Line 4Line 4 Copyic/close/grey600play_circle_outline - material
Answers

Question

What truths are in the following article? httparticles.mercola.comsitesarticlesarchive20140508heavymetalsglyphosatehealtheffects.aspx?xcid20140508leadfacebookdocutmsourcefacebookdocutmmediumsocialutmcontentleadutmcampaign20140508

Submitted by: vorwermi


Answer

Expert response from Dan Goldstein

Former Senior Science Fellow and Lead, Medical Sciences and Outreach, Monsanto Company

Friday, 09/01/2015 12:37

What truths are in this article?  I would agree that, especially as our population ages, neurological diseases and autoimmune disorders will continue to be a significant disease burden.  The same is true of cardiovascular disease and cancer, each of which kill about half of those who do not suffer from accidental causes of death. 

 

Beyond that, nothing I can find.  Keep in mind that a hypothesis is not a truth; it is an idea whose validity remains to be properly tested. Dr. Seneff and colleagues have taken a whole bunch of poorly substantiated or incorrect information and turned it into a theory.  For example, if this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens... then glyphosate causes autism. This kind of approach depends on every step along the way being true.  

 

Thus, while it is tempting to search for a grain of truth in here -- beware.   The temptation is to use the existence of one correct piece of information to extrapolate the truth of the entire chain of hypothetical events.  It does not work that way; each individual part needs to be true on its own merit.  

 

We have serious health challenges and this article certainly won’t help anyone address them because the underlying claims by Seneff and her colleagues are not only unsubstantiated, but some are based on incomplete facts.  See what other folks, the kind who don’t try and use “natural language processing (aka a field of computer science, artificial intelligence and linguistics)” to address issues in fundamental biology have to say:

 

  1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamar-haspel/condemning-monsanto-with-_b_3162694.html
  2. I Was Going To Write Some Words But Keith Kloor Beat Me To It
  3. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2013/04/26/when-media-uncritically-cover-pseudoscience/#more-11062
  4. http://www.biofortified.org/community/forum/agriculture-group5/growing-methods-forum26/glyphosate-disease-and-semiotic-entropy-thread302.0/
  5. http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2013/04/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about.html#!/2013/04/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about.html
  6. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/30/is_glyphosate_poisoning_everyone.php