Monsanto, proud marketer of saccharin, pcb’s, and DDT, says GMO's are GREAT.

[pnwmom]

107. People smoked cigarettes for hundreds of years before testing proved the dangers.

Since most people are exposed to many substances in their lives that could affect cancer susceptibility, it's not easy to tease out cancer-causing agents just from epidemiology. Actual research studies -- and the right combination of them -- have to be carried out. The studies done for Thalidomide weren't adequate, obviously.

Thalidomide is an example of an extremely dangerous drug (at least for pregnant women) that was marketed by a major drug company (Grünenthal, in Germany) as perfectly safe, after submitting a number of research studies to its regulatory agency. Fortunately, the head of the FDA delayed approval here, or we would have had the same disaster.

Cigarettes are another example of a dangerous product which used to be promoted as safe -- menthol cigarettes were once even promoted as being helpful with asthma. It took decades of research before limits were put on its sale.

So when the studies showed that Saccharin had carcinogenic effects on rats the FDA was right to require labeling. That way people could decide whether they wanted to take that risk or not, knowing that rats and humans are not the same, and that more research needed to be done before Saccharin could be deemed safe.