Monsanto Effort to Defund Cancer Researchers

(theintercept.com)

261 points | by mgamache 1679 days ago

11 comments

  • NPMaxwell 1679 days ago
    Roundup, asbestos, leaded gas, and lots of other engineering products say to me that the industry/culture of engineering has a problem. I think that problem is not engineering itself, but emerges when engineering is mixed with current MBA culture of stockholder value rather than stakeholder value. Obvious, and obviously worthless, strategies are to add BS "ethics" courses to engineering programs. It's possible to turn this ship. I don't yet have ideas for how it's actually done.
    • throwawaywindev 1679 days ago
      It’s an economic problem that boils down to not putting a high enough price on negative externalities.
      • PeterStuer 1679 days ago
        The idea that a regulator can pre-run the economic actors to price in all known and unknown negative externalities before transactions occur is disingenuous. Competitively breeding an evolving species of ever more creative amoral actors seeking to concentrate benefits and externalize negatives and then somehow hoping you can contain them is madness. In an environment were the 'guards' can and frequently do swap places with the inmates it is beyond madness.

        Furthermore, even if that were true there is nothing to stop a malevolent actor, either deliberate, by ignorance, or by lack of better alternatives, to just eat the cost.

        • tim_hutton 1679 days ago
          Yes perfect regulation is impossible and yes it's an arms race but it's one we have to keep fighting. The alternative (less regulation) is far worse. We've tried that.
          • PeterStuer 1679 days ago
            Just to be clear: I was not at all advocating less regulation.
      • 52-6F-62 1679 days ago
        Agreed. This is a major problem in the energy sector as well. I regularly hear "oil and gas are cheap energy compared to the alternatives" but they're really not. They're just punting the real costs down a generation or two.
        • sprafa 1679 days ago
          Plus why in the heck do we have fossil fuels being subsidised? That always felt absurd to me, at least these days
          • CountSessine 1679 days ago
            Almost all of what are called subsidies for oil and gas (can’t speak for coal), at least in North America, are just the fact that we don’t price in externalities. There are a few token non-operational subsidies that oil companies enjoy, but they are orders of magnitude smaller than the taxes we apply to oil and gas at multiple levels of production, distribution, and sale.

            Oil and gas, if you ignore global warming, really is very, very cheap.

      • ocschwar 1679 days ago
        That in turn boils down to a reluctance people have to acknowledging the magnitude of an externality of they are the ones imposing it on others, or even its existence.

        It's particularly severe when it's up to an MBA running a company, but an engineering education only goes so far in mitigating that tendency: the Koch brothers majored in chemical engineering at MIT. A major component of their education was all about externalities. And yet they've devoted their political activism to nurturing anti-intellectualism in the Republican party specifically so that the GOP would deny any and all externalities.

      • zzzeek 1679 days ago
        the 11000 lawsuits against Monsanto are the high price of the negative externalities. the article is about them attempting to game the political process to neutralize that.
      • superpermutat0r 1679 days ago
        I'd say it's a regulatory problem. Any kind of innovation that can be applied to massive scale, like pesticides, mobile phones, cars, computers etc. should be tested for decades if not more before it is allowed to disturb the society.

        No one does any risk analysis and the short-term upside makes the long-term downside invisible.

        No one knew how problematic pesticides can get. We are just now discovering the effects.

    • magduf 1679 days ago
      Engineers themselves (in America) tend to be extremely conservative and pro-business, so they're definitely part of the problem.
      • snarf21 1679 days ago
        That is a very judgmental comment. Is everything you work on 100% a net positive to society? Do you work for a non-profit helping the homeless or other social issue at 20% of the salary you could get working for a big tech company? Most people hate change and like to have money to support their family. Each person has to establish their own moral threshold.
      • ocschwar 1679 days ago
        Past tense.

        I still have an extremely conservative outlook, and I have no ideological opposition to the private sector, but when "conservatives" are the ones running around upsetting apple carts and setting fires, it becomes hard to be an engineer and a conservative.

        • magduf 1679 days ago
          Well, just like "liberals", there's different flavors of conservatives out there, and this has always been the case. There's the pro-big-business old-school Republicans, for instance, on one side, and on the other side you basically have nationalistic fascists. These days, in America, the "conservatives" are swaying closer to the latter side. But even the milder ones, because of their generally pro-business and anti-regulation stance, can be a problem in the context of this story, because that mindset generally seems to lead to too much power with the corporations, too much regulatory capture, etc.
      • okmokmz 1679 days ago
        This is a pretty huge generalization. As an engineer in Seattle, I find most of my coworkers are very liberal. I imagine it varies wildly depending on discipline and location
        • magduf 1679 days ago
          Software engineers are far, far more liberal than all other engineering professions.

