Judge: Hundreds of lawsuits alleging Roundup caused by cancer can go forward | Agriculture



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SAN FRANCISCO – Hundreds of lawsuits against herpes Roundup caused a big problem last week when a US judge ruled that cancer victims and their families could present expert testimony connecting the herbicide to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

. District Judge Vince Chhabria said that the active ingredient of Roundup – glyphosate – can cause the disease seemed "rather weak". Yet the opinions of three experts linking glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma were not "junk science" that should be excluded. A lawsuit, the judge ruled.

The lawsuits say giant agrochemical Monsanto, who makes Roundup, had known for a long time about the risk of cancer, but did not warn people. The ruling allows the claims to go forward, even though the judge warned that it could be a "daunting challenge" to convince him to allow a jury to hear testimony that glyphosate was responsible for individual cancer diagnoses.

between cancer and glyphosate. Monsanto vehemently denied such a link, claiming that hundreds of studies have established that the chemical is safe.

The company faces hundreds of lawsuits in federal and state courts that claim the opposite. Chrabria presides over 400.

A separate lawsuit is underway in San Francisco in a lawsuit brought by a dying gardener of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma – the first case a jury heard alleging that Roundup caused cancer . [19659003] In response to Chhabria's decision, Monsanto Vice President Scott Partridge noted that the judge had excluded some of the experts from the complainants and called for the opinion of those who allowed him to testify "shaking"

trials with strong evidence that prove there is absolutely no connection between glyphosate and cancer, "said Partridge in a statement." We have sympathy for all those who suffer from cancer, but science clearly shows that glyphosate was not the cause. "

Michael Baum, plaintiffs' attorney, said that he was still in the process of review the decision. "

" We look forward to the next step – getting the day to court, "he said in a statement.

The judge wanted to determine if the science argued that glyphosate can cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has been correctly tested and met other requirements to be considered valid.

Chhabria spent a week in March hearing testimony from duels of epidemiologists. He asked them about the potential strengths and weaknesses of glyphosate cancer research.

Beate Ritz, epidemiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, testified to the applicants that his review of the scientific literature had led him to conclude that glyphosate and glyphosate-based compounds such Roundup can cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Ritz stated that a study by the National Institutes of Health in 2017 that found no badociation between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had major defects

. his own expert, Lorelei Mucci, a cancer epidemiologist at Harvard TH "When you look at the body of epidemiological literature on this subject, there is no evidence of a positive badociation between glyphosate and the risk of NHL, "she said of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In his ruling on Tuesday, the judge ruled that both Ritz and Mucci could testify before a jury

Monsanto developed glyphosate in the 1970s, and the herbicide is now sold in more than 160 countries. California farmers, the most agriculturally productive state in the United States, use it on more than 200 types of crops. The herbicide has been the subject of an examination more and more thorough after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (France), which is part of the World Health Organization. , listed as "likely carcinogen for humans" in 2015

A series of lawsuits against Monsanto followed, and California added glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer . Monsanto has attacked the opinion of the international research agency as an outlier.

The US Environmental Protection Agency claims that glyphosate is safe for people when used in accordance with label guidelines

Roundup bears a label stating that it is known to cause the cancer.

Dozens of countries have introduced partial or total bans on the use of glyphosate, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France, Germany and Italy. Netherlands, Spain and Sweden

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