
EPA Official Accused of Helping Monsanto ‘Kill’ Cancer Study - objections
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-14/monsanto-accused-of-ghost-writing-papers-on-roundup-cancer-risk
======
DiabloD3
Relevantish studies:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331240](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331240)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28185844](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28185844)
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1532045614...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1532045614001045)

And the worst one of all:
[https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/2016/Glyphosate_V_glycin...](https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/2016/Glyphosate_V_glycine_analogue_2016.pdf)

So yeah, not only does it cause cancer, it causes a wide range of diseases:
literally any one that can be caused by protein misassembly in ways that the
body can't easily clear the protein (or if it does, the glyphosate can end up
being reused instead of flushed out of your body) can be linked to this.

So, in around 5 years, if they come out with a study that Autism is caused by,
or greatly enhanced by, glyphosate exposure in utero or during nursing
(glyphosate concentrations are extremely high in breast milk in mothers
exposed to the chemical), I will not be surprised whatsoever.

~~~
thereisnospork
Paper 1: 'no cytotoxic effects at concentrations at or below 100 μM' \-- A non
trivial amount.

(Sorry don't have the full text for the others)

And your 'worst one of all' is a joke of a paper. Its a review and begs the
question that glycophosphate is substituting an amino acid.

Its presupposition that ” Glyphosate is a glycine molecule with a methyl-
phosphonyl group bound to the nitrogen atom. As an analogue of glycine, it can
be expected to displace glycine at random points in the protein synthesis
process, with unknown consequences.

Demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the specificity of the ribosomes
and enzymes/proteins in general.

Of course they have no actual evidence - say isolating glycophosphate
substituted proteins? Fairly easy to do as normal proteins do not contain
phosphorous, or it could be via C13 labeling of the what would be the glycine
residue.

To say nothing that its quoting studies dosing the equivalent (10mg+/kg) of
having a person do literal shots of herbicide.

Everything (except e-caprolactam, go figure) causes cancer, and most
everything will kill you if you have enough of it. Hell the IARC has
glycophosphate in the same category as red meat and drinking beverages warmer
than 65C. They've also classified cell phones as 'possibly carcinogenic to
humans'. [http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-
centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf](http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-
centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf)

~~~
fabian2k
It is really worth emphasizing just how bad the last paper ("the worst of
all") is. It does not contain a single piece of actual data, there are no
experiments there, only wild hypotheses.

There isn't a single piece of evidence in that paper, the authors simply
assume that glyphosate can subvert one of the most important mechanisms in the
cell and change any protein that contains glycine.

What kills this hypothesis entirely is that glyphosate is a glycine with a
modification on the amino group. That is the part of the amino acid that is
used to make the connection to the previous one in a protein. This kind of
modification makes it impossible for it to be incorporated into a protein by a
peptide bond.

The journal also does not seem trustworthy, it doesn't seem to be indexed in
Pubmed, which is a very, very bad sign. Why would a scientist publish in a
journal that none of their colleagues could easily find? In this area of
science, every journal worth reading (and some more) are indexed in Pubmed. It
also seems to only publish ~3 papers per issue.

~~~
DiabloD3
The paper I linked to seems to be the 5th in a series of papers. The second
one in this series I found on PubMed:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/)

------
refurb
Ignoring the question as to whether or not "killing the study" was nefarious
or not, this is a great lesson on what you should and shouldn't say in emails.

I remember getting training a long time ago from my employer. If you're
discussing anything remotely controversial, pick up the phone or walk to the
person's office. _Don 't put it in an email_

Why? Because lawyers will find it and twist it however they want to make you
look bad. Had a colleague annoy the hell out of you asking for something that
didn't need to be done? Don't put "I deserve a medal for killing this study"
in an email.

~~~
Natsu
This is interesting because according to the article, he didn't write any
emails about that. Some other guy said he said that in an email.

It'd be nice if someone could pull up an actual copy of the legal filings so
we could all read about it, as we are hearing this fourth hand. We have an
article referencing a legal filing referencing an email about what someone
heard someone else say.

“If I can kill this I should get a medal,” Rowland told a Monsanto regulatory
affairs manager who recounted the conversation in an email to his colleagues,
according to a court filing made public Tuesday

~~~
mikeyouse
It's a pain in the ass to find filings on MDL cases on PACER but heres the
email:

[http://i.imgur.com/iSjBfztr.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/iSjBfztr.jpg)

~~~
refurb
Wow! That's put the comments in an entirely different light (not surprised at
all).

