"The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto's glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals. Regulators around the world have cited the paper as evidence of the safety of glyphosate herbicides, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this assessment."
"The listed authors of the paper were three scientists who did not work for Monsanto Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro, and was held up by the company as a defense against conflicting scientific evidence linking Roundup to cancer. The fact that it was authored by scientists from outside the company, from seemingly independent researchers, gave it added validity. But over the last decade, internal company documents, that came to light in litigation brought by plaintiffs in the US suffering from cancer, revealed Monsanto's influence on the paper."
"The documents included an email from a company official discussing the research paper and praising the hard work of several Monsanto scientists as part of a strategy Monsanto called Freedom to Operate (FTO). The corporate files showed how company officials celebrated when the paper was published."
Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology retracted a 2000 safety evaluation of Roundup and glyphosate because of serious ethical concerns about author independence, accountability, and the academic integrity of carcinogenicity studies. The 2000 paper concluded glyphosate posed no cancer, reproductive, developmental, or endocrine risks. Regulators worldwide, including the EPA, cited that paper in safety assessments. The listed authors were external scientists, which created apparent independence. Internal Monsanto documents revealed company involvement, internal praise for contributing scientists, and strategic use of the paper under a Freedom to Operate initiative, information uncovered during litigation by US plaintiffs with cancer.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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