The EPA Grows A Pair And Takes A Stand On Glyphosate

By Josh Bloom — August 13, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

You might as well get pissed off in advance because if you don't much care for scientific evidence you're not going to enjoy this a whole lot. Sorry, but facts are facts, and in this case, the US EPA has them right while the State of California has them wrong.

 

By any measure, California's Proposition 65 is an exercise in madness. 

 

The law, which is officially titled "The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986," was well-intended at the time it was written – to stop pollutants from being discharged into water. Now it has nothing to do with water; it is merely an excuse for predatory trial lawyers, to file lawsuits against companies, small and large, with the laughable goal of "protecting the public" by suing companies that fail to "warn the public" about harmless products like purses, shoes, Tiffany lamps, and bird feeders, as well as hotel rooms, and amusement parks.

How, did these evil companies – many being small family businesses – fail to adequately warn us? By not putting an immensely stupid label on things that cannot possibly hurt you. (See Should California Put A Warning Label On Your Penis?). So it should not be surprising that California wants a Prop 65 label put on the controversial herbicide glyphosate.

 

Except, the EPA doesn't see it that way when it comes to glyphosate (1). The agency recently announced that it would not permit California to put a cancer label on the chemical. And rightly so. 

Some will write off the EPA's recent decision to reject a cancer warning label for glyphosate as partisan politics or big money influencing a government agency. It is neither. Instead, we are seeing a rare case of honesty that is based on scientific evidence, not nonsense. The EPAs decision is scientifically sound on every level. 

"We will not allow California's flawed program to dictate federal policy,"
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler 

Good for him. Wheeler is dead-on. The "evidence" supporting the carcinogenicity of the chemical is not only flimsy; it is a product of fraudulent research by the International Agency on Cancer Research (IARC). Here is an excerpt from my colleague Dr. Alex Berezow's complete annihilation of IARC and its findings:

"We now have an answer... The Times reports that Christopher Portier, a key IARC advisor who lobbied to have glyphosate listed as a carcinogen, accepted $160,000 from trial lawyers representing cancer patients who stood to profit handsomely by suing glyphosate manufacturers. Mr. Portier's failure to disclose such an obvious conflict of interest has exploded into a textbook case of scientific fraud."

Dr. Alex Berezow, Glyphosate-Gate: IARC's Scientific Fraud, October 2017

 

IARC's "evidence," such as it is, was the lone culprit in designating glyphosate as a carcinogen. Epidemiological studies have found no connection between cancer industrial workers who routinely handle the stuff. Biochemical assays that are suggestive of DNA damage or mutation all come up negative. Aside from IARC's made-up baloney, there are no valid animal studies that show that it causes cancer. Regulatory agencies from the US, Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, Australia, and Korea all state that glyphosate does not pose a risk of toxicity or carcinogenicity. 

 

Yet, California, based on IARC's phony findings wanted to slap an incorrect label on it based on the findings of a corrupt group. 

 

A rare win for science and a loss for faulty activism. How refreshing. 

 

NOTE:

 

(1) This week's announcement was not the first time that EPA has objected to the cancer label. In 2017 the agency released the Glyphosate Human Health Risk Assessment, which was a basis for the 2019 decision. 

 

Tags: 

glyphosate

IARC

IARC corruption

cancer warning labels

 

Sidelined Because She Rejects Radical Green Agendas?

Paul Driessen Apr 06, 2019

 Aurelia Skipwith has a BS in biology from Howard University, a Master’s in molecular genetics from Purdue and a law degree from Kentucky. She has worked as a molecular analyst and sustainable agriculture partnership manager. She was also co-founder and general counsel for AVC Global, a Washington, D.C.-based agricultural supply chain development company that helps small farmers link up with multinational buyers and with agronomy, business, financial and other service providers.

For two years, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Interior Department, where she performed her duties so well that last October President Trump nominated her to become the next Director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) at Interior. She is an ideal candidate for the post.

She’s also only the third woman ever nominated for this position – and the first African American. Her impeccable scientific, legal, agricultural and conservationist background would ensure fairness, balance, integrity, solid science and multidisciplinary thinking in FWS decision making.

And yet, Ms. Skipwith lingers in confirmation limbo, along with hundreds of others whose nominations have been stalled for many months to well over a year. Too many Democratic senators appear determined to prevent the president from having people onboard who would implement his policies.

