It's always fun when articles in expensive scholarly journals reach the age at which the public can read them free of charge. By clicking here, you can download a free copy of this article from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute:
It's a pretty authoritative study that seems to contradict an earlier study, accepted by the United Nations' public health officials but not those of the United States, that pronoounced glyphosate to be a "probable carcinogen." Citing stacks of other interesting studies, Andreotti et al. report that a statistical study found only weak correlations between glyphosate exposure and several types of cancer, with the exception of myeloid leukemia. There was a stronger correlation between glyphosate exposure and myeloid leukemia. Also, most of the glyphosate-exposed cancer survivors had been exposed to other carcinogens.
Does that mean glyphosate is not a carcinogen?
Wouldn't it be pleasant if our bodies could only suffer from one kind of damage at a time? /Wouldn't it be fair? You have a broken arm, so you can't have a broken leg. You are too much Thanksgiving dinner, so you can't have food poisoning. You used to smoke cigarettes, so glyphosate couldn't have had anything to do with your having lung cancer.
Bosh.
Any naturopathic doctor will tell you that, actually, the causes of symptoms are more likely to be "all of the above" than to be "either/or." The person with the broken arm is more likely to have a broken leg, from the same accident or a later one, because the person's bones aren't as hard as they ought to be. The person who ate too much turkey is more likely to have ingested more of the bacteria that cause food poisoning. The person who used to smoke cigarettes has done some damage that makes it easier for cancer to develop in per lungs, and glyphosate may add to that damage and speed up the growth of the cancer.
The Andreotti team's results don't contradict the results of other glyphosate studies. They fit right in with the pattern observed in studies of immediate, often minor, glyphosate reactions: Most individuals will show some sort of adverse reaction, but most individuals will not show one of several specific reactions, because glyphosate reactions are such individual things.
Glyphosate reactions aren't even necessarily determined by the method of exposure. It seems logical that skin lesions would form when glyphosate makes contact with skin, respiratory symptoms would result from inhaling glyphosate vapors, and gastrointestinal symptoms would result from eating glyphosate-tainted food. To some extent that's what we observe, but it's not perfect. If you have a chance to watch a crowd of unsuspecting people react to glyphosate vapors you'll see quite a few bolting toward bathrooms rather than coughing and sneezing, though you'll see plenty of coughing and sneezing, probably some asthma...and also possibly some narcolepsy, some vertigo, some mental confusion and/or mood swings. People will complain of "having a bad day" with chronic conditions as arthritis, thyroid failure, or neuromuscular diseases flare up. People will feel tired, or will suddenly notice that weather that seemed perfect before exposure feels terribly hot or cold. There is probably a disease condition that glyphosate does not seem to mimic or aggravate but I'm not sure what it might be. Glyphosate reactions among people who don't have Hansen's Disease don't seem to resemble Hansen's Disease, but has anyone observed the reactions of people who have Hansen's Disease?
Before a decision was made that cancer patients should sue Bayer first because they were generally the patients with the lowest life expectancies, people already knew that most people who have glyphosate reactions don't get any kind of cancer. Most people do have unpleasant glyphosate reactions, though many don't recognize what they are reacting to. Most people never get cancer. Even most smokers don't get cancer. The "real cause," the necessary cause without which cancer can't get started however badly the tissue has been damaged, may turn out to be a virus--but that doesn't mean we can ignore the extent to which tissue damage increases the risk of cancer.
There being no question that glyphosate does damage human body tissue, the question is whether, in addition to promoting the progress of cancers affecting the skin, eyes, nose, mouth, digestive system generally, and lungs, glyphosate also increases our risk of developing bizarre, obscure forms of cancer like multiple myeloma. (Weak but positive correlation.) And what Andreotti's data actually tell us is that it does. Especially, for reasons unknown, myeloid leukemia.
Though the gall with which Bayer and other corporate shills defend glyphosate, the insolence of their quibbling style of debate, is truly astounding, rest assured, Gentle Readers, that both in this world and the next, people who are apparently motivated "just to watch [others] die" tend to find themselves in places where they don't want to be.
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