IARC takes US money, manipulates scientific studies, colludes with activists – and snubs Congress
Guest essay by Paul Driessen
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in France has received over $48 million from America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), to determine whether various chemicals cause cancer in humans. Of more than 900 chemicals it has reviewed, only one was ever found non-carcinogenic. The latest substance to face IARC scrutiny is glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp.
Not surprisingly, the agency branded glyphosate carcinogenic. But this time evidence is surfacing of collusion with anti-chemical activist groups and class action lawyers, serious conflicts of interest involving a key IARC glyphosate reviewer, and IARC manipulation of scientific reports along with deliberate withholding of studies that concluded the chemical is safe, so that the agency could get a guilty verdict.
Despite this disturbing evidence, and demonstrable proof of the chemical’s safety, the European Union barely extended its authorization for glyphosate use, and then by just five years, instead of the usual 15.
The House of Representatives Science Committee is deeply concerned about this corruption of science, its potential impacts on US regulatory decisions, and the use of IARC rulings by predatory lawyers who are suing glyphosate manufacturers. It sent letters to Health and Human Services Secretary Eric Hargan (who oversees the NIH and its agencies) and IARC director Chris Wild. The letters “request” all relevant documents and the names of IARC-affiliated people who could testify at Committee oversight hearings.
Dr. Wild’s artful and legalistic response emphasized “scientific consensus” among all review panel members; said “deliberative” documents would not be made available; claimed there were no conflicts of interest among any IARC reviewers; said he and his staff would not be “pressured” by “vested interests,” the media or Congress; and said congressmen can come to France if they want answers to their questions.
In other words: Drop dead. Members of Congress who authorize taxpayer funding for IARC have no right to scrutinize its deliberations and decisions, to ensure sound science, transparency and accountability.
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. It is vital to modern agriculture – and one of the most extensively tested chemicals in history: some 3,300 studies over four decades attest to its safety. Indeed, virtually every reputable regulatory agency and scientific body in the world has determined that it does not cause cancer – including the European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German Institute for Risk Assessment and US Environmental Protection Agency.
Only IARC says glyphosate causes cancer. To help it reach that conclusion, the agency employed the services of Italy’s Ramazzini Institute, which also concocted studies claiming cell phones and artificial sweeteners cause cancer. It relies on Ramazzini even though regulatory bodies in Europe, the United States and New Zealand have investigated and criticized Ramazzini’s sloppy, suspect pseudo-science.
Dr. Wild’s agency has also worked closely with Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the $690-million-a-year National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences or NIEHS (an NIH agency in the HHS). Birnbaum is also a member of the Collegium Ramazzini and has directed over $90 million of US taxpayer funds to her Ramazzini colleagues, many of whom serve on numerous IARC “expert panels.”
Evidence is accumulating that Brinbaum has worked closely with anti-chemical pressure groups and even trial lawyers, thereby undermining the US regulatory and chemical review process and perhaps ultimately forcing glyphosate off the market. She has helped to coordinate and direct these activities, and has turned the United States into IARC’s biggest donor, earmarking $4.2 million to support IARC’s current effort to list more agricultural and industrial chemicals as carcinogens – including artificial sweeteners. Even GMO foods are on the agency’s hit list.
The well-funded, carefully coordinated effort to eradicate weed-eradicating glyphosate has also involved a number of devious, secretive, deceptive actions.
The 2014 advisory group that decided IARC would review glyphosate was led by activist statistician Dr. Christopher Portier, who worked for years for NIEHS and Birnbaum. In fact, investigative journalists David Zaruk (Risk-Monger) and Kate Kelland (Reuters) discovered, Portier drove the glyphosate review, while also working for the anti-pesticide Environmental Defense Fund and serving as the only “invited specialist” on the working group that labeled glyphosate carcinogenic.
