Pesticide Threats to Human Health

"Glyphosate-based products have been used safely and successfully for over four decades worldwide and are a valuable tool to help farmers deliver crops to markets and practice sustainable farming by reducing soil tillage, soil erosion and carbon emissions."
Bayer AG statement

"When it comes to Roundup they’re [governments] dead wrong. And I know they’re dead wrong because when you look at the science it’s pretty clear."

"[Government regulators are not] truly unbiased."

"If tomorrow they decided ‘you know what, it actually does cause cancer,’ they’d have to tell the world that for 40 years they’ve been wrong, that people have been dying under their watch."

"It’s a lot easier to keep the status quo."

Brent Wisner, U.S. attorney, Los Angeles-based

Bottles of Monsanto's Roundup pesticide are pictured in a gardening store.

PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images

Canada is "dead wrong" two visitors to Canada stated unequivocally, in not recognizing that the manufacturer of the glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup, is a threat to people coming in contact with it. The two, Michael Bauman and Brent Wisner were on the team of lawyers that managed to succeed in persuading the U.S. justice system to find for their client, a former groundskeeper who believes his terminal cancer resulted from years of exposure to the herbicide glyphosate, Roundup. 

Their client was the beneficiary of a court that ordered Bayer AG to pay $289 million, later dropped to $78 million, a significant agreement of the danger inherent in the use of the weedkiller. It is an order that the company is appealing, but over 11,000 additional plaintiffs in the United States are suing the Germany-based Bayer which since 2018 when it bought out Roundup maker Monsanto is left with the product they continue to persist in stating has no health risks to humans.

Lawyer Baum knows of no Canadians that have brought suit over Roundup, but he and his colleague Wisner arrived in Ottawa to meet with Members of Parliament on Parliament Hill to acquaint them with the issue, explaining evidence that proves glyphosate causes cancer. "There's going to be the same type of injuries suffered here", he assured skeptics.

The two lawyers will continue on to Toronto to work with Canadian activists and lawyers in a bid to determine how most effectively to proceed, with the intended purpose  of potentially beginning court action, according to CEO of Friends of the Earth, Beatrice Olivastri. "We're actively looking for ways forward in litigation", she stated.

American lawyers who successfully sued the makers of the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup on behalf of a man dying of cancer say Canada is "dead wrong" to allow it to be widely used here. (File)

On the market for over forty years, glyphosate has its appearance in over 130 products available for use in Canada. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency branch of Health Canada has just recently re-approved glyphosate for use in the country following a process of review, including reviewing their assessments in the past following objections filed by eight organizations. Objections that included allegations that Monsanto improperly influenced evidence that Health Canada relied on to determine the safety of the product.

Agency scientists "left no stone unturned", discovering no evidence the science was tainted, according to Connie Moase, director in the health-effects division of Health Canada. Canada's review of glyphosate was thorough and proper, proving yet again that it is a safe product, stated Bayer, noting glyphosate is approved for use in 160 countries. "Twenty of our best scientists" reviewed the evidence before approving the project, stressed a spokesperson for Canada's Minister of Health. 

According to lawyer Wisner, the unbiased International Agency for Research on Cancer -- a specialized agency of the World Health Organization -- scientists were unanimous in concluding glyphosate is a human carcinogen. The glyphosate decision has caused a "crisis in confidence in Canada’s pesticide police", according to Ms. Olivastri of Friends of the Earth, Canada.

Side Effects Associated with Monsanto Roundup

Adverse side effects that have been allegedly linked to use of glyphosate products including Monsanto's Roundup include:

• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• Leukemia
• Brain cancer
• Lung cancer
• Testicular cancer
• Thyroid cancer
• Lymphoma
• Kidney disease

• Liver disease
• Nerve damage
• Multiple sclerosis
• Parkinson’s disease
• Diabetes
• Infertility
• Birth defects

Consumer Safety Watch   

Society's Killers-by-Default?

Photo: The Atlantic

Big Pharma is being introduced through the courts to the power of public concern over their products. The drugs, OxyContin, Percocet, Opana and a generic version of oxycodone are not illegal, they have a place in responsible use by medical professionals when the attributes they are capable of are called upon to ease peoples' suffering and pain. But their manufacturers deliberately and with the prospect of enriching themselves, launched public relations blitzes convincing prescribing doctors that these opiates are 'less addictive' than others which have been a bane to society, not a boon.

