40 The Nation. October 30, 2017THE
FUTURE
OF
FOOD
Other documents released in the legal case raise questions about Mon-
santo’s influence on glyphosate research. One tactic outlined in Monsan-
to’s plan for responding to the IARC was to “support the development of
three new papers on glyphosate focused on epidemiology and toxicology.”
Heydens proposed in a February 2015 e-mail to colleagues that Mon-
santo “ghost-write” part of a paper by outside scientists: “We would be
keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit
and sign their names so to speak,” he said, explaining that this was how
Monsanto “handled” an earlier paper on glyphosate’s safety. That earlier
paper, published in 2000, acknowledged Monsanto’s help in data collec-
tion, but it did not list any company employees as co-authors, contrary to
the transparency standards upheld by most journals. In response to ques-
tions about the apparent ghostwriting, Partridge objected to the term—
even though Heydens used it himself—adding that the activities described
“were entirely professional and aboveboard.”
Monsanto also hired an outside consulting firm, the Intertek Group, to
orchestrate a so-called “independent” review of glyphosate’s health effectssearch director for US Right to Know and the author of
a new book, Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer,
and the Corruption of Science. “Monsanto’s own internal
communications indicate that it has worked long and
hard to suppress scientific research showing dangers
with its herbicide while at the same time setting up secret
networks of straw men to push product propaganda.”
Monsanto has also tried to undermine the credibility
of scientists on the IARC committee. “The basic strat-
egy is: Attack people who’ve done the research you don’t
like—mercilessly,” said epidemiologist Devra Davis, a
former appointee to the US Chemical Safety and Hazard
Investigation Board and president of the nonprofit Envi-
ronmental Health Trust. “They go after the researcher,
they go after their funding.... Even the scientists who
reported the formation of the ozone hole were vilified
before they got their Nobel Prize” in chemistry.
Specifically, Monsanto argues that
Blair, the IARC committee chair, was
aware of but discounted data that
showed no cancer link. The data came
from the Agricultural Health Study,
an epidemiological survey of cancer
and other health problems in a cohort
of nearly 90,000 farmers, licensed pes-
ticide applicators, and their families in
Iowa and North Carolina. (Blair was
a senior researcher for the survey.)
Monsanto asserts it is “the most com-
prehensive study on farmer exposure
to pesticides and cancer” undertaken
and says that if data from the study
had been considered, the IARC would have categorized
glyphosate as noncarcinogenic.
Some researchers familiar with that study say there’s
a good reason that it wasn’t included—namely, that it
hadn’t been published yet. “If you evaluated everything
unpublished, you’re going to get a bunch of garbage,”
said Peter Infante, an epidemiologist who has evaluated
carcinogens for the Occupational Safety and Health Ad-
ministration and has participated in other IARC reviews.
Infante believes that there are other major problems with
the survey: The control group—which had not been ex-
posed to glyphosate—was exposed to another pesticide
suspected of causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That’s
a problematic comparison, Infante said, akin to asking
“whether high testosterone levels elevate the risk of
heart attacks in men and then comparing those men with
a group that already has heart disease. Obviously, you’re
going to underestimate the risk.”T
he current task for the attorneys
representing Teri McCall and other plain-
tiffs is to convince presiding Judge Vince
Chhabria that there’s enough evidence to
indicate that glyphosate “generally” causes
cancer. If that effort succeeds, Chhabria will begin to
hear individual plaintiffs’ testimony next year and decide
whether Monsanto must pay compensatory damages,
which could run into the tens or hundreds of millions.
Cancer victims have won a few recent cases against“Twenty
years later,
all these
people have
certain
cancers,
and we ask
why. Then
scientists
connect the
dots.”
— Robin Greenwald,
attorneyto refute the IARC’s cancer assess-
ment. A disclosure accompanying the
review, which was published in Criti-
cal Reviews in Toxicology, reported that
Intertek was paid by Monsanto but
claimed that “neither any Monsanto
company employees nor any attorneys
reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s
manuscripts prior to submission to
the journal.” In fact, internal e-mails
indicate that Heydens and other
Monsanto employees reviewed and
edited drafts before the report was
published. “I have gone through the
entire document and indicated what I
think should stay, what can go, and in a couple spots I
did a little editing,” wrote Heydens in a February 2016
e-mail to Ashley Roberts, senior vice president in Inter-
tek’s food and nutrition division. Partridge defended the
review’s independence: “It did not amount to substantial
contributions, editing [or] commenting—nothing sub-
stantive to alter the scientists’ conclusions.”“
Doubt is our product,” a cigarette-
company executive once wrote, “since
it is the best means of competing with
the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind
of the general public. It is also a means
of establishing a controversy.” For 50 years, Big Tobacco
manufactured uncertainties about the health impacts of
cigarettes, with ads featuring smoking physicians and a
media campaign claiming that there was “no proof” of
any health concerns caused by smoking. In defending
glyphosate, plaintiffs say, Monsanto is following a familiar
playbook: hire scientists to produce friendly results, fund
front groups—Monsanto has contributed to the American
Council on Science and Health, which defends glyphosate
and other chemicals from “junk science”—and use the
media to sway public opinion.
“It appears as though we are seeing the unraveling
of a very carefully crafted corporate narrative about the
safety of a well-known product used around the world,
just as we saw when the dark and dirty secrets of the
tobacco industry came to light,” said Carey Gillam, re-