          Don't forget, a lot of engineers don't even consider software engineering to be an engineering discipline.

          • okmokmz 1678 days ago
            What does that have to do with my comment? I'm not a software engineer
    • rossdavidh 1679 days ago
      So, I think there are two entities that are failing in cases like these: 1) the government (regulators, and Congress) 2) the corporate boards

      The CEO of, for example, Monsanto, has doubled down on Roundup in so many ways he cannot fail to fight this and keep his job. So I'm not surprised that he is fighting it (and getting Monsanto's many PR resources to fight it). But, the longer term for Monsanto is very negative if they don't change course, because even if they can suppress this in the U.S. they can't in Europe or elsewhere.

      So, while the failure of our regulators and/or legislators to respond is certainly part of the problem, the other part is that our corporate boards of directors, whose only remaining job really is to know when to pull the CEO, are not up to the task.

    • ackbar03 1679 days ago
      You have to wonder how twisted you can really get though in the name of increasing shareholder value. How do these top brass justify to themselves what they're doing
      • techrich 1679 days ago
        well the chemicals turn them into soulless husks of a person. They dont start out that way, but over time thats what happens.
    • daniel-cussen 1679 days ago
      All of those are chemical products.
  • The_rationalist 1679 days ago
    This press article is mostly void of substance.

    Yes, Monsanto do everything, even semi illegal things to defend it's economical interests. I actually learned they hired fake journalists.

    But nothing about the real issue: is glyphosate carcinogenic and if so, how much compared to very common carcinogenics. By far most independent studies (listed on Wikipedia) conclude that glyphosate is not or is unlikely to be carcinogenic. This is solid evidence of glyphosate being of little worry, especially when we have far more worrying carcinogens in our everyday life.

    The FTI-written letter declared that glyphosate “does not cause cancer,” accused the IARC of peddling “bunk science,” and threatened a reassessment of the NIH budget to ensure that the agency is “committed to only funding organizations that produce information and conclusions based on sound science, robust processes, and credible methodology.” How solid scientifically are the IARC reviews? Nobody adress this real question.

    Btw everybody talk about potential lives that Monsanto indirectly maybe killed. Monsanto is often considered as evil. But thanks to their scientific innovations, they feed the world. It's difficult to realize how many lives they have saved or improved, but they are probably on the top 10 list of most impactful entities for increasing well being and diminishing suffering.

    • alexandercrohde 1679 days ago
      >> By far most independent studies (listed on Wikipedia) conclude that glyphosate is not or is unlikely to be carcinogenic.

      Well, if there was no concern about the objectivity of the science that might be more relevant. Unfortunately the whole article is pointing out that the science done may not be accurate, as Monsanto has been putting financial incentives against honest research.

      We may like to tell ourselves that scientific studies are beyond corruption, but that's plainly not true. There was even a time when a "scientific study" concluded leaded gasoline was safe. This is why financial backers must be disclosed in respected research.

      As a consumer, if a CEO wants to consistently subject himself to a 10x dose of the chemical that will be remaining on/in my food, maybe I'd have more faith that our incentives align.

    • wickedwiesel 1679 days ago
      > But thanks to their scientific innovations, they feed the world. It's difficult to realize how many lives they have saved or improved, but they are probably on the top 10 list of most impactful entities for increasing well being and diminishing suffering.

      How can you be so sure about this? Monsanto's GMOs depend on the use of their tailored pesticides. It's their whole USP. The negative impact of the current use of pesticides, of which roundup is a bestseller, is _immense_. The vicious cycle of pesticide use, GMOs and debt is horrible for farmers in low- medium-income countries and often leads to suicide. Just pesticide poisoning accounts for a yearly death toll of 200,000 to 250,000 people according to the UN [0] and the WHO [1].

      This does not even go into the topic of loss of biodiversity where pesticides play a vital role. According to the OHCHR, if we were to eliminate bees by using neonicotinoid pesticides as usual, we will likely see a collapse of "the very basis of agriculture as 71% of crop species are bee-pollinated."[2] Monsanto and its practice have been directly linked to the demise of bee populations [3].

      Monsanto and the like are again, cashing in all our chips for short-term gain. This is not innovation. This is a growth hacking at its worst.

