Monsanto Ordered to Pay $289m in Case Linking Glyphosate to Cancer

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Chemical giant Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289m (£226m) damages to a man who claimed herbicides containing glyphosate had caused his cancer. In a landmark case, a Californian jury found that Monsanto knew its Roundup and RangerPro weedkillers were dangerous and failed to warn consumers. It's the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging a glyphosate link to cancer. Monsanto denies that glyphosate causes cancer and says it intends to appeal against the ruling. "The jury got it wrong," vice-president Scott Partridge said outside the courthouse in San Francisco.

BBC

This case has apparently been going on for some time, and the New York Times had earlier reported that the internal emails had been suggestive of a cover-up of some kind by Monsanto figures:

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In one email unsealed Tuesday, William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, told other company officials that they could ghostwrite research on glyphosate by hiring academics to put their names on papers that were actually written by Monsanto. “We would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak,” Mr. Heydens wrote, citing a previous instance in which he said the company had done this. Asked about the exchange, Monsanto said in a second statement that its “scientists did not ghostwrite the paper” that was referred to or previous work, adding that a paper that eventually appeared “underwent the journal’s rigorous peer review process before it was published.” David Kirkland, one of the scientists mentioned in the email, said in an interview, “I would not publish a document that had been written by someone else.” He added, “We had no interaction with Monsanto at all during the process of reviewing the data and writing the papers.”

In response to the New York Times report, Steven Novella pointed out that there are two claims being made. One that Monsanto was engaging in some dishonest behaviour and two, more importantly in this case, the question of whether glyphosate causes cancer:

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There are essentially two questions raised by Hakim’s latest article. The first concerns the behavior of Monsanto. Hakim alleges that they ghostwrote scientific articles for academics and used political pressure to shut down EPA reviews of glyphosate’s safety. I would not assume this assessment is true, and certainly don’t trust Hakim’s journalism given his history. The academics in question deny the allegations, and Monsanto claims these e-mails are taken out of context. We have certainly seen that before. I don’t have enough info at this time to form my own opinion, but let’s assume that the worst interpretation of the allegations are true. This means that Monsanto tried to put its thumb on the scale to garner favorable reviews for its products. If true, this is clearly wrong. Corporations can (and often must) fund research, but they need to let the chips fall where they may. Academics should resist the temptation to accept too much “help” from corporations. This behavior is, unfortunately, very common and not limited to Monsanto. But these allegations need to be kept in proper context. Not to excuse them in any way, but Hakim implies that this behavior raises fresh concerns about the safety of glyphosate, which is the second core question raised by the article. I don’t think that it does, however. There is nothing in the revealed e-mails that calls into question the large body of independent scientific research into the safety of glyphosate, any more than the infamous e-mails called into question the large body of scientific research establishing man-made global warming.

So:

1) Does this case now reveal that glyphosate is dangerous?
2) Does this case now reveal that Monsanto are monsters?

Or:

3) Did the jury make the wrong decision on the link between glyphosate and cancer?
4) Was the jury swayed by misleading presentation of emails and documents?

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2OtKVEB