
Is Roundup the Cause of 'Gluten Intolerance'? - yiedyie
http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/gluten-intolerance-from-roundup-herbicide-zw0z1402zkin.aspx?newsletter=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=RF%20eNews&utm_campaign=03.03.14%20RFSR
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Angostura
Ummm. Those authors look familiar: [http://www.examiner.com/article/bogus-
paper-on-roundup-satur...](http://www.examiner.com/article/bogus-paper-on-
roundup-saturates-the-internet)

One is a long-time 'independent scientist' and the other is s a Senior
Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory with a degree in Biophysics from the 1960s.

The nature of the peer review isn't really clear, I'm not familiar with the
Journal, but this paper makes my thumbs prick.

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tonyarkles
Good catch. I hadn't looked up the authors, but their associations had raise
some red flags for me.

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collyw
Good science should be good science independent of the authors interests, no?
(Not saying this paper is good science, but I dislike the attitude of
dismissing based on who the authors are).

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tonyarkles
Yes, but...

I wouldn't 100% judge the work based on authorship, but it definitely makes me
think twice when Toxicology research is published by a computer scientist. It
makes me wonder even more when that work is published by Americans in a
Slovakian Toxicology journal. And when it's published by two people who have
published work of questionable quality in the past... I think those are decent
heuristics to flag this work as having a higher probability of being flawed.

Sure, it's not 100% objective, and all scientific literature should probably
be looked at through the same critical lens. I'm not a toxicology researcher,
and I don't have time to thoroughly investigate the claims of the work. This
is enough of a heuristic for me to say "hmmmm, not going to make any life
changing decisions based on this work until there's more data from other
people"

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markkennedy
I find the arguments for Hygiene Theory being the cause of the increase in
autoimmune diseases and allergies much more credible, and it seems to have
more science behind it.

There was a good discussion of "An Epidemic of Absence", a recent book on the
topic, on EconTalk this week. The basic premise is that these disorders may be
caused by a lack of microbes and parasites in the modern Western world. The
lack of those microbes and parasites causes our immune systems to be overly
aggressive towards harmless outside substances (peanut allergies, celiac
disease) or mistakenly aggressive towards our own bodies (Crohn's disease,
type I diabetes, etc.)

Sounds very plausible to me, but it lacks a villain, which I think makes it an
unsatisfactory explanation for some.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/03/velasquez-
manof.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/03/velasquez-manof.html)

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drcube
Almost every time based graph goes up and to the right. Big whoop. Maybe the
internet causes gluten intolerance? Or maybe Roundup caused the rise of social
networking?

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tonyarkles
This is fascinating for me for a few reasons. I have family members who suffer
from gluten intolerance (not full blown Celiacs where a a few µg of gluten
causes problems, but pretty bad).

It's a long journal article, and I haven't read the whole thing in detail (and
probably won't). A good portion of it is outlining correlations between the
use of glyphosate and the prevalence of Celiac's and intestinal infection
rates. There's a lot there, and while it's enough to raise suspicion, it's not
damning evidence as far as I'm concerned. Definitely worth looking into
further.

The other thing that jumps out at me as interesting are the authors: Anthony
Samsel is listed as Independent Scientist and Consultant, and Stephanie Seneff
is associated with CSAIL at MIT; not a typical group to be writing toxicology
journal articles!

My take away: I hope that this research encourages more discussion and
research, but I don't think I want people making policy decisions based on it.

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beardicus
What am I missing here? Aren't all the graphs in that paper just a
correlation/causation joke waiting to be made? I could probably fit "number of
mobile phones sold" to the same curve and have "proof" that mobile phones are
causing gluten intolerance.

The rest of the paper is way above my head, but certainly seems speculative
and doesn't appear to have any actual evidence or study behind it. Given the
motivated reasoning that happens often regarding topics such as these... I'm
suspicious.

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baldfat
The GMO hate still goes on.

I use to have friends in Manitoba that ran a wheat farm. Guess what I saw all
the time? Round up. This was in the early 1990s. I have a funny suspicion that
Round Up has not been sold more that matches the graph. Also we all know how
valuable "Peer Reviewed" science is. Just open the data and let others pound
at the same "evidence."

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markmassie
Is US electricity consumption the cause of "gluten intolerance"?

[http://www.rmi.org/Content/Images/KnowledgeCenter/RFGraph/US...](http://www.rmi.org/Content/Images/KnowledgeCenter/RFGraph/US_electricity_demand.jpg)

The answer may surprise you.

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vixen99
Excellent point though it is worth nothing that glyphosate does indeed chelate
metals whereas it's difficult to see US electricity consumption having quite
that effect in vivo or even in vitro.

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chesh
I don't have a view one way or another on the scientific accuracy of the
report. Anecdotally though I live in Europe and gluten intolerance seems just
a fraction of the issue it is in the USA. Just look at the gluten-free section
in any supermarket, or ask in any restaurant for a gluten-free dish.

This topic surely deserves an extensive scientific investigation to 1)
identify any statistically significant difference in gluten-free intolerance,
2) what root causes can explain the difference.

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trebor
It may be an influence, but what about those of us who've had organic grains
for most our lives? I don't think it's more than correlation at this point.

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untothebreach
I was under the impression that typically, "organic" does not necessarily mean
"pesticide-free." I often see foods that are billed as "organic _and_
pesticide-free," but I always thought "organic" just meant non-GMO.

Feel free to correct me, as I am just going purely off my own experiences
here, but that was my impression.

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chrisduesing
Organic, in the US, is regulated by the USDA and includes no genetically
modified seeds and no use of chemical pesticides. If something has the green
label it was tested and certified. Sometimes food manufacturers call out
things like pesticide-free because there is confusion among consumers.

