NY Politicians to Science: Drop Dead
THE latest anti-science frenzy has come to New York.
Last month, a trial-lawyer linked environmental advocacy outfit said children’s cereals contain a weed-killing chemical with dubious health risks. Clickbait stories flooded social media, frightened parents and riled New York Sen. Chuck Schumer.
The substance in question is glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s widely used Roundup herbicide. The Environmental Working Group’s report — which was posted online, not published in any scientific journal — was released less than a week after jurors returned an eye-popping $289 million personal-injury verdict against the Bayer-owned agribusiness giant.
The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, frequently used Roundup as a school groundskeeper. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he sued, blaming the product for his illness.
Officials around the globe responded to the verdict by suspending use of the herbicide. Overprotective New York politicians Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and Rep. Jose Serrano — admitting there is no “iron- clad evidence of harm” — called for a ban on glyphosate-based products in public parks.
But scientists and health officials disagree with the jury’s assessment and the levels of glyphosate the EWG deems unsafe.
The National Cancer Institute published a sprawling study last year that found no evidence of an association between glyphosate and cancer. The EPA, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Canadian health officials and the European Food Safety Commission all agree the weed-killing ingredient likely isn’t carcinogenic.
Only one panel has concluded otherwise, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an affiliate of the World Health Organization. And even that assessment is flimsy. The agency categorizes the compound as “probably carcinogenic,” a turn of phrase that California Northern District Judge Vince Chhabria notes has no “quantitative significance.” In a July ruling, the federal judge, overseeing similar suits, wrote that “evidence of a causal link” between glyphosate and lymphoma “seems rather weak.”
When Reuters investigated the IARC’s findings, it discovered that one scientist, Aaron Blair, suppressed evidence from the National Cancer Institute’s report, which he himself worked on. Under oath, Blair admitted the IARC would’ve concluded differently had that data been included.
Yet plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to unleash a wave of lawsuits. Johnson’s reps told Law.com that following news of the eight-figure payout, 200 people called wanting to join the litigation. There are more than 8,000 such suits already pending in state and federal court. At the same time, another courtroom battle involving unsettled science is unfolding nationally. In July, a Missouri jury awarded $4.7 billion to 22 women in a suit against Johnson & Johnson claiming the company’s talcum powder products cause ovarian cancer, when the evidence to back up such accusations is virtually nonexistent. Even the American Cancer Society doesn’t buy into that.
So how do juries keep returning these massive verdicts?
Science and the tort system are in constant conflict. Lawyers don’t need to prove a given product causes cancer or any other injury. As the plaintiff ’s attorney in the Roundup suit told jurors, “What we have to prove to you is not yes, absolutely, it causes cancer,” just “I’m not sure, but I think so.”
The most benign chemicals can be classified as cancerous. Earlier this year, after years of litigation brought by a group that shares an address with a plaintiff ’s law firm, a California court jittered java drinkers when it ordered coffee shops to display cancer warnings. The original lawsuit was filed under Proposition 65, a scientifically illiterate Golden State law that allows private attorneys to enforce warning label rules — and recoup big fees.
Since 2000, New York-based businesses spent $20.5 million settling Prop 65 claims, with 73 percent going directly to attorneys’ fees.
Fortunately, California regulators propose to exempt coffee from future blacklists.
It’s time New York politicians took a hint and started putting truth above panic.