Prosecution alleging that Roundup caused cancer may go ahead

SAN FRANCISCO – Hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the Roundup weed killer caused a big stumbling on Tuesday when a US judge ruled that cancer victims and their families could present a testimonial. expert linking 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 trial, 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 claims to go ahead, although 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 is facing hundreds of lawsuits filed 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 . [19659002] 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"

these trials with solid evidence that prove that 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 reviewing the decision. "

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

The judge wanted to determine whether science supported that glyphosate can cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has been correctly and meet 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 said that a 2017 National Institutes of Health study 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 the glyphosate and the risk of NHL, "she said about 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 subject to more and more scrutiny after the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization in France, ranked it as a "probable human carcinogen" 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 Search Agency as an outlier.

The US Environmental Protection Agency claims that glyphosate is safe for people when it is used according to label guidelines

a label stating that it is known to cause cancer , saying that the warning is misleading because almost all regulators have concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic.