Monsanto 'bullied scientists' and hid weedkiller cancer risk, lawyer tells court
Monsanto has long worked to "bully scientists" and suppress evidence of the cancer risks of its popular weedkiller, a lawyer argued on Monday in a landmark lawsuit against the global chemical corporation.
"Monsanto has specifically gone out of its way to bully ... and to fight independent researchers," said the attorney Brent Wisner, who presented internal Monsanto emails that he said showed how the agrochemical company rejected critical research and expert warnings over the years while pursuing and helping to write favorable analyses of their products. "They fought science."
Wisner, who spoke inside a crowded San Francisco courtroom, is representing DeWayne Johnson, known also as Lee, a California man whose cancer has spread through his body. The father of three and former school groundskeeper, who doctors say may have just months to live, is the first person to take Monsanto to trial over allegations that the chemical sold under the Roundup brand is linked to cancer. Thousands have made similar legal claims across the US.
Monsanto? Never heard of it.
Also at the San Francisco Chronicle.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11 2018, @04:43AM (4 children)
No one said "absolute safety" but to give an example, tobacco! It was known for a very long time that cigarettes massively increased the chances of lung cancer but it was swept under the rug and then promoted to children! That is your vaunted "free market" at work. Without legal culpability corporations are easily taken over by sociopaths who rationalize that the consumer is the moron so why not take their money. Oh, they die earlier? Well good riddance to an idiot willing to smoke themselves to death! /s
Most likely you're just another internet troll trying to get reactions for the lulz, but I respond as if you're serious because it is worth the risk of giving some troll what he wants if at least a few others are given pause when considering our shitty vaunted capitalist system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11 2018, @04:54AM
I mean, what could your point possibly be?
Big Government and Big Tobacco were in indisputable cahoots; as always, Government is the problem because it holds some strange, inexplicable reverence by society.
There's nothing about Big Tobacco that was "Free Market'. NOTHING.
I'm not a troll. I'm really not. I just want you fuckers to leave me alone. Get your guns out of my face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11 2018, @12:17PM (2 children)
Noone figured out how to have tobacco smoke give a mammal cancer until 2005. All the methods that worked for other carcinogens (eg radioactive dust) failed. What finally worked is putting specially bred mice in a smoke filled tank within 12 hours of birth, doing this every day for their entire adolescence (4 months), then stopping the procedure for just as long. Thats right, they need to simulate quitting smoking to get the cancer. Tobacco smoke is a very weak carcinogen, if it even is at all more than anything else.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11 2018, @01:15PM (1 child)
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15765916 [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29370344 [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 11 2018, @05:53PM
Makes sense, the healing and regrowth is when the cancerous mutations occur. It also fits with the many anecdotal accounts of people quitting and then getting cancer.