| “But then, it's also possible that some of the WHO staff or consultants were biased.” Indeed. Which it is why declaring COIs is so important. e.g. From a followup piece on Forbes (emphasis mine): https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-... “Portier, an American statistician who worked for the federal government for over thirty years, was the special advisor to the IARC panel that issued the report declaring glyphosate to be “probably carcinogenic.” The transcripts show that during the same week in March 2015 in which IARC published its glyphosate opinion, Portier signed a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant for two law firms that were preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims. His contract contained a confidentiality clause barring Portier from disclosing his employment to other parties.” It is easy to view these Glyphosate wars as tiny heroic Davids battling a vast malicious Goliath, and huge multinationals certainly can get up to all sorts of dubious stuff—but so can the “little guys”. And we have been here before: just look at Andrew Wakefield, found balls deep in lawyer money and rival patents, and still causing serious harm (e.g. 79 dead in Samoa) a decade after being busted for the mendacious money-grabbing little shit he really was. As for the WHO, while it has done a great amount of very good work over the last 70 years, it is a human institution like any other and thus not immune to errors and corruption. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/who-promotes-unscientific-t... |