A U.S. appeals court on Monday refused to dismiss a Georgia doctor’s lawsuit claiming that Bayer AG’s Roundup weedkiller caused cancer, the latest setback in the German company’s efforts to fend off thousands of similar cases carrying potentially billions of dollars in liability.
A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bayer’s argument that federal regulators’ approval of Roundup shielded the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers of the product’s risks. Several other appeals courts had previously reached the same conclusion in similar lawsuits.
If the 11th Circuit had broken with those other courts, it would have made it more likely for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue. Bayer has said that it hopes a favorable Supreme Court ruling could limit its liability from the Roundup-related litigation, but the court has so far rebuffed its appeals.
The annoying part about all of this legislation is that no scientific evidence is ever presented. If it does cause cancer, I would love for it to be definitively shown. But that’s not even attempted in these lawsuits.
The big original suit with the university gardener who (somehow) poured glyphosate all over himself and developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma developed the lymphoma…within six months after the incident in question, with other symptoms indicating sooner than that even. And since the development of such a cancer and onset of symptoms takes around a year…which was before he ever started working at the university…their own timeline debunked the claim.
But the jury seemingly ignored that little tidbit of scientific importance.
Hi Monsanto
Ho hum, like I haven’t heard that before. I am simultaneously Big GMO, Big Pharma, Big Green Energy, Big Nuclear, and who knows what else based on what I’ve been called because I defend the science on any and all topics.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/20/glyphosate-weedkiller-cancer-biomarkers-urine-study … notes that cancer biomarkers have been found in urine samples
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/us-glyphosate-cancer-study-scli-intl/index.html … notes that glyphosate increases the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by 41%
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/09/weedkiller-glyphosate-cdc-study-urine-samples … which notes the following
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=glyphosate+cancer&scisbd=1#d=gs_qabs&t=1707197448592&u=%23p%3DLh2rhLUbbCEJ … which notes the following
First one: Oxidative stress biomarkers, ie caused by most things and also are largely irrelevant? Biomarkers don’t actually correlate to actual risk increases in themselves.
Second one: High long term exposure, ie being consistently doused in the stuff somehow, And is looking at meta-risk, so not actual risk of cancer development. Also, the 41% even therein is based on risk increase from the original numbers, not an absolute increase. Meaning the actual risk went from something akin to 0.4% over a lifetime to 0.55%. And this only applies to someone who has massive exposure repeatedly over a long period of time.
Third one: Has nothing to do with science or evidence of any kind. Judges in courts don’t know anything about science, hence why scientific experts and organizations actually research this stuff.
Fourth one: Is likely referencing studies already covered in #2, which again relies on actually understanding what the 41% is referring to.
In short, a lot of media fearmongering about science would be less effective if the general public understood statistics better.