is actually unhealthy and that "got milk" was a blatant lie ?
Will we discover that too much computer activity reduce IQ while we all though we were getting so clever learning online ?
"Don't worry, teleportation is totally safe. We are absolutely not copying your body and destroying the original"
The future is going to be fun.
I do not know if you are joking, but we know for some time now that regular consumption of dairy as an adult human increases risk for many health complications. (similarly evidence builds up against meat and eggs for some time now)
http://nutritionstudies.org/12-frightening-facts-milk/
http://www.peta.org/living/food/reasons-stop-drinking-milk/
http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/health-concerns-ab...
Full disclosure: grew up on a dairy farm. Like milk. Might be biased.
> Full disclosure: grew up on a dairy farm. Like milk. Might be biased.
Dunno if yr biased. Only after to gather enough info and are ready to pass a judgment by yourself, then bias might show. Currently I expect your are merely uninformed. Some of the bigger "abandon milk" doctors grew up on dairy farms themselves.
And enjoyment is different story from health-impact. Some claim to enjoy smoking :)
I had head aches all my life, and my hippie family doctor told me I should stop milk. I never listened to her.
Then in the last recent years I made experiments, and I noticed a correlation between raw milk intake and my head aches.
Now my veggie no gluten no milk doctor has died. Of cancer. Oh the irony.
But I don't have to take pain killers that much often anymore, only when I screw up my diet.
Life is funny that way.
There are studies that found a link between gut bacteria and mental illnesses. Some of the bacteria in our guts also thrives in milk based products like yoghurt.
see eg https://www.wired.com/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-...
Monsanto has a legitimate tricky choice here.
One lobby group was very concerned about cross contamination, about GM seed escaping from GM farms and getting to other places.
Terminator genes help fix that.
And sterile crop isn't new thing from GM, it's common for hybrid crops to do this too.
What's the issue with this? They (the former chemical company) were a DOD supplier.
DDT was NEVER banned for public health purposes in Africa or anywhere in the Developing World.
It was restricted for use in agriculture to ensure --in part-- that it continued to be useful for public health. As far back as the late 1950s it was known that mosquitos easily developed resistance to DDT and other insecticides.
I suppose I can farm some of my own links, but if you have more please LMK!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ddt-use-to-combat... (Article mentions that we are still using DDT in africa)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140224204808.h... (a single mutation is required to for mosquitos to become DDT resistant)
Think about this: At least in the western world we have achieved wealth and productivity where the word "unimaginable" from a point of view of even 500 years ago would be a gross understatement. And yet, to many people daily life still feels full of threats, while many work what they themselves recognize are meaningless jobs (see the popular Dilbert cartoons). It doesn't make sense, it is artificial. It doesn't need to be this way. We force people - and organizations - to live in a "stress and survival mode" that is completely unnecessary.
It doesn't help when those who have to prove their validity have to resort to regulatory capture so often.
Our tests are not only limited in time, but also in complexity. Scientists take a sample of subjects in a defined environment. The benefit of that is that they can draw definitive conclusions because of the manageable variables. The problem with it is that you fail to see the big picture, the many interactions with the numerous components of a real life activity, and on the long run.
When talking about living things and food, or in that case, living things that are food, the context is incredibly important to define what is safe or not.
The food we consume now has little resemblance past a visual one (and even not that in some cases), to food of the past.
Time-tested? Only in the past 60 years or so have we actually been able to begin to understand the effects of any food, natural or GMO. That our ancestors didn't keel over immediately after consuming these "same" foods does not mean they are anymore "safe to consume" than GMO foods.
I think this is the wrongest statement I've ever read on HN.
When did strawberries change?
Unfortunately "time" doesn't test for cancerogenicity, as laypeople are terrible at inferring causality that may span months or years. Case in point [1]: several "herbal remedies" used in China for hundreds of years are linked to kidney failure and kidney cancer.
