
Of all the known applications of distorted, exaggerated and warped junk science, few are as outrageous a travesty of science and law as the systematic corporate extortion racket behind the weed killer glyphosate.
On Wednesday, German drug and chemical giant Bayer announced it would be paying US$10 billion to extricate itself from U.S. lawsuits brought by law firms that mounted thousands of class and individual claims in U.S. courts claiming the weed killer causes cancer, specifically non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Under the brand name Roundup, glyphosate — a godsend to global agriculture — was developed in the 1970s by Monsanto, which was taken over by Bayer in 2018, leaving the German company with the task of shaking off 125,000 claims in a screwed-up U.S. legal system that has allowed junk science to rule its courts. When it comes to manipulating the public, there was no need to turn on the algorithms of the tech giants. Plain old TV commercials did the trick, sucking in viewers with promises of big payouts.
The legal scare over a Roundup cancer risk was extreme, even though by all serious scientific assessments there is no evidence that glyphosate poses a cancer risk. Last year Health Canada, pressed by activists such as the David Suzuki Foundation, completed a review that was as categorical as official statements on health risks can get. “Our scientists left no stone unturned” to conclude that its original assessment that the weed killer did not pose a cancer risk would stand. It added: “No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”
[Interesting Read]