[zorkw4rg]

> Mr Johnson's lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury's verdict showed that the evidence against the product was "overwhelming".

Uhhh to say that is quite the stretch, a jury of layman should judge the scientific consensus? The referenced International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report is anything but conclusive. That verdict speaks more to the widespread uninformed FUD against GMO.

https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/2016/glyphosate...

[lx3459683]

> the scientific consensus

Uhh. You mean the lack of consensus. Which is bought and paid for by Monsanto. When it comes to their own products, they outspend any independent studies by orders of magnitude in order to create enough noise for there to be a lack of consensus long enough to make a profit. It's straight out of the tobacco industry playbook.

[0x4f3759df]

Not sure if it causes cancer or not, but this is like a security hole in the scientific process (ie mostly only the company that produces X will fund studies of X). It's interesting to think security holes more generally - Nick Szabo got me thinking along these lines with his recent pinned tweet: "Giant companies are the security holes of capitalism. The more centralized industries get, the more they attract socialist political activists. The Bolshevik Revolution was a violent version of this vs. railroad stations, newspapers, etc. Now activism is focused on tech giants."

[kennywinker]

That’s one way to look at it. Big companies attract activists and so are a risk for capitalism.

Another way would be that big companies do the most damage to the most people’s lives, and are a risk for humanity.

[killbrad]

This case and this verdict had nothing to do with GMOs, but ok.

[zorkw4rg]

> This case and this verdict had nothing to do with GMOs

Over 80% of genetically modified (GM) crops grown worldwide are engineered to tolerate being sprayed with glyphosate herbicides.

[killbrad]

And the case was not for, against, or anything other than casually adjacent to GMOs.

[nyrulez]

Have you read the case? It's not about the crops getting cancer from the herbicide, it's a human being. Also human being is not a GMO product. I don't understand your GMO angle.

[shawnz]

I don't think you made an honest effort to understand the parent's point. They are saying that the jurors might have been biased against Monsanto due to the widespread fear of GMO, and glyphosate being a symbol of that fear.

[ScottBurson]

I can't speak to what was in the jurors' minds, but in my opinion that's backwards: it is concern about glyphosate that is primarily driving fear of GMOs. If we got rid of glyphosate, I for one would not have any problem with the other GMOs I am currently aware of, though I would of course reserve the option of objecting to specific GMOs I might learn about in the future.

[shawnz]

> it is concern about glyphosate that is primarily driving fear of GMOs.

In my experience the two most common anti-GMO arguments that I hear are: A) that GMOs can be patented, which creates IP problems when they spread, and B) that somehow human-designed species might be less safe than natural ones due to unintended health consequences of the modifications (not really sure the rationale for that one.)

[saalweachter]

How do you feel about bt crops?

[DmenshunlAnlsis]

It’s important to point out that this case is about Roundup as a whole product, of which less than half is glyphosate, not just glyphosate. Some other posts here go over this in more detail.

[tim333]

The IARC concluded "probably carcinogenic in humans" (category 2A). I'll give you it didn't say "definitely" but still not good.

[ncallaway]

> Uhhh to say that is quite the stretch, a jury of layman should judge the scientific consensus?

Who else is going to do it? Either a judge or a jury needs to determine the facts of a case if there's a dispute over the facts.