"We have enough to sustain our conclusions" \- I read that as, we have enough
data, why are we doing yet another study?

"No coordination is going on, he wants to establish some" \- again, people are
asking for an additional study without considering all the details

"I doubt Jess and EPA can kill this" \- the desire to kill the study is
broader than just Jess, it's the EPA in general

------
pavement
It never ceases to amaze me, how much controversy the name Monsanto stirs up.

The waters around this company are so murky, that it's less a question of
_whether_ the company operates an unregulated extrajudicial campaign against
public awareness of their wares and activity, but rather, what's their spend
on it, and how deep do they go?

Food security is frighteningly politicized, to the point of bald
militarization (see: Canada's maple syrup). Almost nothing would surprise me.

~~~
matt4077
Well that would be my favourite conspiracy ever, considering the people
running it must be the most incompetent evil scheming overlords ever.

If they're running an "unregulated extrajudicial campaign against public
awareness", it is a spectacular failure, considering Monsanto is among the
most-hated companies on the planet. Can we somehow get them hired by Syria's
government?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe they simply don't give a damn, because they realize general population
is not their target market, and so it doesn't matter what regular people think
of them?

~~~
thrillgore
And yet as an agricultural company, almost every person on earth is touched by
their products or intellectual property. Regular people don't care but 7
billion potential and unaware users of their products might...

~~~
TeMPOraL
The question is - does "7 billion potential and unaware users" becoming aware
affects their bottom-line? If it doesn't, then they probably won't care.

I'm not saying it is good, but that's how things work. That's e.g. why
boycotts generally don't work.

------
costcopizza
Yet another nail in my personal " _Why are agencies tasked with protecting
human health even allowed to be lobbied in the first place?_ " coffin...

~~~
pitaj
Because lobbying is an ambiguous term. Everything is lobbying, and nothing is
lobbying.

------
Natsu
Does anyone have a link to the actual court filing so we can see the document
they reference? Is this an email found during discovery or something else?

> “If I can kill this I should get a medal,” Rowland told a Monsanto
> regulatory affairs manager who recounted the conversation in an email to his
> colleagues, according to a court filing made public Tuesday

> The case is In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2741, U.S.
> District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

~~~
Natsu
Update -

mikeyouse found the email here:
[http://i.imgur.com/iSjBfztr.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/iSjBfztr.jpg)

His comment saying that got autokilled for duplicating his other comment
linking to it.

Here's a quick transcription I made of the email:

===

Hey- cc'ing Jen

So...Jess called me out of the blue this morning:

"We have enough to sustain our conclusions. Don't need gene tox or epi. The
only thing is the cheminova study with the sarcoma in mice- we have that study
now and its conclusions are irrelevant (bc at limit dose...?) I am the chair
of the CARC and my folks are running this process for glyphosate in reg
review. I have called a CARC meeting in June..."

Also, Jess called to ask for a contact name at ATSDR. I passed on Jesslyn's
email. He told me no coordination is going on and he wanted to establish some
saying "If I can kill this I should get a medal". However, don't get your
hopes up, I doubt EPA and Jess can kill this; but it's good to know they are
going to actually make the effort now to coordinate due to our pressing and
their shared concern that ATSDR is consistent in its conclusions w EPA.

    
    
      Dan Jenkins
      U.S. Agency Lead
    
      Regulatory Affairs
      Monsasnto Company
      1300 I St., NW
      Suite 450 East
      Washington, DC 20005
    
      Office: 202-383-2851
      Cell: 571-732-6575

~~~
mikeyouse
Thanks for the assist -- Didn't realize dupes would be deleted if they were in
different comment trees.

~~~
Natsu
No problem, thank you for digging up the info. Yes, it will auto-kill
identical comments no matter where they are and those with showdead will see
[dupe] [dead]

I didn't want your info to get lost because getting the original source is far
more interesting to me than a 4th hand account of what happened.