We don't know if something is dangerous until we deliberately and scientifically test it. Given that "non-natural" stuff (e.g. GMO) is thoroughly tested, I would expect that it's way safer than "natural" one that was never really tested.
[1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/1343598/Chinese-herb-...
Its not so simple. When you consider the significantly lower yields of organic farming[0], combined with a growing world population 71% of which lives on less than $10 a day[1] that will not be able to afford these increased food costs you are left with a question. Do you prefer to add perhaps a few years to the end of your life or do you prefer to allow a great many others to live?
Personally even if GMO and others took a decade from me (I have seen no evidence this is the case. Humans are living longer lives than ever before.) if it allows more children to eat I support it.
[0]https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/20... [1]http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-inco...
This also applies to tobacco.
I'd be curious to find out if there's any place with a history of consumption of fresh tobacco leaves as a food item.
I think it would help tremendously if we started expressing everything in terms of Disability-adjusted life years[1] lost. So instead of "Drinking hot tea causes cancer!", the headline would read "Drinking hot tea causes you to lose an average 20 minutes of disability-adjusted life expectancy". A lot less scary, and a lot easier to compare with other things.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year
The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Yet the first thing you think about is accusing organic farming of conflicts of interest?
You are a perfect example of extreme cognitive dissonance. What's even more scary is you're working in the field of biotechnology. It only reinforces my view that many of you are living in your own dogmatic information bubble.
He's a shill, and the poisoning-our-food industry employs the most shills overall.
Your point being?
> e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organic industry and has long had a beef with the GMO industry: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben....
This particular debate is not about GMO though, is it?
> It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen.
We're not calling everything a carcinogen. Some people are suspecting Glyphosate of being one.
> We have to rank-order risks in order to make reasonable choices in life, and glyphosate sits very low on that list compared to other industrial chemicals when you look at the evidence for mutagenicity or secondary carcinogenic mechanisms.
But I eat very few of these chemicals (I hope).
Indirectly it is; Monsanto promotes Roundup as a weed killer and simultaneously promotes Roundup Ready crops that are genetically modified to be resistant to Roundup, thus letting farmers safely apply Roundup without endangering the crops themselves.
This story is as much about the info-war that kept glyphosate from being 'poisonous in the public mind' as it is about the fact that there are worse carcinogens in the world ..
Sure, depleted Uranium is a much worse pollutant for us to be worried about. But, that's no reason for us to continue paying millions into an industry that lied to us so that we would keep spreading it on our food sources now, is it?
Ultimately, I think it's appropriate for things to be tested in the context they are used. It's just really weird to me that some governments are examining the evidence but not requesting 2nd (let alone 3rd) party testing.
It seems very irrational. Chemicals have different breakdown characteristics when mixed. Dosages are different from before. Consumer exposure is different.
Even if the impact is minimal, you should test and prove that it's minimal.
That they have avoided it makes me think they have something to hide.
Edible beans on the other hand...
Here's a guide from roundup on pre-harvest application:
http://www.roundup.ca/_uploads/documents/MON-Preharvest%20St...
A page from 2014:
http://fieldcropnews.com/2014/08/direct-harvest-do-you-need-...
1. Glyphosate (roundup) use is two orders of magnitude higher than originally approved.
2. Due to the emergence of glyphosate-resistant weeds, the dosage has been increased substantially.
3. It is now also usually combined with other compounds to increase effectiveness, which affects how it breaks down and affects both the food and environment.
4. It is now also used for 'green burndown'. To help dessicate the crop. AKA they use it to kills crops to speed harvest, resulting in significantly elevated levels in your food.
Start with the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
Go on to a letter of concern published in the journal of Environmental Health signed by 14 experts in the field. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26883814
Realize that little to gain from raising these concerns, while there are many wealthy parties with vested interests in not finding these results. There's little funding behind this. Governing bodies (e.g. in Germany) are still relying on findings from labs with clear conflicts of interest.