Public authorities are alarmed throughout North America at the carnage that the drugs' dependencies are wreaking through drug overdose deaths. The general public has been made aware that they live in a time where the "culture of drug dependence, dysfunction and death" has affected the larger society, not only drug addicts dealing with mental instability, crime and profit, feeding addictions, but ordinary, middle-class and upper-middle class professionals who have lost their way, becoming hopelessly in the thrall of death-delivering medications.

"[The opioid epidemic was produced by a] fraudulent scheme [engineered by Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals and Endo Pharmaceuticals] to mislead doctors and the public about the need for, and addictive nature of opioid drugs."
"They put millions of dollars into advertising. They put lots of sales forces out there. And they supported legislation that made this stuff far more available than it was before. And it's not enough to say, 'Well, people misused it'."
"When you put way too many drugs, for way too many bad reasons, into way too many people's hands, prescribed by way too many people, you get what we have in our area, which is an epidemic."
Barry Staubus, District Attorney, Sullivan County, northeast Tennessee

Photo: The Atlantic

The entire world knows about the legal battles undertaken by various governmental bodies to punish tobacco manufacturing giants in 1998 when they were accused on the evidence which revealed they were in the business of deceiving the public trust about tobacco addiction. They were ordered to pay out over $200-billion in fines to aid government in cost outlays associated with providing health care to smokers whose lung cancer was directly attributable to scientifically validated and acknowledged carcinogens present in cigarettes.

A new battle  has been mounted by public authorities whose areas have been hit with the still-emergent epidemic of drug overdoses. Attorneys general of Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi and Oklahoma, along with counties in California and New York among others, have launched lawsuits against the offending pharmaceutical giants. This is just the beginning. There will be an increasing number of lawsuits. And, as with the battle against tobacco manufacturers when those suits have been settled, individual civil suits will be launched.

In 2015, opioid overdoses caused the deaths of 33,000 people in the United States. This is fast becoming a crisis of intense and untenable proportions, no little of the sense of urgency to do something to ameliorate the situation and name and punish the perpetrator, that white-middle-class suburbanite communities with political influence, has persuaded politicians of all stripes to become involved, as the issue keeps gaining momentum.

There is no disagreement among public health experts to the obvious; that legal painkillers are the cause of a crisis where prescription opioids steadily gained prominence through wide prescription practices, habituating users to search out ever more powerful drugs, leading them on to heroin. OxyContin maker Purdue was persuaded to plead guilty in 2007 to a criminal felony, admitting to fraudulent practices, inaccurately promoting its product as less likely to be abused than other drugs, leading to a $600-million settlement.

"The drug companies are not utterly defenceless. There are issues they can raise and they're pretty good at it", observed University of Kentucky law professor, Richard Ausness. All they have to do is point out that prescription opioids have a distinct purpose, aiding patients in coping with pain issues, as long as they are used responsibly, and therefore they have a place for good health reasons in the prescription pharmacopoeia.

Prescription and illegal opioids are commonly abused because they are so addictive, binding to areas of the brain that control pain and emotions. Photo CNN

They were given a scientifically-approved clean bill of  health when government health regulators themselves studied, then endorsed prescription opioids, releasing them for wide use. In any event, it is medical professionals themselves who stand between the manufacturers and the patients. "Unlike tobacco companies, our products are medicines approved by the FDA, prescribed by doctors, and dispensed by pharmacists, as treatments for patients suffering pain. [The company] vigorously [denies allegations, and is] committed to working collaboratively to find solutions [to the crisis]", Purdue huffed righteously.

The maker of Percocet and Opana, Endo Pharmaceuticals, chooses to side-step any awkward acknowledgement of impending litigation: "Our top priorities include patient safety and ensuring that patients with chronic pain have access to safe and effective therapeutic options". How can any one argue with that selfless, public-service-focused statement, of a totally innocent manufacturer whose only interest in producing drugs is to serve the public?

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced Wednesday the state is suing five pharmaceutical companies, claiming the companies knowingly understated the addiction risks of prescription opioid medication.(Jackie Borchardt, cleveland.com)