At the same time, Portier was also advising trial lawyers suing over other chemicals that IARC had found carcinogenic – and shortly after serving on the advisory group signed with the same lawyers to work on their glyphsate suits, a gig for which he has so far been paid $160,000. No conflicts of interest?
Even more outrageous, as Ms. Kelland explained in another article, IARC repeatedly ignored or altered studies that exonerated glyphosate. One report clearly said the researchers “unanimously” agreed that glyphosate had not caused abnormal growths in mice they had studied. IARC deleted the sentence.
In other cases IARC panelists inserted new statistical analyses that reversed a study’s original finding; quietly changed critical language exonerating the chemical; and claimed they were “not able to evaluate” a study because it included insufficient experimental data, while excluding another study because “the amount of data in the tables was overwhelming.” These machinations helped to ensure a “consensus.”
Equally questionable, NIH Cancer Research Institute scientist Aaron Blair conducted a years-long study that also found glyphosate was not carcinogenic. But he held off on publishing his results, and did not divulge his findings, knowing IARC would leave “unpublished” work out of its analysis.
This is not science. It is manipulation and deception – supported by our tax dollars, and used to drive safe, widely used chemicals off the market.
Other activists repeatedly claim “endocrine disrupting” chemicals which don’t cause cancer or other harm in high doses somehow do so at barely detectable levels. Another clever ploy claims no actual exposure is needed; kids get cancer because their parents or grandparents were exposed to something, perhaps years ago. It’s ridiculous. But convincing a jury there’s no cause-effect relationship is a Sisyphean task.
The end result, if not the goal, is to undermine public confidence in science-based risk assessments, lend credibility to agitator claims that countless chemicals contaminate our foods and imperil our health, endlessly frighten consumers, and set the stage for billion-dollar lawsuits to enrich class-action lawyers and organic food interests.
More than 1,000 US lawsuits already claim glyphosate causes cancer, and law firms are running ads saying anyone who has cancer and was ever exposed to glyphosate in any form or amount may be entitled to millions in compensation. Other lawyers are playing the same games with “manmade climate change.”
Ending legal predation will require major state and federal reforms. However, the American people elected this President and Congress to bring transparency and accountability back to Washington and international regulatory agencies. They need to use their oversight and funding powers to do so.
Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith told me he is reviewing Mr. Wild’s response. “Given the serious nature of our concerns related to IARC’s expenditures of taxpayer dollars, IARC should exercise due diligence and provide a complete response to my November 1 letter. The Science Committee will use all tools at our disposal to ensure the stewards of our taxpayers’ dollars are held accountable,” Smith said.
That is good news. Too many regulators and “scientific” panels have the attitude, “We are accountable only to ourselves. We will not have any member of Congress or the Trump Administration presume to tell us how to run our business, do science or be transparent.” That arrogance is intolerable.
Even if Dr. Wild is beyond the reach of US law, Drs. Birnbaum, Portier, Blair, et al. are not. They should be compelled to testify under oath, and funding for their agencies and work should be made contingent on their cooperation in rooting out the apparent secrecy, corruption, conflicts of interest and junk science.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy.
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I don’t think the “science is settled” quite yet on glyphosate. It is being detected in placental tissue at levels higher than “promised”. It kills plants by binding nutrients (primarily mineral), and that is the last thing you want around developing babies.
Its use as a pre-harvest drying agent on some crops puts it right on the plant foliage. Glyphosate persistence should be relatively easy to study on these (worst case) chemically dried plants…and the animals that eat them…BUT…
It’s getting hard to trust scientific study results coming from industry or government. No one should trust the UN. There is a price to pay for bad science.
I agree with that, I don’t trust Monsanto scientists but nor do I trust the UN’s because they are both activists 1st and scientists second.
“I am also an MD and ….”
And a crackpot!
Being in the nuclear industry you get good at identifying the rhetoric of crackpots.
