There are no credible studies indicating that glyphosate is a carcinogen, and it would be a little bit surprising it if was, since it targets a metabolic pathway not present in animals. Meanwhile, many of the herbicides that glyphosate displace, plenty of which remain in use, are known human carcinogens.
The most widely reported declaration of glyphosate's carcinogenicity, by IARC, was disavowed by the WHO, IARC's parent organization.
Yes, I agree that evidence to date does not show glyphosate is a carcinogen. But this:
There are no credible studies indicating that glyphosate is a carcinogen, and it would be a little bit surprising it if was, since it targets a metabolic pathway not present in animals.
is not a very strong argument. Harmful "off-target effects" are a very common cause of drug development program failures. Most chemicals that are probable human carcinogens weren't developed with the intention to target metabolic pathways in any living thing.
I've read enough literature about the carcinogenicity to assure myself that it is very probably not a carcinogen. And to my chemist's eye it looks fast to degrade, pretty benign overall. But biology is surprisingly complicated. That's why I think that the "it targets" argument means little. That's the only part I took issue with.
the key is designed to unlock a certain type of lock with a certain arrangement of pins. when the key unlocks the lock, the target dies. this is intended behavior.
but given the way that locks work -- patterns of pins -- it could very easily coincidentally work on other locks that it was not designed to unlock.
it won't be most other locks. it will be a small minority. it won't necessarily have the same result when that lock is opened as it does under its intended use. in fact, it might not even open the lock -- it might just get stuck in there real good and be impossible to remove. it might even have a beneficial effect (but probably not).
the details of this play out on the biochemical / enzyme-substrate level. another commenter pointed out how glyphosate is an estrogen-equivalent. this would not surprise me whatsoever. it wouldn't have to be a carcinogen to be wildly destructive in that context.
any time -- any time -- you have a chemical which is known to be bioactive, it's going to have an effect.
i just want to make it very clear that there is no excuse to have these chemicals in our food. they are not harmless. at best, they are an added inconvenience for the host's body to deal with.
My concern is best summed up by this comment from above:
Every time the jury is out on a topic where one side has a vested interest and a billion dollar budget to protect it, you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be.
See: pesticides and bees, fossil fuels and climate change, food packaging plastics and cancer, pain treatment meds and addiction.
The answer in all those cases is the harmful effects eventually became known, but the jury was out long enough for the vested interests to make a ton of profit and cause a ton of damage which they'll never pay for repairing. All made possible with a series of comparatively small investments to buy scientific research to keep the jury out.
Even in non-borderline cases like tobacco, lots of money and power can really confuse the issue. This is definitely not as clear cut as tobacco, and I’d like the option to opt out of the lengthy, massive “trial period” in which the public gets to play guinea pig. The problem with this is that it’s very difficult to do that when the compound in question is unexpectedly ubiquitous.
This isn't so much an argument as it is innuendo. If you get glyphosate carcinogenicity wrong, you increase carcinogenic agriculture, because that's what the market alternatives to it are: clearly known human carcinogens.
Basically you have some popular chemical so it gets studied extensively and we learn about the bad things it does. It then starts being replaced by things that have been less studied, so there's less evidence of the bad things they do but could be equally bad, better or worse.
That isn’t so much an argument as a false dichotomy, predicated on a system of agriculture which allows a near 50% rate of wasteage in the West. The alternatives include less productive, yet still sufficiently productive methods which do not include carcinogenic compounds.
Edit: Your state of being persuaded is immaterial, because what I said isn’t really controversial. One known alternative to herbacides is tilling, hardly a radical new invention and notably not carcinogenic. As I said up front, it would take more effort to produce crops, but simply by reducing waste you can more than make up for that. The use of ground cover, litter, and other established techniques all allow for large scale farming without herbacides.
There are other alternatives, and adjunct techniques as well, for example:
It would be a false dichotomy if glyphosate hadn't literally displaced herbicides that were known to be human carcinogens and allowed anyways, but it did, so your logic isn't persuasive.
And what you're proposing is letting perfect be the enemy of the good. No matter how sustainable and green your alternative is, "less productive" anything won't fly in today's world economy. Until we change 8 billion humans' economic motives, maybe we can start with getting the facts straight on one substance.
Another manifestation I have seen of this behavior is this.
The claim "vaccines does not cause autism" is often made to implicitly imply "All vaccines are very safe". I mean, this belief is harbored by every single one of the "Educated" "science-believers" out there. It is so damn ridiculous that people (who often consider themselves intelligent) can be so easily misguided.
The most widely reported declaration of glyphosate's carcinogenicity, by IARC, was disavowed by the WHO, IARC's parent organization.