← Back to context

Comment by seec

1 day ago

I quickly checked the first study linked and it's a meta analysis.

It relies on studies in rodent that get exposed to amounts of glyphosate that are absurdly high. Equivalent human absorption would be in the gram range, to the point where someone eating 250g of bread everyday would have 1% of this mass ingested as glyphosate.

By this standard, things like vitamins and minerals are toxic as well.

It makes no sense, to me it looks like bad science.

You have not assessed the facts critically. The argument in favor of glyphosate's safety is that, as the herbicidal action is the result of disrupting an amino acid synthesis pathway that in animals does not exist, it is therefore harmless to animals. This argument is already fallacious: all it does is establish the mechanism by which it is harmful to plants. These studies evidence that glyphosate is harmful to animals and investigate the mechanisms underlying the harm. The fact that these experimental conditions are not the same conditions under which glyphosate is consumed in the food chain does not make it bad science, because science is concerned with knowledge that generalizes (e.g. biological mechanisms and pathways) and these mechanisms cannot be gleaned by reproducing the conditions already in place.

The comparison with vitamins is not relevant, and to bring it up suggests you are not thinking clearly.

I thought that from reading the first part of the first meta sample too, but in that same paragraph is mention of a second study that apparently did find relevant issues at low doses in vitro of human cells at environmentally relevant concentration levels.

In fact the purpose of meta analysis is to compare and contrast the conflicting research and results on a topic. It's very useful when forming a scientific view.