In fact, the US Senate has already been forced to hold cloture votes – ending drawn-out debates – on 128 Trump nominees! In glaring contrast, the Senate had a grand total of only 24 such cloture votes for all six previous presidents combined: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II and Obama! That’s 32 times more nominees by this president sidelined by Congress than during all ten previous presidential terms.

 

Why is Ms. Skipwith being treated this way? It appears to be simple ideological politics. Senate Democrats seem to be acquiescing to the demands of Deep Green environmentalists and Deep State career bureaucrats who do not like having their views and policies challenged.

Her molecular analysis and sustainable agriculture work were with Monsanto, the ultimate Evil Corporation to many of her opponents, because it manufactures both Roundup weedkiller and genetically engineered (GE) crops like Bt corn and Roundup-Ready soybeans. As Deputy Assistant Secretary, Ms. Skipwith supported reversing Obama era bans on planting such crops and using advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides in wildlife refuges administered by Fish & Wildlife.

The 2014 bans resulted from collusive sue-and-settle lawsuits between environmentalist groups and Obama DOI officials. They were reversed in August 2018, following a careful review process. As I have noted in many articles (here, here and here, for example), GE crops, glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) and neonics are safe for humans and the environment. They also enable farmers to produce more food from less land, using less water and fewer pesticides, and with greater resistance to droughts, floods, insects and climate change, than is possible with conventional or organic crops.

 

Genetically engineered crops promote sustainable agriculture and help the world feed billions who otherwise face prolonged malnutrition and starvation. And yet, radical greens oppose them. They even attack Golden Rice, which prevents blindness and death in malnourished children and parents, by incorporating genes that produce Vitamin A precursors, vastly expanding nutritional values in rice.

 

Americans alone have consumed more than four trillion servings of foods with at least one GE ingredient – without a single documented example of harm to a person or the environment.

Regarding glyphosate, only one agency, the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC), says the chemical is “probably carcinogenic” to humans – and its analysis is tainted by fraud and blatant conflicts of interest. Studies by the European Food Safety Authority, Food and Agriculture Organization, Germany’s Institute for Risk Assessment, Australia’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, and other respected organizations worldwide have concluded that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic.

 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists conducted a “comprehensive systematic review of studies submitted to the agency and available in the open literature,” and concluded that the chemical “is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans.” Health Canada conducted a similarly extensive review of global studies, found no likely cancer risk, and noted that “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world” believes glyphosate is a cancer risk to humans “at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”

As cancer researcher Arthur Lambert noted recently, “exposure to carcinogens influences the risk of developing cancer, which is a function of many factors, including the dose and duration of the exposure” – to glyphosate for example. But other factors also play integral roles, including inherited genes and genetic mutations, how well one’s immune system can find and eliminate mutated cells before they develop into cancer, personal lifestyle choices, and exposure to additional carcinogens over the years. Separating all those factors is virtually impossible.

 

Risks associated with glyphosate fall “somewhere between the small hazard that comes from eating a considerable amount of bacon (for colorectal cancer) and consuming very hot tea (for esophageal cancer),” Lambert notes. In fact, IARC lumps bacon, sunlight and plutonium together in its “definitely carcinogenic” category and lists as “possible” carcinogens pickled vegetables, caffeic acid found in many fruits and vegetables, and even drinking hot beverages or working the night shift.

If glyphosate poses few risks of cancer in humans, its threats to ducks, geese, turkeys and other animals in wildlife refuges are likely infinitesimal. The same is true for GE crops and neonicotinoid pesticides.

Most neonics are used as seed coatings, which get absorbed into plant tissues as crops grow. They protect plants against insect damage by targeting only pests that actually feed on the crops – and are largely gone by the time mature plants flower, which means they are barely detectable in pollen.

As to claims that neonics harm bees and thus should be banned from wildlife refuges, a 2015 international study of wild bees found that most wild bees never even come into contact with crops or the neonics that supposedly threaten them. The same study also determined that the 2% of wild bees that do visit crops – and so would be most exposed to these pesticides – are among the healthiest bee species on Earth.

The eight senators who recently expressed concern that chlorpyrifos and other pesticides threaten multiple protected species should applaud Interior’s reversal of bans on modern agricultural technologies (which reduce the use of such pesticides). Ducks Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Federation certainly did.

The bans “were clearly not based on science,” they said, adding that the reversal restored GE crop use as an “essential tool” for waterfowl and wildlife management in national wildlife refuges. Many refuges were established along migratory bird flyways to provide food for waterfowl. But some can provide sufficient food only through cooperative agreements that let local farmers plant crops on refuge lands in exchange for leaving some of their crops unharvested, to supplement natural food on the refuge.