When it comes to safety, are the dead bodies? If something is dangerous, that is not safe, and in widespread use; then you have dead bodies. Crossing the street, swimming pools are dangerous. We have dead bodies all over the place.
The benefit of doing something must also be considered when evaluating the risk.
Electrical safety is a big issue for me, at work and at home. However, if you start talking about the hazards of electromagnetic radiation, I will be thinking you are a crackpot and I will have to be careful not to hurt your feelings.
Science can prove a negative. You can collect lots of evidence that suggest the risk is small. So if the benefit is large, just do it.
Ha ha ha, I see more absurd arguments against Glyphosate:
Glyphosate toxicity: Looking past the hyperbole, and sorting through the facts. By Credible Hulk
“You may at some point have heard people speak of glyphosate as being “less toxic than caffeine or table salt.” What they’re referring to when they say that is what we call its LD50, which a standard way of quantifying acute toxicity. A substance’s LD50 is the dose at which 50% of the subjects who ingest that amount will die of complications from an acute overdose, and it is measured in units of mass of the substance per unit mass of the subject (usually mg/kg). See, one of the most fundamental principles in all of toxicology is that “the dose makes the poison,” which was famously coined by Paracelsus, the father of toxicology. Most substances have some amount beyond which they become toxic. Many substances that are benign, beneficial, or even essential to human health in one range of concentration will become harmful if taken in sufficiently large amounts. Even water can be toxic if you drink enough of it. So, you can’t just look at it as though there were some toxic things in the world and some non-toxic things, or that something that is toxic at one dose is bad in any dose, simply because that’s not how toxicology works.
Here you can find a very brief introduction to concepts in toxicology, but for now, suffice it to say that students are generally taught about three main types of toxicity: acute, chronic and subchronic.
By the acute standard of LD50, glyphosate (albeit not necessarily round up brand mind you, which also contains surfactants) is indeed less toxic than either caffeine or table salt.
It has an LD50 of 5600 mg/kg based on oral ingestions in rats, according to EPA assessments, placing it in Toxicity Category III. The EPA ranks chemicals in four categories, I being the most toxic and IV being the least.”
http://www.crediblehulk.org/index.php/2015/06/02/glyphosate-toxicity-looking-past-the-hyperbole-and-sorting-through-the-facts-by-credible-hulk/
Long but worth reading to see that all those anti round up claims are unsupportable.
Except for the few cancer buff, I don’t think the toxicity of glyphosate is questioned. It is not toxic to humans or any other mammals, or at least in conceivable doses. However, it is toxic to most plants and certain bacterial. And, according to several studies, many bacteria in the human microbiome. Since humans rely heavily on that microbiome for a healthy subsistence there is at least the potential for glyphosate to cause serious harm by eliminating certain bacteria we rely on. That is what Dr Senef’s papers are trying to determine. Scientists have just begun to study the human microboime and its effects on health.
Again glyphosate is just one component of round up. If I spray just glyphosate on my fields it will not kill a thing. The only two long term studies I can find on round up show a problem. This is in our food supply, should we not have better evidence that this. Those who call the Seralini study junk science seem to have nothing to say about the Monsanto study it was modeled after using the same type of rat, basically same study design and heck even published in the same journal. That 90 day study dismissed statistically significant change in organ weights as “not biologically significant”. The Seralinin study was for 2 years. It was not perfect but no study is. For what it was designed to show it did in fact do a very good job showing liver and kidney toxicity. The tumors were an unexpected finding and because of the study design by definition could not show statistical significance yet there are the tumors. It was with withdrawn a year after publication after a former Monsanto employee got on the board of that journal. They could not find any valid scientific reason to withdraw it or we would have heard it from high roof tops. It was withdrawn believe it or not for “inconclusive results”. It was republished after passing a rigorous per review and stands as one of the few long term studies.
LD 50 is for toxicology but means nothing as a endocrine disruptor, long term carcinogen, and its effects on our gut bacteria.
