Monsanto, the producers of Roundup®, continues persistent attacks and attempts at intimidation directed towards the highly accredited International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) scientists, who found the glyphosate in Roundup® to be dangerous to human health. The IARC of the World Health Organization (WHO) classified glyphosate a Group 2A probable human carcinogen in 2015, after systematically evaluating public and peer-reviewed studies.
Monsanto is directly attempting to undermine the IARC findings, which reveal the serious risks of exposure to their most profitable herbicide, Roundup®. Monsanto claims that the evaluation of these scientists, who are highly trained in epidemiology, is “junk science” and is carrying out a campaign of misinformation, bullying, smearing, and lobbying against them. The IARC produced a brief outlining Monsanto’s efforts at intimidation, in which they explain that Monsanto is both criticizing the legitimacy of their findings and attacking their governmental funding sources.
Monsanto claims that the IARC scientists are incompetent and politically biased. In fact, the IARC rigorously explored and disclosed all conflicting interests before the glyphosate review and an independent assessment of potential conflicting interests was also carried out for The Lancet Oncology publication. Monsanto’s lawyers have been attempting to influence IARC members by writing them intimidating letters. Monsanto and umbrella industry organizations including pesticide trade group CropLife America are also lobbying various factions of the U.S. Government to protect glyphosate and undermine and defund the IARC. Specifically, they lobbied the EPA regarding the experts in their glyphosate review panel and lobbied the U.S. House of Representatives in an effort to strip the IARC of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. CropLife International has also approached Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands regarding this matter.
In response to Monsanto’s lobbying against IARC funding, the Acting Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Douglas R. Lowy, M.D., wrote a letter on behalf of the NCI and the NIH to IARC Director, Christopher P. Wild, Ph.D. In this letter regarding the IARC Monographs (studies) on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks, he assured Wild that NCI supports the IARC and that their Monographs program “has been highly regarded within the scientific community for its systematic, rigorous, comprehensive reviews and evaluations of evidence on the carcinogenicity of a wide range of human exposures based on the current state of the science.”
The widespread lobbying against the IARC’s scientific findings is part of Monsanto’s transparent effort to protect their economic interests above all else and to suppress evidence of the dangers of glyphosate/Roundup®. The Miller Firm is currently accepting clients who have developed non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma after exposure to Roundup®. If this has happened to you, please visit our Roundup Lawsuit page to learn more and request a free consultation, or call the Miller Firm at 1-800-882-2525.