Genetically modified crops maximize crop yields, the FWS has explained, and “a blanket denial” of their use limits the latitude that refuge managers need to fulfill the purposes of each refuge. The ban on neonics was equally problematical because they are often used with GE crops and Roundup.

Aurelia Skipwith’s actions reflect the best in science-based government decision making. Her broad expertise enables her to separate fact from fiction, and reality from ideological agendas. She is the right person for this job – and indeed may turn out to be one of the best FWS directors ever. The Senate should confirm her forthwith.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. He has degrees in geology, ecology and environmental law.

Predatort Part II: How predatory lawyers, activist scientists hijacked IARC—International Agency for Research on Cancer—for personal profit and ideological vanity

David Zaruk | Genetic Literacy Project | March 1, 2019

Part Two of SlimeGate’s Tort-Tort Scam chapter is not only an illustration of tort-tort abuse of the scientific process for their personal enrichment, it is also an indictment of how the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has forsaken academic integrity and knowingly is contributing to the Predatort litigation strategy. A small network of scientists prospering as litigation consultants seems to be controlling IARC according to their tort trial opportunities. This exposé on benzene will provide the backstory for what likely happened with glyphosate. It will reveal the following points:.........To Read More....

• Also:  Viewpoint: Controversy flares over activist ‘predatort lawyers’ who ‘massaged facts’ in the Monsanto-glyphosate case

IARC Retraction Watch Begins: They Faked Images In Controversial Claims

By Hank Campbell — October 25, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has a new leader, an Old Guard insider named Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass, who promised not to change the status quo, which means they remain stuck with an old problem; credibility.

While for its first 20 years they were a much-needed voice of reason that stood up to activists claiming that some new chemical of the month was a carcinogen because it could kill rats, for the last 10 IARC have been the source of ridicule among the science community. And that is because the environmentalists whose hype they once exposed played the long game and wormed their way inside.(1) Today, thanks to letting them hijack that science body, we are told to believe that a weedkiller can cause cancer and deli meat is as bad for you as plutonium or mustard gas. Such claims are literally baloney.

But media who love centralized authoritarian bodies and veils of anti-corporate credibility have gleefully reported each more cosmic claim from the French organization during that time. They have even touted media press releases distributed prior to actual reports as fact. Though IARC decisions do not consider risk (to determine a hazard they allow papers that show 5 orders of magnitude, so one dose of a compound is the same as 10,000 to them) the WHO group will mention risk dozens of times in media claims in their press releases.

There is just one problem they face: Every few years, a new crop of journalists enters the field, and not only might they not be in the bag for your brand of activism, they might be neutral and wonder why no one turns their gaze on the manipulations of supplement hucksters, alternative to medicine purveyors, and environmental lawyers. And some scientists who engage in public outreach are critical thinkers about studies everywhere, like molecular biologist Leonid Schneider and microbiologist Dr. Elisabeth Bik, who have called out groups who do this and also journal editors who enable them with a desire to publish provocative claims that will bring international media links.

A recent analysis of both journals and IARC involvement, titled WHO Cures Cancer In Photoshop, went into detail about the cultural flaws that allowed IARC to lose its way but more broadly about how easy it is to duplicate or reuse or slightly change graphics to look original in a science study. Some of the inferences I don't agree with - the involvement of a private sector scientist does not sway results by default, that is Cui bono? conspiracy signaling - but the overall examination is sound. (2)

Schneider is not alone in being concerned that IARC is trapped in the past using a methodology that is easily exploited by activists with nefarious agendas and patience, like Professor Martyn Smyth of Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) (3) or Dr. Chris Portier of Environmental Defense Fund. They used 21st century strategy to infect a stodgy 20th century institution, which creates ad hoc working groups based on having friends inside, refuses to be transparent, and has no rules for the study of each compound. It has become just statisticians finding things to correlate to cancer. As Dr. Angela Logomasini of Competitive Enterprise Institute notes in the Washington Times, "The working groups are free to focus on myriad small-scale studies with implausible results. That can lead to cherry-picking that serves the biases of working group members."

It certainly has. Look at two California court cases, on coffee and on weedkiller, and the first thing you will find are two IARC participants mentioned above, Chris Portier and Martyn Smith, who have been paid by attorneys to help them sue companies.

Is there hope? There certainly is. The American Council on Science and Health Board of Scientific Advisors was part of a group of four people called on to testify before the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee about IARC and we recommended Congress use its financial leverage, and the credibility U.S. backing grants, to rein the rogue statistical body in.