~~~
mikeyouse
I found a better source for the docs, they're in the exhibits portion at the
top of this page:

[https://usrtk.org/pesticides/mdl-monsanto-glyphosate-
cancer-...](https://usrtk.org/pesticides/mdl-monsanto-glyphosate-cancer-case-
key-documents-analysis/)

Makes sense that I couldn't find them on PACER too, turns out that discovery
docs aren't posted publicly unless provided by one of the parties (in this
case the plaintiffs supplied them).

The email series in question starts at page 99 of this PDF:

[https://usrtk.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/JessRowlandseri...](https://usrtk.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/JessRowlandseries.pdf)

~~~
Natsu
Much appreciated! It's so hard to get direct access to information like this
these days.

------
gerdesj
"Roundup" isn't just for farmers. I deployed around 35 x 5 ml of the stuff in
5l of water here, at home (UK) two days ago. I took care to only spray in the
early evening after bees and most other insects had buggered off but probably
some woodlice ("jiggers" I think, in en_US) might have suffered.

I threat the stuff as a nasty poison but had no idea that it might be
carcinogenic.

~~~
cheath
for whatever it's worth--we call woodlice "roly-poly's" in the US. which now
sounds silly typing out. jiggers are far scarier parasitic creatures.

~~~
saghm
Ah! I didn't know what either "jigger" or "woodlice" referred to until I read
your comment. I actually always used to call them "pill bugs", although I'm
not sure if that's something that others call or just a name I learned from my
family.

------
everdayimhustln
It's no surprise when corrupt regulators cozy with industry are ineffective.
It's not that regulation is bad, it's the nuance of having sensible and
effective authority, legislation and enforcement that is desperately needed to
properly regulate chemicals as and how they are used in many industries.

This is almost as bad as Monsanto guy offered to drink glyphosate and then
refused to drink it.
[https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM](https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM)

~~~
ericcumbee
And safe is a relative term. something might be safe ingested in trace
amounts, or with contact to the skin. But drinking a whole glass of it? that
is a different story.

~~~
saalweachter
The poison is in the dose; the LD50 for glyphosate is in the neighborhood of 5
g / kg, which amounts to around a quarter liter of pure glyphosate for a 50kg
subject. You want to stay orders of magnitude below the LD50, for obvious
reasons.

"How much can you safely drink?" depends heavily on the concentration. A cup
of pure, or even the most concentrated form the sell in stores, might do it.
Or might not. Once you dilute it for application - usually gallons of water to
the tablespoon of concentrate - a cup becomes significantly less threatening.

~~~
legulere
The problem with that approach is that it is just about acute lethality and
does not consider long-term effects from prolonged exposure that are hard to
measure.

Further it ignores interactions with other chemicals that are also in use,
something that we know is pretty common from medications.

Especially with endocrine disruptors there is also the effect that several
chemicals might work in the same direction, where a safe dose of one chemical
might be harmless but safe doses of 10 chemicals combined might not be safe
anymore.

~~~
saalweachter
Well, no, but when the question is "will you drink a cup of this?" a good
question is "will this kill me outright?"

------
TazeTSchnitzel
The evidence offered that glyphosate causes cancer is not very credible,
though.

~~~
Analemma_
How are we supposed to verify that statement if the study was killed?

~~~
tptacek
Because _lots_ of people have studied glyphosate. We're not dependent on the
EPA for this.

~~~
5ilv3r
We sort of are.... since they are the regulating body with authority in this
area.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
They are _one_ regulating body with _jurisdiction in the US._ There are other
(less biased) research groups, and plenty of other countries with
organizations equivalent to the EPA.

~~~
DiabloD3
I actually agree with this. If, say, Canada or Europe or Australia banned it
and banned importation of any goods exposed to it, Monsanto would be forced to
seriously rethink their options.

------
hoodoof
Presumably Trump will appoint for former Monsanto CEO to run the EPA?

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments about partisan topics. Those are
flamebait.

~~~
jacquesm
It's flamebait and it is partisan but reality is actually worse so possibly it
is substantive?

~~~
dang
An interesting thought, but I guess partisan flamebait is enough for a please
don't.

------
calafrax
Keep in mind that regulatory agencies exist to protect corporations by giving
them immunity from product liability lawsuits.

Just like California's labeling everything as a known carcinogen has nothing
to do with protecting consumers but only serves the purposes of making
corporations more immune from liability because they have duly warned you in
compliance with the law that their products are harmful.

