POSTED WITH NO COMMENT - JUST FOR GENERAL INFO
MIKE
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If you read the article it actually says it found no link.
Eric
I was just quoting the headline.
I just noticed that The Washington Post headline said " NO FIRM link" while The Scientist Magazine said "âDoes not causeâŚâ seeâŚ
âLong-term Study Finds That the Pesticide Glyphosate Does NOT Cause Cancerâ
(emphasis added)
Mike
The most important piece of info is, who funded the study.
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." The study is a collaborative effort involving investigators from National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health."
âMore than 89,000 farmers and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina have participated in the study.â
Donât know who paid but the collaborators/ participants are main stream.
Mike
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According to the studies I have read and it would take some looking up to find them again but they are out there, Round Up is proven to cause cancer. When the ingredients were broken down the glyphosate did not show signs of causing cancer but the carry agents that are used to introduce the glyphosate were proven to be carcinogenic. Does not mean I want to consume glyphosate but those are the studies I read.
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The study referred to here is one Iâve posted about several times on this forum, and it is a massive epidemiological study which includes tens of thousands of farmers and spouses that have a very high level of exposure to glyphosphate and just about every âGodawfulâ agricultural poison that has been used in the last 50 years or so in our country. It shouldnât be confused with the kind of studies done by corporations to help them introduce and market their products- there is no possibility of cherry picking and ignoring data in this type of study. If you donât believe in this study, you probably will not be convinced by any evidence that contradicts your personal confirmation bias. However, this judgement is coming from someone with his own confirmation bias.
The AHS participants are farmers and their spouses who are licensed to use pesticides.
A subsequent summary from 1,198,129 person-years of data with an average participant follow-up period of 13.4 years found that AHS participants are healthier overall than the general population and less likely to die from all causes:
⢠Study participants are less likely than the general population to die from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, lung diseases, and liver diseases.
⢠Rates of smoking-related cancers, such as oral, esophageal, pancreatic, lung, and bladder, are lower or similar to rates in the general population.
⢠Overall injury deaths were lower, but deaths related to machinery continue to be higher among AHS farmers compared to non-farmers.
⢠A few cancers are more common among AHS farmers, including prostate cancer. Additional studies are being carried out to learn more about the risk of developing these cancers.
Thanks. Perhaps I should be more exact. Who among the principal investigators in the study takes money from large corporations, if any?
Y
You would have to research that yourself, but how would that matter with an epidemiological study? Youâd have to believe in a conspiracy among the scientists to invent the data as it is only about health issues reported by people in the study or their actual deaths. Do you understand the nature of epidemiological studies? If so, can you explain how the data could be tweaked to promote one particular outcome? If you read the complete study I think your question will be answered- I can send it to you if you like. In the first report of the study, the writer indicated some astonishment on the part of the scientists that high exposure to pesticides didnât seem to generate any major red flags as far as health consequences- almost as though they were disappointed.
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Yes, I think I know what an epidemiological study is. And there have been famously wrong such studies. For example, in Ancel Keys 7 country study 15 countries were left off. Or the (20 years long) Framingham study pointing to saturated fat and/or meat as the cause of heart disease. Now proving a negative (as is the case of this study) is generally a more airtight conclusion, and I can even agree that RU is more correlated to other diseases of civilization (other than cancer).
Perhaps that is the trick. Look at cancer instead of autism.
But IMHO caveat emptor. The field of medicine is too corrupt, the government panels too full of people with ties to big pharma, to really trust such studies. If the Japanese or Europeans come up with similar studies it would be much better for me.
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How do we figure out a way to eliminate that one component of the human psychology that stands in the way of progress more than any otherâŚ
⌠it is the emotional epoxy that contaminates our decision making process.
Too bad on us.
Mike
You seem to me to be working from an emotional construct to discredit the study without really considering it. Not all ep studies are equal- I was pointing out the difficulty in corrupting such studies for economic gain,not claiming all ep studies are conclusive- thatâs the strawman tactic you are using, so please donât go there because it wastes time by needlessly muddying the waters.
This particular study is interesting because it isolates a group with entirely different lifestyles than the average citizen in their states. This lifestyle includes almost unanimous exposure to much more pesticide tn the course of the lives of the farmers and their spouses compared to the vast majority of people in other occupations.
It doesnât prove pesticide exposure isnât harmful to ones health, but it strongly indicates that the harm is much less than what the general public believes, and that is important and helpful, especially to those of us who use pesticides to grow fruit.
I should point out that the Canadian gov. has done a similar study with similar results.
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without a doubt I tend to consider less (or not at all) studies coming from certain sources, your post is very true. I used to have the opposite bias, and I can see that there are many ways to game the system, and it takes a lot of time to figure it out, so I just ignore the study.
I just disagree that the choice is emotional. I arrived at it through a lot of thought, book reading, and articles reading (I have access to virtually every scientific paper through my work).
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All of us are susceptible to bias based on presupposition, no matter how much real information is in the formulation, and it is nearly impossible to objectively evaluate our own prejudice. .My ax to grind is an instinctive desire to minimize the risks at using pesticides because I use them and have to convince customers who I believe often have an exaggerated sense of danger that they should rationally consider synthetic pest control to get fruit and weigh that against the advantages of going organic, I too used to be coming from the other side.