The only opposition we faced on that panel was Natural Resources Defense Council's Dr. Jennifer Sass, who argued IARC's closed door mentality and lack of transparency about its working groups should remain untouched. That was the opposite of what she claimed in 2002 and when that was noted she could only reply, "2002 was a long time ago."

In many ways, this is true, and IARC should consider shucking off the parts of our past that no longer have validity in 2018.

NOTE:

(1) If your career goal is to get a fat paycheck as an expert witness or as a consultant at an environmental NGO, today there is a clear roadmap. First, write provocative epidemiology papers linking harmless things to health effects - it can be miracle vegetables creating eternal life or scary chemicals taking years away. Second, become a Washington insider and get a title, any title, from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). If you are good with media and share the correct political proclivities, use that title to get quoted frequently in the New York Times. Soon enough, a litigation group like Earthjustice or Environmental Defense Fund or Center for Biological Diversity will start offering you money. And if you are really good at political maneuvering, you will get a slot on an IARC Working Group, where you can get the chemical you wanted banned all along subjected to a review. Once that is complete, you can claim to be a U.N. expert on the chemical you want banned while signaling to trial lawyers you are ready to "play ball", and then the expert witness checks will start coming in.
(2) "Apparently, by re-using certain western blot bands, a potential prevention therapy for cervical cancer can be established. Amazing research, done by WHO scientists at IARC, with public support."
He pulls no punches. You should read it.

Attention @PNASNews @jbiolchem @J_Immunol @ASMicrobiology @PLOSPathogens @JExpMed @ACasadevall1 Look what @IARCWHO published in your journals. https://t.co/PhM33CET8l
— Leonid Schneider (@schneiderleonid) October 11, 2018

(3) Despite its lofty name, CERT is not a council at all, there is no 300-person Board of Scientific Advisors like we have, it was instead created by Metzger Law group to have a non-profit to act as a front for lawsuits against companies - if it exists outside paper at all it now it seems to be "run" by a politically

Claims That Criticism of IARC Are Industry-Driven Do IARC More Harm Than Good

By Geoffrey Kabat — August 23, 2018

Neil Pearce, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has risen to the defense of the controversial International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), but falling back on hollow claims of IARC's superiority will do  little to dispel the serious questions about the Agency's process.

Pearce opens his piece by endorsing last week’s ruling by a California court finding that Monsanto – the maker of the most widely-used herbicide Roundup -- was liable for a rare cancer that developed in a grounds-keeper who had used the herbicide. Roundup contains the chemical glyphosate as its active ingredient. The court decision awarded $289M to the plaintiff.

Pearce proceeds to point out, approvingly, that IARC’s 2015 assessment that glyphosate was a “probable carcinogen” played a prominent role in the court’s decision. One would expect that in what follows he would have delved into the controversy surrounding the question of whether glyphosate is a carcinogen and, thus, whether there is a justification for public concern........To Read More...

Risk, Hazard and the Precautionary Principle: Why Europe Gets Crop Biotechnology and Chemical Regulation So Wrong

David Zaruk, Founder of GreenFacts, Environmental-Health Risk Governance Analyst, Professor at Odisee University College

This is the first article in a three-part series on risk and hazard:

• Part I: Risk, Hazard and the Precautionary Principle: Why Europe Gets Crop Biotechnology and Chemical Regulation So Wrong
• Part II: Precautionary Politics: Europe Moves Backward into a Fear-Based ‘Dark Ages’ in Regulating Agriculture and Cancer Risks
• Part III: In the Battle to Regulate GMOS, Gene Editing and Other New Breeding Techniques, Who Has ‘Hazard Blood’ on Their Hands?

Why is Europe seemingly so confused when it comes to understanding the differences between chemicals and technologies posing manageable hazards versus those that threaten us with unacceptable risks? It’s a conundrum that perhaps only a child can fully appreciate.

I was recently discussing the concept of safety, dangers and risks with a seven-year-old boy who wanted to cross the street to join his friends in a playground.

“Cars can be dangerous,” I advised him. “Please stay away from the streets when playing.”
It seemed like common sense advice. A hazard (like a car) is only a risk if we are involved in a crash or it hits us while moving..........To Read More....

My Take - I look forward to the rest of David Zaruk's series because it's apparent far too many suffer from what John Adams, professor of risk at University College London, calls "the modern disease of compulsive risk assessment psychosis - otherwise known as crap.” 