      [0] - 2017, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/017/85/PDF... "pesticides are responsible for an estimated 200,000 acute poisoning deaths each year" [1] - 2006, https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/en/Pest... Worldwide, an estimated three million cases of pesticide poisoning occur every year, resulting in an excess of 250,000 deaths. [2] - https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N... [3] - https://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-be...

      • jcranberry 1679 days ago
        You haven't mentioned any evidence which would inculpate Monsanto. Pesticides are used for both GMO and non-GMO crops. What is so vicious about the cycle of 'pesticide, GMOs, and debt' which is less vicious for 'pesticide, non-GMOs and debt'?
        • wickedwiesel 1678 days ago
          This is a two-part answer.

          First, the big difference about GMOs is that "farmers must purchase fresh seeds as retailers sell them only as hybrid cultivars, which prevents growers from replanting them the following year." [3] You can imagine that this makes a huge difference in how farmers need to operate. Farmers do not store seed anymore like they used to but need to buy new seed ever year. If world market prices of their commodities drop they will not even be able to afford new seed & pesticides for the next crop, especially since prices for GMO seeds and brand-specific pesticides are a multiple of non-GMO seeds. With non-GMOs, farmers retain the possibility and the legal right to the re-seed next year. That is why this cycle is more vicious, especially for low-income countries where credits and loan are hard to come by.

          > You haven't mentioned any evidence which would inculpate Monsanto.

          Secondly, I explicitly linked an article titled "Death and Extinction of the Bees. The Role of Monsanto?" which is one of many others like the Guardian, citing University of Texas research [0], the German Office for Environmental Protection [1] highlighting the negative effect of RoundUp/Glpyhosat. All of these detail the negative impact of Monsanto's product on biodiversity in general and bees more specifically. So the evidence is not only about the negative impact of Monsanto's main product RoundUp on bee population but also Monsanto's documented efforts to prevent effective regulation and scientific discussion.

          For instance, the so-called 'Monsanto papers' "reveal Monsanto-sponsored ghostwriting of articles published in toxicology journals and the lay media, interference in the peer review process, behind-the-scenes influence on retraction and the creation of a so-called academic website as a front for the defense of Monsanto products."[5]

          Monsanto doesn't really help here and became the first company that has been "banned from entering the European parliament after the multinational refused to attend a parliamentary hearing into allegations of regulatory interference" [4].

          [0] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/monsanto... [1] - https://www.bfn.de/fileadmin/BfN/landwirtschaft/Dokumente/20... [3] - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2014/... [4] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/28/monsanto... [5] - https://www.sci-hub.tw/10.3233/JRS-180028

  • ocschwar 1679 days ago
    History repeats itself.

    When Clair PAtterson started researching the environmental persistence of ethyl-lead (leaded gas), Du Pont offered to sponsor any research he wanted to do so long as it wasn't ethyl lead.

    Not only can you not trust a company to research possible bad effects of its products, you can expect companies to interfere with research into their products done by outside parties.

  • vertis 1679 days ago
    The first time I read about Monsanto being evil it was in the fiction novel Freedom(TM) by Daniel Suarez (sequel to Daemon).

    Daniel Suarez had neatly integrated Monsanto suing farmers[1] into the storyline.

    It's a great (neo)cyberpunk read, as are his other novels.

    One of the things I love about novels of this style are that they prompt me to go off and learn more about a subject.

    [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...

    • stringyham 1679 days ago
      Thanks for the author recommendation, had never heard of him.
  • jimbob45 1679 days ago
    >Great, so now on top of all the other $#!% farmers have to deal with they also need to be concerned their going to get blood cancer. So what is the suggested alternative? Farmers can't just not use weed killer. They need an effective weed killer and it has to be cheap.

    I really don't think this should have been downvoted to hell. We spend every Monsanto thread talking about how bad the company is and I think we can all agree at this point that the company would be best off dead. However, there are still very real farmers out there who need real solutions to avoid going bankrupt. Why can't we talk about all the good weedkiller companies that we should be buying from?

    • ocschwar 1679 days ago
      > However, there are still very real farmers out there who need real solutions to avoid going bankrupt

      The financial risk for farmers comes primarily from having to compete with farmers who are resorting to these dangerous products. And there's an easy way to address that.

    • wnevets 1679 days ago
      How was farming possible prior to the cancer causing weed killer being created?
      • cwp 1679 days ago
        80% of the population spent their lives in extreme poverty, toiling in the fields from sunup to sundown.
        • ocschwar 1679 days ago
          You can thank the McCormick Reaper for putting that to an end. No need for Roundup.
        • strainer 1679 days ago
          This common outlook of pre-industrial farming is actually contested, eg. [1]

          > One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.

