Comment by baq
4 hours ago
> The evidence seems to suggest that glyphosate is basically inert in humans
It actually might be the case and it still can be damaging to people by affecting the gut microbiome:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
> affecting the gut microbiome
That is so vague it can apply to everything. Probably drinking a glass of water affects the gut microbiome.
I would disagree with the claim/usage of “inert” if it was damaging to gut microbiome.
Did you read the paper? I just did. There's no data in it. It's a broad statement about research directions in glyphosate accompanied by concerns that all chemical agricultural supplements are objects of concern, epidemiologically, with Parkinsonism.
I think the point about the microbiome is well taken, for what it's worth. It's a good response to "humans lack a shikemic acid pathway, which is where glyphosate is active".
reference [5] (right in the middle of point 3, the one about gut microbiome) links to https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3233/JPD-230206 which is way too dense for me to unpack in general...
e.g.
I'm definitely not going to go crate digging through the cites in this paper! I think for the level of discourse we keep here on HN, it's more than enough to note (1) glyphosate targets metabolic pathways animals don't have, but (2) bacteria do have those pathways, which could implicate the gut microbiome. Point taken!
In all these discussions, if I could ask for one more data point to be pulled into the context, it's what the other herbicides look like (my understanding: much worse). I think these discussions look different when it's "late 20th century SOTA agriculture writ large vs. modern ideal agriculture with no chemical supplementation" than when it's "Monsanto vs. the world".
A very annoying part of the backstory of the "Monsanto vs. the world" framing are people who care about glyphosate not because they have very fine-grained preferences about specific herbicide risks (glyphosate is probably the only herbicide many of these people know by name), but rather because of glyphosate's relevance to genetically modified crops. I'm automatically allergic to bank-shot appeals to the naturalist fallacy; GM crops are likely to save millions of lives globally.