French Research Agency Churning Out Pseudoscience on America’s Dime

Steve Sherman June 24, 2018

Cancer research is big business, and with big business comes big corruption. The embattled International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), based in Lyon, France, is in Congress’s crosshairs again. The U.S. House Science, Space and Technology (SST) Committee has been concerned about IARC’s scientific integrity—and the millions of dollars of funding it receives from American taxpayers—since 2016. Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass, a Brazilian scientist who was recently chosen to take over the reins of IARC in January 2019. The SST has officially asked Weiderpass to testify at a July hearing to explain how she will manage the agency better than her predecessor, whose tenure the Congressional committee called “an affront to scientific integrity.”..........

Congress has made it clear that despite this history of supporting the status quo, it is looking for Weiderpass to usher in genuine change, which needs to begin with her testifying before the committee. If she continues IARC’s tradition of snubbing American lawmakers, then it’s high time to make good on threats to pull the agency’s U.S. government funding. America can no longer afford to foot the bill for IARC’s cushy new offices in France and third-rate science.
.............To Read More.....

Who Will Lead IARC? The Most Likely Choices, and My Prediction

By Hank Campbell — April 13, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Christopher Wild, Ph.D., has been the director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) since 2009 and during his tenure, the organization has been controversial. With recent rulings on bacon, coffee, and a mildly toxic pesticide, all of which have come down in defiance of every legitimate science body, there have been calls for Wild to resign or be fired from the once-respected body.

He has avoided being terminated but he leaves behind a group with a reputation far removed from the original IARC, whose first director, Dr. John Higginson, was so prestigious among the cancer community he was on the board of the American Council on Science and Health. Like the Council, the original IARC wanted to separate health threats from health scares. Under Wild, they use their press office to attack other agencies, to engage in activism, to brazenly claim they assess risk rather than determine a hazard for further study, and even to threaten pro-science groups who criticize them.

Wild will finally be gone, but undoing the damage he has done will take some time. As a result of his efforts, fellow activists have been placed inside and they have blocked out the world's top experts - from diesel to toxicology to pathology - because they will have consulted for industry. Meanwhile, they specifically exempted IARC insiders being paid by environmental groups from conflict of interest concerns. As you will see, one of the key people under consideration was not only being paid by an environmental group that raised millions campaigning against the herbicide IARC was evaluating, he signed a contract with a trial lawyer to be an expert witness against companies making the herbicide...before the IARC ruling was even released.

Next month, IARC is supposed to announce its new director, someone who will guide the organization for the next five years, and someone who will have to undo the damage Wild and his collaborators in the activist community have done to the reputation of scientific risk assessment.
Here is how I handicap the front-runners. Since this is a United Nations body (1), there is a lot more than science that goes into their decision, so I have tried to discuss those factors as well.
#1 - Dr. Joachim Schüz of Germany, received his Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Mainz.

• Pros: He is an IARC insider. He is known to everyone in IARC as a reliable voice for the recent IARC approach to hazard assessment.
• Cons: He is an IARC insider. They recognize they need to cast off the stigma of the Wild era and virtually his entire CV involves IARC. He is European. IARC has been at war with European scientists and agencies who have defied their recent claims. Except for the first director, IARC has always been led by a European and an organization in France always picking a European now looks too insular. 

#2 - Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass, now of Finland, received her PhD in epidemiology from Karolinska Institutet, and her M.D. in Brazil.

• Pros: She has excellent credentials and IARC has never been led by a woman. You might think that shouldn't be an issue, but this is the U.N. They changed IPCC membership from being the world's most prominent climate voices to having geographical quotas so science is not always foremost. 
• Cons: She is European, which hurts her almost as much as Schüz. She is married to Harri Vainio. While most of us believe that should never make a difference, we are in a world where the head of EPA can't even rent a bedroom in a property owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist without getting outrage from the New York Times. Vainio is very much part of the Old Guard at IARC, exactly the influence the agency wants to have less of starting in 2019, so this impacts her by association.

#3 - Dr. Chris Portier, now of Switzerland. Ph.D. in biostatistics from UNC Chapel Hill.