          These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false...

          [1]https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

        • wnevets 1679 days ago
          I had no idea roundup was that old and revolutionary
      • gandalfian 1679 days ago
        You can till/plough mechanically destroying the weeds but eroding the soil or you can use Weedkiller instead. But it is hard to use neither and maintain yields.
      • iamvik 1679 days ago
        However it was done, we have much higher productivity requirements nowadays.
        • superpermutat0r 1679 days ago
          Much higher productivity demands for luxury products. If we want back to produce a variety of direct human edible vegetables the productivity would not be necessary at all. When you're raising corn, soybean and wheat for cattle then it's obviously a much bigger higher order problem.
      • thebooktocome 1679 days ago
        Buckets of free/cheap labor that no longer exists in much of the world.
    • Circuits 1679 days ago
      "I really don't think this should have been downvoted to hell."

      Um... as far as I can tell my post received no down votes lol

  • AngeloAnolin 1679 days ago
    These type of behavior has always been prevalent with any for-profit corporation. Generally, companies would try to find loopholes and way around regulations just to ensure that their cash cow is able to fulfill their own bottom line.

    Come to think of it - it is always a big news when companies' wrongdoings are exposed. But for companies who've turned around and is trying to make their operations better and abide by regulations and focused on ensuring safety and well-being of everyone directly and indirectly, they never make the news.

    • refurb 1679 days ago
      These type of behavior has always been prevalent with any for-profit corporation.

      This type of behavior has always been prevalent with any corporation staffed by humans.

      You don’t need a profit motive to get these sorts of things. Look at what the gov’t has done in the name of national security, war against crime, etc.

  • jcranberry 1679 days ago
    According to their Preamble, what IARC does is collect studies on a particular substance and categorize them according to how likely it is they carcinogenic to any degree. So they essentially publish reviews of existing literature. They evaluate whether there's a hazard, but not how much risk there actually is. The article title should probably be "Monsanto Effort to Defund Cancer Research Reviewers".

    Glyphosate sits in the same category ('probably carcinogenic') as:

    >Emissions from frying stuff

    >Being a barber

    >Being a night shift worker

    >Red meat

    >Malaria

    >Glass manufactoruing

    >Burning wood biofuel

    And some other stuff and a bunch of chemicals whose usage I don't know.

    In the 'definitely carcinogenic' category are lots of things that you would expect, such as coal production and ionizing radiation, but there's also:

    >Being a painter

    >Mineral oils

    >Processed meat

    >"Salted fish, Chinese-style"

    Because I wasn't sure, this is the IARC's definition of processed meat:

    >Processed meat refers to meat that has been transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavour or improve reservation. Most processed meats contain pork or beef, but processed meats may also contain other red meats, poultry, offal, or meat by-products such as blood.

    There's also the third group of 'possibly carcinogenic', which includes beverages above 65C (149F), aloe vera, carpentry, asian pickled vegetables, and radio waves.

    Source:

    https://monographs.iarc.fr/list-of-classifications

  • ptah 1679 days ago
    Event like this convinces me that government is primarily a servant of big business
    • AndrewDucker 1679 days ago
      "Government" is a broad grouping. It varies depending on the politicians making it to.

      What you see here is largely a Republican effort to defund an organisation that's... Government funded.

      So if you want the research to happen then that's not less government, it's different government.

    • AdmiralAsshat 1679 days ago
      • specialist 1679 days ago
        How do we fix this?

        The core conundrum is the two party adversarial system.

        More durable are three way food fights (trilemmas), like the USA's Constitution balance of powers (leg vs exec vs court).

        Not perfect. Just better.

        IMHO.

    • ghobs91 1679 days ago
      and it will continue to be, so long as political donations of any size are legal.
      • save_ferris 1679 days ago
        It’s not just the size of the donation, the PAC system permits tremendous amounts of dark money whose donors aren’t disclosed.

        Donating directly to politicians is fairly straightforward and transparent due to campaign finance law, but PACs operating “independently” and in the background undermine the system in a huge way

        • ghobs91 1679 days ago
          My point is that as long as donations of any kind are legal, politicians will continue to optimize for fundraising, rather than optimizing for policies that benefit the largest number of people. Who is most equipped to donate large sums to politicians? The wealthy.
          • snowwrestler 1679 days ago
            If donations are no longer legal, only the wealthy will have enough money to run for office. It would not have the democratizing effect you seem to think it would.
            • save_ferris 1679 days ago
              This just isn’t true, and this problem largely already exists in the US.