All I am saying is this stuff is in our food supply. Watch Dr Hubers video linked in me prior post, then tell yourself there is absolutely safe and then feed this stuff to you kids.
Except for a few cancer buffs, I don’t think the toxicity of glyphosate is questioned. It is not toxic to humans or any other mammals, or at least in conceivable doses. However, it is toxic to certain bacteria, and, according to several studies, many bacteria in the human microbiome. Since humans rely heavily on that microbiome for a healthy subsistence there is at least the potential for glyphosate to cause serious harm by eliminating certain bacteria we rely on. That is what Dr Senef’s papers are trying to determine. Science is just beginning to study the mirobiome and is a far cry from determining the effects of each class of bacteria in it. Because of the complexity my guess is it is going to be a long time before we fully understand any negative effect on the human.
Sorry for the repeat. My computer lost the comment just above your so I inadvertently repeated it.
Basically the regulatory guidelines in the EU are based on punitive taxes, fees, and penalties of all things American by hook or by crooked science. It’s basically the methods of Obama’s EPA pseudoscience but with heavy nationalistic and protectionist overtones applied.
re: “Ending legal predation will require major state and federal reforms.”
Not necessarily. It really only requires one legal reform – a credible loser-pays system. Make the lawyers have some economic skin in the game and they’ll be a lot less likely to launch baseless litigation of all types.
Having done a quick page search I find that the Radon scam, supported by the EPA, Health Canada, and the World Health Organization (albeit, inexplicably, at varying mitigation threshholds of 4, 5, and 2.7 picocuries/L, respectively) has been overlooked.
Here is a scam that aims to hit millions around the world in the pocket book to the tune of thousands of dollars for a hole in the basement and exhaust pipes that uglify the home inside and out and take up precious space. All to fix a health problem for which NO scientist has ever offered any proof. Indeed, what evidence there is suggests that such levels (and much higher ones) are protective against cancer.
Yet this campaign has the full support of not only the United Nations and the USA but also that of “Holmes on Homes”.
How does that happen, and keep happening, in a society that’s ever more educated and “informed”?
Just as the CAGW sycophants look for new ways to “save” us from the evil carbon emitting cars and power plants. People who are rational actually have to start looking at every organization with over a few thousand members as being easily corruptible. It’s scary that so many are just fed any new catastrophic end of the world scenario every time some con artist can come up with it. As long as they can get enough people to donate to their cause to “save”, (there’s that word in quotations again) us all from ourselves they’re new age spirituality saints above any angelic hierarchy they’re so high on life and millions of dollars they believe they are gods. It’s just more insanity because there’s a sucker born every minute.
Having worked on the anti- pesticide game for 30 years the anti-pesticide folks are as bad if not worse than the anti-vaccers or the CAGW crowd. It is an industry and some EPA staff walk hand in hand with them. The glyphosate attacks are an attack on pesticides, using the DDT paradigm as their model, but it is also an attack on GMOs. The “quats”, i.e., diquat, paraquat, etc are far more biological active in animals than glyphosate yet are still used and not attacked by radical environmentalists. Why? because to my knowledge they are not pertinent to GMOs just in general agriculture. Glyphosate (Rodeo) has been approved for use in drinking water bodies to control aquatic weeds for decades. While we don’t need pesticides to grow food, while there have been gross mistakes using pesticides in the past, if used properly we grow a lot more food with them than without them.
Kind of amazing to watch how even this thread wanders. Is RoundUp carcinogenic or not? Indeed, it has an effect on the human micro-biome, but is that effect cancerous? Zero evidence presented here that this is the case.
As for the French response, well, they have been arrogant jerks who can’t manage their own country worth a damn for a long time. This is the land of Rousseau and Robespierre – they are the leading edge of Leftist insanity. Or you could just look at their Islamic population and how they’ve created the seeds of their own destruction. By 2050, Europe will be Eurabia. Think France will be less hostile then?