A quarter-century ago, a study hit the scientific journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, claiming glyphosate, a.k.a. the weedkiller Roundup, posed no health risk, making millions feel a little better about spraying it all over their lawns. Now, however, that paper has been retracted.
Editor in Chief Martin van den Berg explained in a note attached to the retraction that he had pulled the paper over “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented.”
Published in 2000, the Williams-Kroes-Munro paper became the go-to talking point for anyone eager to defend major corporations. It was cited all over the world by governmental regulators, and academics heavily relied on it. Today, the large language models that AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini rely on spit out the findings of the review like it’s gospel.
Internal documents released during U.S. lawsuits revealed that employees of the agricultural and agrochemical biotechnology giant Monsanto helped ghostwrite large chunks of the study while the authors skipped the part where you’re supposed to disclose that. On top of that, the paper heavily relies on unpublished, Monsanto-owned data, and on top of that, it omitted already available long-term studies. It’s not really surprising that the journal finally decided the whole thing was too compromised to stand behind.
The only problem is, it’s too late. Monsanto won. Glyphosate is everywhere, as it’s one of the most used herbicides on earth, used by massive commercial farmers and home gardeners. It’s ubiquity cannot be understated. There likely isn’t a human in the United States who hasn’t been exposed to glyphosate.
Glyphosate is so deeply interwoven within the agricultural industry that there are “Roundup Ready” crops out there that are genetically modified to survive the weedkiller.
Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018. It insists the stuff is safe. Though Bayer and Monsanto have been at the center of around 181,000 lawsuits in the United States that all, in one way or another, claim that the pesticide made them sick and the company knew it would. Bayer and Monsanto have coughed up several billion dollars in court settlements surrounding Roundup and its possible link to cancer.
Retraction is nice. A good gesture. But that’s all it is. Simply a gesture. The damage is done. Roundup is, unfortunately, deeply woven into our lives. It’s inescapable. And if those multibillion-dollar, cancer-related settlements are any indication, it’s probably killing us.
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