All that said, I believe this to be a relatively informative study.
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Thanks for sharing the link. I worked in the agrichemical industry for a few years studying the movement of chemicals through the landscapes and waterways in which they were applied. I got to work with apple orchards in Michigan, rice fields in Louisiana and Arkansas, lettuce fields in Florida, and corn fields in Wisconsin and Illinois. It was very interesting discussing chemicals with the farmers who applied them every day. Older guys describing how they used to stir up chemicals in their tanks by sticking their arm in the tank and swirling it around. But by the 80âs, they all had a very healthy respect for chemical toxicity, and they were very careful with their applications. Partly for safety reasons and partly because chemical costs are an enormous part of the equation in terms of whether their farms would make a profit or not. The apple grower I worked with the most said he would absolutely love to reduce his chemical use, but that would mean producing imperfect apples that no one would buy. The use/overuse of chemicals is largely driven by consumer preferences.
One thing I learned loud and clear is that hating chemicals and chemical companies is like itâs own religion. Studies and science related to this issue donât matter to a great many people. As with religion, no amount of evidence- even first-hand irrefutable evidence- will change the minds of some people.
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it is always good news to see pesticides being studied and good news to see at least one study indicating no link to cancer. Even if some other study claims otherwise.
as have noticed over the years, arguments over pesticides occur between two types of posters. The optimists and the skeptics, say, if we hypothetically grant the posted study claiming that roundup â in factâ does not cause cancer(which is awesome news for both optimists and skeptics). But skeptics will also ask if it is also true that it does not cause insidious non-lethal syndromes? Say, developmental(fetal exposure/childhood exposure) factors resulting in autism, ADHD, diabetes, neuro-endocrine/subclinical somatic syndromes, etc? Is it also true that it does not affect the birds and the bees? literally, and figuratively? Will it not have cumulative effects on the environment and every living thing in it in the long run? There arenât many studies on these yet, and it may take several human generations to find direct links. These are not as easy to detect as the link between phocomelia and thalidomide, since signs and symptoms are not detectable at birth.
thus said, the optimist in me celebrates the no-link study, but the skeptic in me is still open to other damage/s possibly involved and yet undetermined. Now, before this correspondence gets lengthy and not-so-amicable as previous similar threads, have to qualify that i totally understand it would be a tough sell for farmers to offer sub-par apples, and that using pesticides may be the only way to do it. It is bad enough that conventional farmers are subject to the extra labor/expense of pricey pesticides and having to don biohazard suits and masks, only to be vilified by those who champion organic farming.
speaking for myself, being a part-skeptic in no way equates to hate or religious tendencies.
and speaking of which(though this might be for another thread), does anyone actually have first-hand irrefutable evidence of the deity or deities one believes in?
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and youâre definitely not alone believing that. Theobroma is the scientific name of that very popular okra relative â which is greek for âfood of the godsâ 
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The skepticism can seem rather arbitrary.
Why is there such a strong focus on agricultural chemicals in the minds of the public compared to the industrial chemicals that are actually much more pervasive in our environment?. Why are my customers more concerned, for example, about tiny amounts of residue in their fruit than about the air they breathe in their weekday homes in Manhattan? The evidence of polluted urban air damaging our health is much more supportive then chemical residue in food, but is barely mentioned by our media.
Perhaps one reason farmers have such better health outcomes than the average citizens in their states is because they tend to live in areas with a lower concentration of industrial pollutants. Such pollutants are also concentrated in the air of most office spaces.
My theory is that during our long biological history as hunter-gatherers, we made existential choices about what foods to eat and what to avoid to guard against poisoning ourselves, so we are instinctively much more attuned to what we put in our mouths than what we absorb through our lungs and skin.
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You would have to produce that study for me to believe it. The WHO report says itâs likely to, but the WHO cancer studies are purely political. They removed coffee from their cancer list due public pressure and humiliation as the public would not buy it. Many reviews of their studies state they are bias, and that the evidence in these studies do not support the conclusions. For the most part their peers reject the studies as bias.
Everything but proof, I have to agree with Alan, itâs emotional. And itâs rare when i agree with him.
Amen!
First I want to say your post was excellent, but you still presented a straw-man argument, as this study is about cancer. I find that distracting, yet informative as to why you are still concerned. Still this study does not address your concerns, so making any conclusions about your concerns from this study positive or negative are not possible. It seems though that it would be possible to make some conclusions from the data collected. It would be easy enough to ask the participants about their offspring. And maybe if you read the whole study you would find answers to some of your questions.
As far as proof of a deity, which Iâm not sure how that relates to this study? (it doesnât in anyway, another strawman). When one lives life, evidence is presented, via many experiences you have, often they do point to a deity, itâs happened too much to be just coincidence in my life. Even with that I canât say for sure? Still agnostic. The fact their is no proof confirms Alanâs statement, is the point of his statement, you just pointed it out. .
By the way I too am in these type of studies and have been for almost 40 years. Mine is via the lifelong nursing study, my kids are too. My wife started participation of our family in 1979 before we had kids, my kids have been monitored through their whole life, as I bet the farmers kids are too, so you may find some answers to your questions in the full study as itâs not just about cancer.
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