Maker of Roundup weedkiller solicits help from lawmakers to protect it from suits about cancer

Bayer, manufacturer of Roundup, the country's best-selling pesticide, is seeking help from legislators to protect it from claims that it failed to warn buyers about cancer risks.

According to an Associated Press story by Hannah Fingerhut and David A. Lieb in yesterday's editions of the San Francisco Chronicle, chemical giant Bayer, "stung by paying billions of dollars for settlements and trials, has been lobbying lawmakers in three states to pass bills providing it a legal shield from lawsuits that claim its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer."

Legal experts warn that identical bills introduced in Iowa, Missouri, and Idaho this year, with wording supplied by Bayer, could have even broader consequences — "extending to any product liability claim or, in Iowa's case, providing immunity from lawsuits of any kind," the article contends.

Matt Clement

The piece quotes Matt Clement, a Jefferson City, Missouri, attorney who represents people suing Bayer, to the effect that "it's just not good government to give a company immunity for things that they're not telling their consumers. If they're successful in getting this passed in Missouri, I think they'll be trying to do this all over the country."

Some 167,000 legal claims against Bayer, the Fingerhut/Lieb story says, contend that Roundup causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The corporation already has "suffered several losses in which juries awarded huge initial judgments," the article goes on, and "has paid about $10 billion while thousands of claims linger in court."

Roundup's main ingredient, glyphosate, is derived from phosphate mined in Idaho. 

The debate over whether glyphosate is truly a demon in the weedkiller equation "escalated when a 2015 report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, said it's 'probably carcinogenic to humans,' a decision that was based on some evidence of cancer in people as well as evidence in study animals."

The federal Environmental Protection Agency, on the other hand, had regularly concluded that it's not likely to be carcinogenic to humans "when used as directed," the AP story contends. A federal appeals court panel in 2022, on a third hand, ordered the EPA to further review the situation after ruling that the agency's decision "was not supported by substantial evidence," the Fingerhut/Lieb piece continues.

The story ends by quoting John Gilbert, an Iowa Falls farmer who's used Roundup only in a limited fashion. He calls local Republicans hypocritical for attempting to protect corporate interests after campaigning on standing up for Iowans' interests.

The final paragraph of the story: "The bill 'invites a lot of reckless disregard,' said  Gilbert, who is on the board for the Iowa Farmers Union. 'No amount of perfume's gonna make it anything but a skunk."

More information about politics surrounding the risks of disease can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten,  aimed at male caregivers.

HPV shots might save thousands of lives

Vaccines, screenings, treatments could severely cut deaths from cervical cancer, N.Y. Times says

Cervical cancer last year killed more than 311,000 women, one every two minutes, but early detection might have prevented thousands of those deaths around the world.

Such detection, it's believed, could have resulted in expanded screenings and treatments.

In addition, an increase in HPV vaccinations for teenage girls may have helped a great deal.

At least those are the conclusion drawn by Mia Armstrong in a recent story in The New York Times. 

Dr. Kirsten Austad

Armstrong quotes Dr. Kirsten Austad, director of women's health for the Maya Health Alliance, as saying, "Almost no one needs to die of cervical cancer."

Of the more than 300,000 annual deaths from cervical cancer, the fourth most common cancer for women globally, the Times piece notes, more than 85 percent were in low- and middle-income countries.

The story also mentions a World Health Organization estimate of 570,000 new cases in 2018, the same year that Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO, "called for coordinated global action" to eliminate the disease.

Armstrong cites, too, the words of Dr. Silvia de Sanjosé, director of women's cancer for PATH, a nonprofit focused on global health, to the effect that such a coordinated effort "was crucial to elevating the issue," which had previously received little attention.

"I would not say that that's enough," she said, the story continues. "But it's clearly a turning point." 

She also told the Times about a couple of big challenges: The vaccine needs to be given after age nine, which is later than most routine vaccines, and the price tag, which in the lowest-income countries costs approximately $4.50, jumps to $150 in some places.

WHO recommends that 9- to 14-year-old girls receive two does of the [HPV vaccine, which protects] against HPV infections responsible for 70 to 90 percent of cervical cancers."

The difficulty is, however, that, according to the story, WHO estimates indicate that "only around 25 percent of 10-year-olds live in counties that have introduced the HPV vaccine."

Other calls to action about diseases can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his wife's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Coffee, tea join list of 80 cancer-causing agents

Super-hot drinks can trigger disease, says a 10-country arm of World Health Organization 

Damn, that coffee's hot!

Well, that very pick-me-up — or similarly super-hot drinks — are not only likely to burn your tongue, they might well be cancer triggers.

According to an article by Alice Park in the current Time magazine, the World Health Organization (WHO) says liquids such as coffee and tea belong on the list of cancer-causing agents.

An organizational arm of WHO, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), checked 1,000 studies that looked into links between high-temp drinks and various forms of the disease and found anything above 149 degrees fahrenheit hikes the risk of esophageal cancer.

Dr. Otis Brawley

The conclusions of that study by the IARC, which is composed of 23 scientists from 10 countries, were published recently in Lancet Oncology.

As with virtually every piece of research, however, there's another side.

Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical and scientific officer, believes smoking and excessive alcohol are much bigger perils, the Time piece notes.

Interested in more info on some of the 79 other substances — including exposure to UV radiation from the sun, air pollution, red meat and DDT — that can be cancer risk factors? Check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Headlines wrongly equate meat risks to smoking

First news reports exaggerate causal links that processed and red meats have to cancers 

Despite "persuasive evidence that eating meat can cause cancer," the risks are "very small for most people," declares an editorial in The New York Times.

The scathing commentary came after a World Health Organization (WHO) adjunct, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, found that processed meats (especially bacon, ham, corned beef, sausages and hot dogs) may be linked to colon and stomach cancers.

The group, according to an earlier Times news article by Anahad O'Connor, the WHO arm had evaluated more than 900 environmental and lifestyle factors that may contribute to cancer — including coffee, sunlight and night-shift work. 

The agency's report, which was published in "The Lancet Oncology" and based on a review of 800 epidemiological studies from various nations with differing diets and ethnicities, also indicated that red meats (beef and pork) may be a probable cause of colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancers.

Initial news reports that the risks from eating those meats were as high as that of smoking were grossly exaggerated, however.

Dr. John Ioannidis

The Times editorial quoted Dr. John Ioannidis, chair of disease prevention at Stanford, as saying, "I think it's very important that we don't terrorize people into thinking that they should not eat any red meat at all."

Ioannidis, who wasn't involved in the WHO report, may be best known for causing an academic uproar when he published a paper in 2005 titled "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False."

To be fair, the Times news piece also quoted Susan Tapster, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, as calling "the panel's conclusions 'an important step' in helping people make more healthful dietary choices."

Recent ACS guidelines suggest skipping both processed and red meat and substituting fish, poultry and beans.

Causes of breast and other cancers are discussed at length in the VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer."