August 10, 2017 — New evidence released by lawyers for 1,000 people with lymphoma shows how Monsanto secretly edited several “independent” safety studies on Roundup (glyphosate).
The evidence includes 70 documents with email correspondence between the study authors and Monsanto employees.
Monsanto’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other employees were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing several “independent” studies on the health effects of glyphosate.
Monsanto paid for the studies soon after glyphosate was re-classified as a “probable human carcinogen” by a group of cancer-research experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2015.
Intertek Group Plc. was paid by Monsanto to publish a review of the cancer risk from glyphosate in September 2016, titled “An Independent Review of the Carciongenic Potential of Glyphosate” in Critical Reviews in Toxicology.
Intertek’s review concluded that glyphosate was not likely to cause cancer in humans. The problem is that Intertek claimed that its experts “were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company” and “neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel’s manuscripts prior to submission to the journal.”
Those statements are contradicted by emails proving that Monsanto was contacting Intertek’s experts and reviewing their manuscripts.
Monsanto also made sure the final papers were highly critical of the World Health Organization’s conclusions. For example, Mr. Heydens himself vetoed an explicit request by an epidemiologist in Denmark to remove 6 “inflammatory” statements about the WHO conclusions.
In another example, Monsanto’s lead toxicologist, Donna Farmer, made substantial changes and additions to a 2011 study on the risk of birth defects from glyphosate — but her name was not listed in the co-authors or acknowledgments.
Monsanto insists that the edits were merely cosmetic. The publishers of Critical Reviews in Toxicology are also reviewing the matter.
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