• Pros: He is well-liked by the environmental community in the United States and Europe because of his advocacy work. He is American. Despite America being the world leaders in science, the dominant funder of IARC and the home of the U.N., Europeans have conscripted IARC as a French group and they want to be seen as more of an international body. He has extensive CDC and NIH experience.
• Cons: Though Portier likely got the most nominations due to his outsized influence among the environmental community, he has a severe lack of credibility. He is the poster child for what has happened to the U.S. government's epidemiology work since Dr. Linda Birnbaum became the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Like much of NIEHS now, he prefers statistical correlation over science. Ethical cloud. He lobbied IARC to declare any industry funding as reasons for exclusion from IARC voting while exempting his work for Environmental Defense Fund. He signed a contract with trial lawyers seeking to sue Monsanto over the herbicide glyphosate before the IARC finding was even released. Age. At 62, he is already at the age where the WHO expects mandatory retirement so he would need a waiver.

#4 - Dr. Shuji Ogino, now of the United States. M.D. from the University of Tokyo School of Medicine and Ph.D. in Pathology from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine.

• Pros: He has excellent credentials and is Asian. The only place with fewer IARC directors than the United States is the entire eastern half of the world. He is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, arguably the most important epidemiology group on Earth, which would show the U.S. Congress, which has IARC in their crosshairs to eliminate and replace with something more modern, that they are serious about scientific reform. He is a pathologist, which steers the organization away from simply using statistical correlation to claim things cause cancer, even if the dose difference is five orders of magnitude, in defiance of common sense.
• Cons: He is Asian and Europeans may want to diversify but not that much. They may prefer a European woman over an Asian man.

#5 - Dr. Sten Dillner of Sweden. M.D. and Ph.D. from Karolinska Institutet.

• Pros: He has excellent credentials. He is a virologist, which steers the organization away from epidemiology and simply using statistical correlation to suggest causation, which has plagued them in the recent past.
• Cons:  He is European. This may be the year that IARC uses the controversy created by Wild to opt for more diversity, and Europeans will have a harder time locking it up for their own once again.

#6 - Outside shots. In my discussions, Schuz and Portier are very unlikely because of their link to the IARC scandals but anything can happen. There are other "dark horse" candidates who are also well regarded epidemiologists and could get the nod: Dr. Anna Giuliano, Founding Director of the Center for Infection Research in Cancer at Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa; Dr. David Richardson, Director, Program in Occupational Epidemiology at UNC Chapel Hill; Dr. David Whiteman, Deputy Director at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane.

My prediction: Shuju Ogino. No one will go on the record, of course, but privately representatives from Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain recognize they need more diverse leadership than they can get out of Europe's current candidates, even though two of the Europeans are well-qualified. The wild card is the United States. India, Qater, Morocco and Brazil will likely follow the U.S. lead but while the U.S. State Department casts the vote, the recommendation will come from the National Cancer Institute. Chris Portier is radioactive in American government circles now but his old boss Linda Birnbaum is not, and she may be pressing for IARC to keep the status quo, which would mean she wants Elisabete Weiderpass. I am told Australia will vote for Ogino even though an Australian is on the list, because they won't want to lodge a protest vote.

Either the first vote will come down along predictable lines but then they will want to reach a consensus and Ogino will get the nod. Or the Old Guard will win and their safe choice,Weiderpass, will sail through without any resistance at all. It's IARC, which means it is more politics than science.

NOTE:

(1) The 25 voting countries are the founding members - Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States of America - plus Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, India, Ireland, Japan, Morocco, Norway, the Netherlands, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

IARCgate: Shouldn’t IARC Stop Lying?

Posted by riskmonger on January 15, 2018

Outgoing IARC Director, Christopher Wild, refused to attend the US House Science Committee hearing into the IARCgate scandal. In actions of arrogance never seen before at any UN agency, Wild is snubbing IARC’s single largest funder. To make matters worse, several days ago (on January 11), Wild wrote a regrettably undiplomatic letter to the honourable US Congressional leaders in language that was terse, insulting, demeaning and factually incorrect. As IARC is searching for a new head for this moral train-wreck of an agency, Wild seems determined to leave it in tatters.

As US lawmakers are surely befuddled by such ill-chosen lack of decorum (and by present standards in DC, that is saying something!), the Risk-Monger thought it worthwhile to be the one to answer to Chris Wild’s outrageous claims, trickery and misinformation. The following read-through of Wild’s loathe-letter to America will hopefully shine some light on how horrible IARC has become.  It highlights six different ways Chris Wild, in his letter, lied to the US Congress........To Read More...

Partisan divide erupts on glyphosate-cancer science as IARC supporters push ‘Monsanto Papers’ narrative

Jon Entine, Cameron English | February 7, 2018

“There appear to be serious problems with the science underlying [the International Agency for Research on Cancer]’s [2015] assessment of glyphosate,” said Committee Chair Lamar Smith at the latest round of congressional hearings that could lead to cut off of United States funding of the World Health Organization cancer research sub-committee.

