Why is Roundup still for sale?

The California legal system has determined that Roundup causes cancer. See, for example, “$2 Billion Verdict Against Monsanto Is Third to Find Roundup Caused Cancer” (nytimes):

The jury, in state court in Alameda County, reached its verdict two months after a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $80 million to a man who claimed that Roundup had caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In August, a state court in San Francisco found that Roundup had caused the cancer of a school groundskeeper, awarding him $289 million. A judge reduced that figure to $78 million.

Yet the German owners of Monsanto (safe to assume they wish they’d spent their hard-earned dollars in some other country?) still make the stuff and Amazon still sells it (example). Glyphosate from a variety of manufacturers is available at Home Depot.

How are the retailers immune from liability? If we have faith in our legal system to come up with correct answers to scientific questions, such as “Does glyphosate cause cancer?” then why are millions of Americans apparently still buying and using it?

17 thoughts on “Why is Roundup still for sale?

  1. Because scientific questions are not open to be decided by juries. The verdict seems nonsensical.

  2. Keeping the cases going to make the big bucks for the lawyers. Eventually, you figure out what jury duty in Calif* really is. The fortunes of lawyers & expert witnesses are built on unpaid jury duty.

  3. > Why is Roundup still for sale? … How are the retailers immune from liability?

    Same reason vaccine mfgrs are immune from liability: big pharma/chem is the largest$ lobbyist in Washington (spends 2x oil, 4x defense industries)? Robert F Kennedy Jr released some videos last week, full of unexpected industry facts and stats. Eg: 4 pharma/chem corps have paid $35B in fines since 2009 for defrauding regulators, falsifying data, damages (Viox alone was factor in 120k+ deaths).

  4. If gasoline weren’t so loved it would be banned too…

    Roundup is a confusing issue. Is it really cancer causing, or did the lawyers and plaintiffs get lucky with the jury? In these days of sensational news articles with little scientific background, how many of us have the time to read the research and make our own valid conclusions? Do you really trust the legal system where many of the juries are logically and scientifically ignorant?

    And then too, a vast volume of crops are dependent on Roundup for efficient production. I would guess that eventually, validly or not, glyphosate will be restricted to commercial use only.

    PS – vinegar, especially the high strength agricultural vinegar, is a relatively good vegetation killer, but roundup may still be better in some cases, e.g. poison ivy, because it will kill right down to the roots.

  5. Boo hoo. If it did cause cancer, who would fund and do that testing and research in the public interest? After decades and (billions?) of sales of this chemical, if Monsanto can’t convince a jury beyond a preponderance of the evidence that roundup doesn’t cause cancer, they deserve what they get.

  6. Aside that letting a jury of non experts decide on whether a chemical compound causes cancer or not (what kind of cancer? and with kid of exposure? and with what incidence? based on what epidemiological evidence? and how replicable is the effect?) strikes me as dumb, keep in mind basically everything has carcinogenic effects (coffee, for instance).

    It is a risk/benefit issue (or, risk/life quality issue — are you giving up coffee or fries because of the trivially small cancer risk they pose?). It is not obvious the risk associated with Glyphosate has been properly quantified by any party though. Also, it is not obvious the persons incurring most/all of the risk enjoy most/all of the benefits.

  7. I’ve been through two jury trials, one lasting 6 weeks and one lasting 1 week. In both cases the attorneys cared more about whether the jury ‘liked’ me and the other witnesses than whether the ‘truth’ came out.

    Perhaps the plaintiffs in California were good at leading the jury to dislike Monsanto and/or like the plaintiffs, regardless of whether Roundup caused cancer.

  8. So stupid. ROUNDUP has LESS long- term effects than the previous most – used hetbicidal. It is NOT agent orange. And its chemical composition only attacks & kills a specific plant proprietary gene/protein and that’s how it works.
    But I guess in California where they inhale or smoke ANYTHING to forget sbout reality. It was a prime lawyer $$$ crop that paid off.

    • Glyphosphate also kills microbes in the gut of bees and earthworms. That microbe is a major component in the bees digestion and immunological functions. Guess what happens to the colony? Not very farmer friendly eradicating pollinators, but Bayers products are already banned in many countries for just that. Unexpected consequences are a bitch.

  9. In recent years, the use of Roundup was extended to include the use as a desiccant – to ripen and dry crops faster so that they have higher yields. This leaves a glyphosate residue in crops that is more than 10 times higher than when it is used as a weed killer. These high levels have serious effects on the bacterial content in the human gut. It is postulated that it kills essential bacteria in the intestine and contributes to the cause of irritable bowel syndrome, celiac desease and even gluten intolerance. If this can be proven, the manufacturers of Roundup will face far more serious legal cases than currently. Research into this effect is well under way.

  10. Marcia Angell’s book “Science on Trial,” about the silicone breast implant fiasco, is a good guide to how plaintiff’s attorneys and professional experts warp the legal system. In this case a multi billion dollar corporation was put out of business. And then the FDA found that the product was harmless. But too late for the corporation.

    Angell is the former publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine.

    • And then there’s DDT. How many millions have died? Also on the Monsters list… Greenpeace, for their opposition to golden rice which could prevent the blindness and death of a quarter of a million children a year. Truly monstrous.

  11. Boycott all the retail outlets that. sell Roundup. Cannot trust the Regulators from our government.who can we as citizens trust.Man in my opinion is causing the cancer epidemic.our daughter has multiple myeloma.and i am tired of lies .lets find out what causes it and pinpoint the source.Right now we have untold numbers of nonpoint sources.Do we know the sourcr and disguising it?

    • The whole notion of a “cancer epidemic” is another one of those things that “everybody knows” that isn’t so. Truth is that cancer is on the decline, we’re living longer with it due to modern medicine, we’re detecting it earlier, and we’re living so long now that there’s not much more that can take us out, and “cancer” can describe a hundred things. But if you want to find lies, look to the absolute crap science that these lawyers are using to try and make their case.

  12. I think it may be for same reason that Indian generic companies continue to supply 2/3 of generic drugs to the US market (90% of all prescription drugs sold in the US are generics). These drugs are made by illiterate personnel that live in slums and have no access to sanitation and running water. The companies file phony data from their filthy plants to the FDA, and it passes muster with swift approvals. A suggestion for your next book review, Phil: https://www.amazon.com/Bottle-Lies-Inside-Story-Generic/dp/0062338781/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2M7ZTY3D0BVNE&keywords=bottle+of+lies+the+inside+story+of+the+generic+drug+book&qid=1559190660&s=gateway&sprefix=Bottle+of+%2Caps%2C260&sr=8-1

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