When the Environmental Protection Agency declared that Roundup weed killer was safe for humans, it relied on scientific reports that were secretly ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, according to company emails.
The emails were released by plaintiff attorneys suing Monsanto on behalf of farmers who claim they got cancer of the lymph nodes from working with Roundup, which contains the herbicide glyphosate.
The bogus "reports" were designed to rebut The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) finding in March 2015 that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Monsanto was also working with a corrupt EPA official, who bragged to Monsanto that he deserved a medal if he could kill an investigation of whether the company’s Roundup herbicide causes cancer.
A total of 220 mass tort lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto in Roundup Products Liability Litigation before US District Judge Vince Chhabria in MDL 2741 in the Northern District of California.
Dozens of internal Monsanto emails, released on Aug. 1 by plaintiffs’ lawyers from Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman of Los Angeles, reveal how Monsanto worked with a consulting firm to dupe the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology to publish a supposedly “independent” review of Roundup’s effect on health. The review was published along with four subpapers in September 2016.
According to a Bloomberg report, the emails show that Monsanto's chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in reviewing and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts.
Other emails show that Monsanto’s lead toxicologist, Donna Farmer, who was a co-author of a 2011 study on glyphosate’s reproductive effects, made substantial changes and additions to the paper behind the scenes.
The paper’s Acknowledgment and Declaration of Interest falsely stated that Monsanto did not participate in editing the report, despite the editor's insistence that the authors make clear how they were hired.