The glyphosate controversy shifted to a new forum this week: The House Science and Technology Committee. As might be expected, it was a highly political and ideological airing, illustrating the sharp differences among scientists, industry groups, regulators and politicians over the controversial herbicide glyphosate, sold exclusively until 2000 by Monsanto under its patent name Roundup, but now widely available in generic form from many suppliers.

The National Institutes of Health’s grant database shows that it gave IARC more than $1.2 million last year and more than $48 million since its inception.

"There are real repercussions to IARC's unsubstantiated claims, which are not backed by reliable data," Smith, the Texas Republican, said.........To Read More....

My Take - The IARC is another great idea that became infested with junk scientists and ideologues.  It's time to dump it.  Quoting Oliver Cromwell tdismissing the Rump Parliament:

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.  

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.  

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes?  

Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?  

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?   Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.  

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.  

I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place. Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

 You might say that about Congress.

Agitators, regulators and predators on the prowl

Corrupt anti-science, anti-industry agencies have gained disturbing power in recent years. This article recounts the incredible example of an EU agency that exerts major influence over the use of chemicals, especially in Europe, but also in the USA and world. As the article and linked sources demonstrate, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has engaged in unbelievably shoddy and even fraudulent science – and rampant collusion with anti-chemical activist groups – to pave the way for predatory lawyers to sue Monsanto and other companies for billions of dollars over phony cancer risks. The only thing that overshadows that behavior is the conniving of one of IARC’s principal scientists. It’s an unbelievable saga.
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They’re going for a knockout and jackpot on a farm chemical, a corporation – and science

Paul Driessen

Legal and scientific ethics seem to have become irrelevant, as anti-chemical agitators, regulators and trial lawyers team up on numerous lawsuits against Monsanto. They’re seeking tens of billions of dollars in jackpot justice, by claiming a chemical in the company’s popular weed killer RoundUp causes cancer.

A key basis for the legal actions is a March 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer ruling that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen.” A previously little known agency in the World Health Organization (WHO), IARC has gained infamy in recent years – critics slammed it for manipulating data and altering or deleting scientific conclusions to advance extreme anti-chemical policy agendas.

Although it is funded by US and European taxpayers – and is at the forefront of controversial policy, legal and regulatory actions – IARC insists that its deliberations, emails, draft reports and all other materials are its private property. Therefore, the agency claims, they are exempt from FOIA requests and even US congressional inquiries. IARC stonewalls all inquiries and advises its staff to talk to no one.

Its 2015 ruling became the primary justification for California listing glyphosate as carcinogenic under Proposition 65, a European Parliament vote to ban the chemical, and a European Commission committee proposal to give it only a five-year extension for further use in the EU. These actions, in turn, have given trial lawyers the ammo they need for their lawsuits – and other legal actions they are already preparing.

Glyphosate is an herbicide. It kills weeds. Used in conjunction with genetically modified RoundUp-Ready crops, it enables farmers to practice no-till farming – wherein a couple of soil spray treatments eliminate the need to till cropland to control weeds. That preserves soil structure and organisms, moisture, organic matter and nutrients; improves drainage and soil biodiversity; reduces erosion; and permits the high-yield farming humanity must practice if we are to feed Earth’s growing populations without having to plow under millions more acres of wildlife habitat. It also reduces labor and tractor fuel consumption.

Banning it just in Britain would cost the UK $1.2 billion a year in reduced crop yields and farm incomes.

Moreover, as UK science writer Matt Ridley  points out, coffee is more carcinogenic than glyphosate. So are numerous other foods and beverages that we consume every day, adds cancer expert Bruce Ames.  Of all dietary pesticides that humans ingest, 99.99% are natural, Ames notes; they are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves against fungi, viruses, insects and other predators.

Indeed, every other regulatory agency and reputable scientific body, going back some 40 years, have universally found that this RoundUp chemical does not cause cancer! The European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), US Environmental Protection Agency and even other WHO experts have all studied glyphosate carefully. They have all said it is safe, non-carcinogenic or “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.”

And yet IARC villainizes glyphosate. In a way, that’s not surprising. Out of 900 chemicals the agency reviewed since it was formed, it found only one was not carcinogenic. Many other chemicals, and even GMO foods, may soon be branded the  same way, especially now that America’s tort industry senses more jackpots from “cooperating closely” with IARC and putting more agency advisors on its payroll.

