Judge upholds verdict that found Monsanto's weed killer caused worker's cancer

[pnwmom]

Last edited Tue Oct 23, 2018, 04:13 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: CNBC

A Northern California judge on Monday upheld a jury's verdict that found Monsanto's weed killer caused a groundskeeper's cancer, but she slashed the amount of money to be paid to the man from $289 million to $78 million.

In denying Monsanto's request for a new trial, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos cut the jury's punitive damage award from $250 million to $39 million. The judge had earlier said she had strong doubts about the jury's punitive damage award.

The jury awarded punitive damages after it found that the St. Louis-based agribusiness had purposely ignored warnings and evidence that its popular Roundup product causes cancer, including DeWayne Johnson's lymphoma. . . .

"I urge you to respect and honor our verdict and the six weeks of our lives that we dedicated to this trial," juror Gary Kitahata wrote. Juror Robert Howard said the jury paid "studious attention" to the evidence and any decision to overturn its verdict would shake his confidence in the judicial system.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/judge-upholds-verdict-that-found-monsantos-weed-killer-caused-cancer.html

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The weed killer is Monsanto's glyphosate product, Round-up.

Part of the plaintiff argument is that Monsanto has been covering up evidence that they were aware of, and also paying researchers to ghost-write studies to give them more credibility.

There are links to trial transcripts and exhibits here:

https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto-roundup-lawsuit/dewayne-johnson-v-monsanto-company/

[Steven Maurer]

1. This will be appealed

As it should be. Glyphosate is terrible for ecosystems (especially water based plant life), but absolutely no peer-reviewed epidemiological evidence shows any consistent pattern of positive associations with any form cancer in humans.

Juries aren't scientific. Half the time, they're barely sentient.

I don't care how much you dislike Monsanto. Do you want some Bible Belt jury awarding millions of dollars based on some "result" from Young Earth Creationism?

[pnwmom]

2. This WAS an appeal. Part of the evidence the jury considered was testimony that the company was

Last edited Tue Oct 23, 2018, 04:56 AM - Edit history (4)

hiding some of the results of internal studies. Also, that they were paying researchers to ghostwrite studies -- they were only posing as independent researchers. Don't you think researchers should acknowledge when they have a financial connection to a product they're studying?

Also, though US and European regulators say that glycosphate is safe, the WHO classifies it as a probable carcinogen.

There are links to trial transcripts and evidence here:

https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto-roundup-lawsuit/dewayne-johnson-v-monsanto-company/

https://www.ft.com/content/400f5d6c-d66c-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8

Bayer has said it plans to appeal the ruling, something which analysts at Citi said they expected to take up to three years.

“Our expert puts a 35 per cent probability on a successful appeal but either way sees punitive damages being significantly reduced, and a 30 per cent probability of compensatory damages also reduced,” Peter Verdult, an analyst at Citi, said in a note.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/22/monsanto-trial-cancer-weedkiller-roundup-dewayne-johnson

Last week Judge Curtis Karnow issued an order clearing the way for jurors to consider not just scientific evidence related to what caused Johnson’s cancer, but allegations that Monsanto suppressed evidence of the risks of its weed killing products. Karnow ruled that the trial will proceed and a jury would be allowed to consider possible punitive damages.

“The internal correspondence noted by Johnson could support a jury finding that Monsanto has long been aware of the risk that its glyphosate-based herbicides are carcinogenic … but has continuously sought to influence the scientific literature to prevent its internal concerns from reaching the public sphere and to bolster its defenses in products liability actions,” Karnow wrote. “Thus there are triable issues of material fact.”

SNIP

The lawsuits challenge Monsanto’s position that its herbicides are proven safe and assert that the company has known about the dangers and hidden them from regulators and the public. The litigants cite an assortment of research studies indicating that the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicides, a chemical called glyphosate, can lead to NHL and other ailments. They also cite research showing glyphosate formulations in its commercial-end products are more toxic than glyphosate alone. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/11/one-mans-suffering-exposed-monsantos-secrets-to-the-world

Monsanto, which became a unit of Bayer AG in June, has spent decades convincing consumers, farmers, politicians and regulators to ignore mounting evidence linking its glyphosate-based herbicides to cancer and other health problems. The company has employed a range of tactics – some drawn from the same playbook used by the tobacco industry in defending the safety of cigarettes – to suppress and manipulate scientific literature, harass journalists and scientists who did not parrot the company’s propaganda, and arm-twist and collude with regulators. Indeed, one of Monsanto’s lead defense attorneys in the San Francisco case was George Lombardi, whose resumé boasts of his work defending big tobacco.

Now, in this one case, through the suffering of one man, Monsanto’s secretive strategies have been laid bare for the world to see. Monsanto was undone by the words of its own scientists, the damning truth illuminated through the company’s emails, internal strategy reports and other communications.

The jury’s verdict found not only that Monsanto’s Roundup and related glyphosate-based brands presented a substantial danger to people using them, but that there was “clear and convincing evidence” that Monsanto’s officials acted with “malice or oppression” in failing to adequately warn of the risks.

Testimony and evidence presented at trial showed that the warning signs seen in scientific research dated back to the early 1980s and have only increased over the decades. But with each new study showing harm, Monsanto worked not to warn users or redesign its products, but to create its own science to show they were safe. The company often pushed its version of science into the public realm through ghostwritten work that was designed to appear independent and thus more credible. Evidence was also presented to jurors showing how closely the company had worked with Environmental Protection Agency officials to promote the safety message and suppress evidence of harm.

[PatSeg]

4. Thanks for the added info

I wasn't following the trial that closely. Hopefully this will be the beginning of more lawsuits against Monsanto.

[Steven Maurer]

10. Yeah, I'm sorry, but junk science is still junk science

Unlike nicotine and other carcinogenic tars and phenols found in tobacco, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to indicate that there is any carcinogenic relationship with glyphosate. At all. Period. It is not the case that no one ever gets cancer, but people who work with this chemical get cancer at no higher a rate than the normal population.

It doesn't matter that Bayer/Monsanto published their own studies, whether or not some people think it was "designed to appear independent". This has been studied to death by completely independent researchers worldwide. (By the way, it is exceedingly ironic that you are bolding attacks on this supposed 'appears to be independent' without noting that you are quoting opinion pieces by an obviously biased advocacy organization with an obvious incentive to misrepresent the truth.)

As the non-relationship between vaccines and autism shows, it is an unfortunate truth that luddism runs through the left.

[pnwmom]

11. Monsanto lost because of their own emails from their own employees.

Last edited Tue Oct 23, 2018, 07:02 PM - Edit history (1)

Their own employees were concerned that they were covering up research. And trying to hide unfavorable results DOES matter, and it DOES matter when researchers producing favorable studies pretend to be independent and they're not. It's fine to be a researcher paid by a drug company, but you're supposed to disclose that.

Scientists disagree on the safety of glyphosate. The scientists at the WHO decided that phosphate is a probable carcinogen, after looking at the evidence. US and European scientists think it's safe. I think the jury was influenced by what appears to be Monsanto's own deceptiveness.

This is from the WHO, which is not an advocacy organization.

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/MonographVolume112.pdf

Lyon, France, 20 March 2015 – The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, has assessed the carcinogenicity of five organophosphate pesticides. A summary of the final evaluations together with a short rationale have now been published online in The Lancet Oncology, and the detailed assessments will be published as Volume 112 of the IARC Monographs.

What were the results of the IARC evaluations?

The herbicide glyphosate and the insecticides malathion and diazinon were classified as probably
carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A). . . .

What was the scientific basis of the IARC evaluations?

. . . For the herbicide glyphosate, there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The evidence in humans is from studies of exposures, mostly agricultural, in the USA, Canada, and Sweden published since 2001. In addition, there is convincing evidence that glyphosate also can cause cancer in laboratory animals. On the basis of tumours in mice, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) originally classified glyphosate as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group C) in 1985. After a re-evaluation of that mouse study, the US EPA changed its classification to evidence of non-carcinogenicity in humans (Group E) in 1991. The US EPA Scientific Advisory Panel noted that the re-evaluated glyphosate results were still significant using two statistical tests recommended in the IARC Preamble. The IARC Working Group that conducted the evaluation considered the significant findings from the US EPA report and several more recent positive results in concluding that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. Glyphosate also caused DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells, although it gave negative results in tests using bacteria. One study in community residents reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) after glyphosate formulations were sprayed nearby.

[Steven Maurer]

14. They lost because of scientific illiteracy

...plain and simple. Plus, there is this "rooting for the underdog" sort of effect that juries can get, which in general isn't a bad thing, but it is flat out pathological when you ask them to make actual epidemiological conclusions with (for many) barely a highschool education.

This is an important factor to consider with regards to the glyphosate debate. When IARC announced in June 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic” to humans, Kate Guyton, a toxicologist and lead author of the IARC monograph, stated that “because the evidence in laboratory animals was sufficient and the evidence in humans was limited, this places [glyphosate] in Group 2A [of probable carcinogens].” It was later revealed that IARC scientists had removed findings from studies that concluded glyphosate to be noncarcinogenic before publishing the final version. The edits were made in the monograph’s chapter on animal studies, which crucially informed IARC’s assessment that glyphosate causes cancer.

The debate sparked by IARC’s evaluation highlights why human studies are so essential. Indeed, one key study—whose initial findings were not included in IARC’s literature review due to their internal prohibition on considering unpublished data—is the Agricultural Health Study, a long-term observational analysis of the health effects of herbicides on 89,000 farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina. Running since 1993, the AHS has consistently failed to find that glyphosate use is linked with increased risk of cancer. Parts of the study, whose failure to find any evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity was already well-known among IARC staff, were finally published earlier in November.

Read this. Please.

https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/years-of-testing-shows-glyphosate-isnt-carcinogenic.html

[pnwmom]

15. If that happened, that was wrong. But it was also wrong for Monsanto to suppress data

that they didn't like. Their own emails condemned them, in the eyes of the jury.

[Steven Maurer]

17. I agree with you about Bayer (not Monsanto BTW)...

They shouldn't be attempting to spin any results. But the fundamental problem is that those emails didn't say what the lawyers tried to pretend they did (shades of the bullshit accusations against the DNC by the "Bernie or Busters" ) , and juries are simply not qualified to determine scientific truth. If I "uncover" a supposed letter claiming that Santa Claus's existence is being covered up, it doesn't make Santa Claus real.

By the way, did you get the irony about Bayer now being the manufacturer of glyphosate? Aspirin, unlike glyphsate, is actually toxic. Give it in even a tenth of the dose those mice were doused in, and they'd be dead in minutes.

[7962]

3. Many thought the judge would totally reverse the decision, so I see this as still a win.

And there are thousands lined up with similar suits.
Bayer/Monsanto needs to also stop bullying farmers

[Nitram]

5. The application of glyphosate makes it possible to forego the use of a number of highly toxic

products and known carcinogens. When properly applied it does minimal harm to the environment, and no scientifically proven harm to humans. The unintended consequences of banning glyphosate may be a great deal worse than the product itself.

[7962]

6. There are other options that work as well. Glyphosate is more problematic

It gets into the foods being grown, and it also depletes the soil of nutrients over the years as well. It also depletes the foods being grown of nutrients that we need FROM the foods.
Glyphosate is implicated in triggering and contributing to a host of serious health problems in both animals and humans, both directly and indirectly. A number of independent and publicly-funded studies essentially prove this.
And of course, the human factor of "when properly applied" also comes into play

[Nitram]

7. I can't say I've done an exhaustive review of the aviailable literature, but what I've seen is

that while there are very low levels of metabolites of broken down glyphosate in some foods, they are considered to be at levels that are not harmful. I have seen no strong evidence that glyphosate causes any "health problems" to humans "when properly applied." Bacteria break down glyphosate and render it harmless in the soil.

Your caveat regarding the phrase "when properly applied" is of concern particularly in third world countries with no regulations or oversight on the use of agricultural chemical products. What we should really be worrried about is the application of pesticides that are banned in the US on crops we import from other countries. Some of these are known carcinogens, and can have multiple harmful effects on human health. Application of such pesticides in large quantities are believed to kill hundreds of thousands of songbirds that migrate to Central and south America in the winter. Their effects on agricultural workers outside the US have not been documented, but they can't be good.

[7962]

8. And more importantly, the bees. A growing problem.

[Nitram]

9. True, that.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

16. NO! Of concern also to first world countries where applicators just dont give a rip - Im currently

involved in trying to get the railroad who sprays tracks behind my house to stop killing my plants and poisoning my cat. Im talking about damage on my side of the property line - finally got it together to file a complaint this yr but how many people dont ? what Im learning is there are very exacting requirements in the application of this stuff (weather conditions, terrain etc.) and this stuff is very prone to drifting unless those exact conditions are met. Oversight is useless unless people are willing to notice that theres harm being done and then willing to do something about it.

[scipan]

12. from a link in the Guardian article

Very interesting read of the history and how Monsanto went to great lengths to discount evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic.

Of Mice, Monsanto And A Mysterious Tumor
...
And yet—rewind to July 1983 and a study titled “A Chronic Feeding Study of Glyphosate (Roundup Technical) in Mice.” Following the document trail that surrounds the study offers an illuminating look into how science is not always clear-cut, and the lengths Monsanto has had to go to in order to convince regulators to accept scientific interpretations that support the company’s products.

The two-year study ran from 1980-1982 and involved 400 mice divided into groups of 50 males and 50 females that were administered three different doses of the weed killer or received no glyphosate at all for observation as a control group. The study was conducted for Monsanto to submit to regulators. But unfortunately for Monsanto, some mice exposed to glyphosate developed tumors at statistically significant rates, with no tumors at all in non-dosed mice.

A February 1984 memo from Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist William Dykstra stated the findings definitively: “Review of the mouse oncogenicity study indicates that glyphosate is oncogenic, producing renal tubule adenomas, a rare tumor, in a dose-related manner.” Researchers found these increased incidences of the kidney tumors in mice exposed to glyphosate worrisome because while adenomas are generally benign, they have the potential to become malignant, and even in noncancerous stages they have the potential to be harmful to other organs. Monsanto discounted the findings, arguing that the tumors were “unrelated to treatment” and showing false positives, and the company provided additional data to try to convince the EPA to discount the tumors.

But EPA toxicology experts were unconvinced. EPA statistician and toxicology branch member Herbert Lacayo authored a February 1985 memo outlining disagreement with Monsanto’s position. A “prudent person would reject the Monsanto assumption that Glyphosate dosing has no effect on kidney tumor production,” Lacayo wrote. ”Glyphosate is suspect. Monsanto’s argument is unacceptable.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/of-mice-monsanto-and-a-mysterious-tumor_us_5939717fe4b014ae8c69de40

[pnwmom]

13. Thanks for digging deeper! n/t