              Many countries use publicly funded elections where all candidates get a set sum from the government to use towards a campaign. This would stop the billions flowing into races and ensure that all candidates have the same campaign budget.

              Look at Texas, for example. The annual salary for a state legislator is pitiful (like $10k), which basically prevents anyone who isn’t independently wealthy from running from state office.

      • SkyBelow 1679 days ago
        Or as long as we allow free speech.

        As long as we have free speech, whomever can buy the largest megaphone has the ability to drown out everyone else. You have to regulate speech so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone, but then groups that most people want to drown out also gets to speak. You can try limiting it so only some groups get access, but then you just get regulatory capture of speech.

        • okmokmz 1679 days ago
          This doesn't make any sense. Government is a servant of big business because we allow free speech? How exactly would you go about regulating speech "so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone"? Censorship would absolutely not help improve the situation
          • SkyBelow 1676 days ago
            >Government is a servant of big business because we allow free speech?

            Well, you have to include the middle step that voters are strongly influenced by what they hear, advertising, and the like and that many voters do not do a deep amount of digging. Also you have to include the other step that there is a lot of research in marketing and psychology to sway people's reactions and opinions.

            But once you combine the above, it turns out that those with control of the primary information distribution can influence public opinion. Now, they can't convince people that grass is purple and the sky is green, but they can sway public opinion. Politicians realize this and are thus swayed by those who control the information lest they make enemies who will seek to promote their opponents either in primaries or general elections (at least in the US with its government system).

            >How exactly would you go about regulating speech "so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone"?

            I don't have a clue, and as you suggest, such actions won't be without unforeseen consequences which could end up worse than the original problem. A few countries in the EU seem to have laws made to dampen the problem without fixing it, but the actual effectiveness of the laws is something I haven't seen any peer reviewed research on.

          • Elrac 1679 days ago
            I think _theoretically_ the way this is thought to work is that Amazon or Google could take out daily ads in all major media that say "vote for John Doe, he's a great guy!", i.e. well-heeled companies could do candiates' campaigning for them, while we ordinary people can't afford that much public exposure.

            That may be true enough, but it's not a phenomenon we've been seeing. What we _have_ been seeing in the past few years, especially after _Citizen's United_ and the dawn of PACs, is wealthy corporations legally handing money to candidates to do their campaigning with.

            This would and should have nothing to do with free speech, except that there have been recent (SC?) rulings declaring financial donations, i.e. money, to be a form of speech, so basically unlimited political donations are considered protected under the 1st Amendment. I personally consider this a grave error in judgment, undoubtedly politically motivated.

    • mikelyons 1679 days ago
      Ego is the servant of money, and government is highly corrupted with ego at the moment.
  • inflatableDodo 1679 days ago
    >During his deposition, Rands said that he believed it appropriate for Monsanto to draft a letter on behalf of a lawmaker to NIH, calling such ghostwriting a “common practice in Washington.”

    I feel an iceberg metaphor looming.

  • mrhappyunhappy 1679 days ago
    Is this a surprise? Monsanto doing what Monsanto does to keep screwing people for profit. Take money out of politics, pay our public servants well out of taxpayer money, implement short term limits, problems solved. It’s not rocket science, but powers that be will not give up easily.
    • reacweb 1679 days ago
      and sell before facing trials. Should we have empathy for Bayer that has made a very bad purchase ?
      • mikro2nd 1679 days ago
        I'll bet Swiss Money that Bayer knew exactly what they were getting into before buying and (upper management) decided to go ahead anyway. Presumably they've done the math and think it's worth it, having priced the risk in. Scary thought imho.
        • linuxhansl 1679 days ago
          German speaking here... I suspect they came to this with an understanding of German interpretation and application of law. In Germany a jury cannot just declare a substance as carcinogenic, there are no class action suits, no punitive damages, etc.

          That's why the defence has focused so far on facts and studies.

          (Note: I'm not saying one is better than the other. Just that the risk was probably assessed with assumptions that turned out to be incorrect.)

  • Circuits 1679 days ago
    Great, so now on top of all the other $#!% farmers have to deal with they also need to be concerned their going to get blood cancer. So what is the suggested alternative? Farmers can't just not use weed killer. They need an effective weed killer and it has to be cheap.