The latest tactic is to claim the chemical is being detected in some foods and in people’s urine. We can detect parts per trillion! (1 ppt is two teaspoons in 660 million gallons.) But where does actual risk begin?

And how did IARC reach conclusions so completely different from nearly every other expert worldwide, whose studies confirmed glyphosate poses no cancer risk? That’s where this story gets really interesting.

IARC is linked inextricably to Linda Birnbaum’s National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, which gets millions in US taxpayer money. The NIEHS funds and works with Italy’s junk-science factory, the Ramazzini Institute, and is allied with radical elements in US and EU government agencies. One of the most prominent and recurrent names on the list is Dr. Christopher Portier.

According to investigative journalists David Zaruk (Risk-Monger) and Kate Kelland (Reuters), Portier worked for years with Birnbaum at the NIEHS. He has also been a principal US government liaison to IARC, was paid as its only “consulting expert” on the working group that demonized glyphosate as carcinogenic, and did so while also being paid by the US National Institutes for Health – and while simultaneously being paid by the rabidly anti-pesticide group Environmental Defense. Portier has also received over $160,000 as a consultant to law firms that are suing Monsanto and other companies!

Equally outrageous, Portier admitted that, before he was hired as an “expert” on IARC’s glyphosate panel, he “had not looked at” any of the scientific evidence and had no experience with the chemical. He signed his lucrative deal with the lawyers within a week of finishing his work on the panel – but later admitted that he had been working with them for two months: while he was consulting for IARC!

Portier, IARC and the predatory lawyers all worked diligently to keep these arrangements – and major conflicts of interest – a secret. As Ms. Kelland explained in another article, IARC was equally diligent in securing a “guilty verdict” on glyphosate – by ignoring or altering multiple studies and conclusions that exonerated the chemical. That scientific and prosecutorial misconduct was revealed when Kelland compared IARC’s draft and final report, and found numerous indefensible changes and deletions.

In multiple instances, she discovered, the IARC panel simply removed scientists’ conclusions that their studies had found no link between glyphosate and cancer in laboratory animals. In others, the panel inserted a brand new statistical analysis, “effectively reversing” a study’s original finding. Other times, it surreptitiously changed critical language after scientists had agreed to earlier language that made precisely the opposite point from what appeared in the final Monograph 112 report on glyphosate.

One animal pathology report relied on by the US EPA clearly and unequivocally stated that its authors “firmly” and “unanimously” agreed that glyphosate had not caused abnormal growths in mice they had studied. The published IARC monograph simply deleted the sentence.

Overall, Reuters found ten significant changes between the critical draft chapter on animal studies and IARC’s final published monograph. Every one of them either deleted key statements that the Monsanto chemical did not cause tumors, replaced them with assertions that it did cause tumors, or (six times) claimed IARC “was not able to evaluate” a study because of “limited experimental data” included in it.

In addition, IARC panelist Charles Jameson said another study was excluded because “the amount of data in the tables was overwhelming,” and possibly because it may have been submitted an hour late. Dr. Jameson also claimed he didn’t know when, why or by whom any of the changes had been made.

Zaruk’s meticulous and eye-opening analysis of IARC’s swampy, shoddy, deceptive practices, collusion with anti-chemical zealots, blatant conflicts of interest – and six reasons why agency director Christopher Wild should be fired – is must reading for anyone concerned about cancer research and scientific integrity. His discussion of “hazard” versus “risk” assessment is particularly enlightening and valuable.

Many would call this saga blatant corruption, manipulation and fraud. All funded by our tax dollars! It is uncomfortably similar to what we have seen over the years with IPCC and other work on climate change.

The lawyers hope that years of anti-chemical activism, carefully stoked public fears, doctored studies and silencing or marginalizing of contrary voices will bring them a huge jury jackpot – akin to what their brethren recently received in an absurd talcum-powder-causes-cancer case (which was also based on IARC pseudo-science), before the suspect evidence, verdict and award were tossed out on appeal.

It’s likely that the EU and WHO will do little or nothing about this cesspool. Thankfully, the US Congress, particularly Jason Chaffetz  (R-UT) and Lamar Smith  (R-TX), is digging into it. We can only hope that they and their committees will issue and, more importantly, enforce subpoenas. If Portier and other IARC staffers, panelists and hired guns refuse to comply, Chaffetz and Smith (and judges in the Monsanto cases) should arrest and jail them, until they open their mouths, books and deliberations.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)  and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy.