Science shouldn’t be decided in the courtroom
The World Health Organisation (WHO) have a strange and highly misleading terminology when talking about the causes cancer. I first came across this issue a few years ago when the WHO classified red meat as a “Known Carcinogen”. I frequently hear vegetarians and vegans use this classification as a support for the cause of not eating meat, telling people that red meat causes cancer.
As a vegetarian myself, I however, do not make this argument. Not because I think its fine to eat meat, I think the moral reasoning around abstaining from meat is strong enough to support the cause on its own. But specifically because the “known cause of cancer” definition means very little in day to day life.
The incredibly misleading cancer distinction made by the WHO
The WHO classification system indicates the likelihood of a relationship between a factor and cancer, not the strength of the relationship.
This is a spectacularly important aspect to understand.
Smoking and eating red meat are both placed in the category of Known Carcinogens, however, smoking is almost an order of magnitude more likely to cause cancer when undertaken frequently then eating read meat 1, a factor that is not included in this definition.
To put this another way, the evidence is strong and reliable that these two products cause cancer, but the risk of developing cancer is much much higher for a frequents smoker than a frequent meat-eater.
Other Known Carcinogens include furniture and cabinet making, Chinese-style salted fish and chimney sweeping, as well as the dangerous and high risk cancer causing agents present in the manufacturing industry 2.
Glyphosate
On Friday of last week, the agrochemical company Monsanto was ordered to pay $289 million dollars in compensation to a man that claimed that a product that they produce caused his cancer 3.
Glyphosate. Image credit Wikimedia
Dewayne Johnson, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014. He regularly used the RangerPro weedkiller in his day to day work as a groundsman at a school in California. The RangerPro weedkiller contains the chemical herbicide Glyphosate which formed the focus of this case.
This was the first case alleging the link between glyphosate and cancer to go to trial and, obviously, the first where the claimant won.
Glyphosate exists in the category below "Known Carcinogens"; "Probable Carcinogens"4. Putting the chemical compound in category where we are less sure if it can cause cancer then those mentioned above.
This terminology has a habit of creating spectacular misleading headlines, as was discovered in 2016 when the WHO classified “very hot drinks” as a Probable Carcinogen.
Image credit Pixabay
The Independent, June 15th 2016: Very hot drinks ‘probably’ cause cancer, UN says
The Spectator Health, June 16th 2016: Very hot drinks ‘probably’ causes cancer so leave that tea to cool off
The Daily Mail, June 15th 2016: Very hot drinks ‘probably’ cause cancer of the oesophagus, world health chiefs warn.
The Telegraph, June 15th 2016: Hot drinks probably cause cancer, warns World Health Organisation
Not even the quotes around ‘probably’ for this last one, that’s very bold of them!
Note how these articles do not say that hot drinks will cause cancer, or that a specific case of oesophagus cancer was caused by drinking hot drinks.
Why this has me worried
The reliance on this definition in this court case rings alarm bells for me. While it is perfectly natural to want to attribution a specific cause to a cancer it is particularly difficult to do so on a single case basis. Cancer is a game of probabilities and one that is effected by many thousands of factors.
A while back I wrote a post on the topic of the "Vaccine causes [blank]” problem, in which I talk about how a simple ”this causes that” stories can get out of hand and how they can be particularly difficult to correct for after the rumour is let lose into the wild. Combine that with reporting such as the following and what you have is a particularly convincing argument.
The epidemiology of cancer is spectacularly complicated. I don’t blame anyone for thinking that this “Glyphosate causes cancer” theory has now been confirmed due to this ruling. However, trust me, this is not how you want scientific issues to be settled.
An emotional, heartfelt, testimony is not a viable substitute for a series of rigorous scientific studies followed by meta-analysis.
A jury of twelve members of the public is not the same as the combined consciences of the scientific community.
In science nothing is as simple as “the [blank] causes the development of someone’s [blank]” so the precedent set by the case here is worrying. Farmers currently warn that banning the chemical could cut crop yields by more than 10%, costing the economy hundreds of millions of pounds 3. As someone that has lost many nights of sleep worrying about global food security, this has me deeply concerned.
Warning: I had two cups of tea and two cups of coffee while writing this post today (both of them very hot!). Please consult a medical professional if you intend to do similarly in the future.
About me
My name is Richard, I blog under the name of @nonzerosum. I’m a PhD student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I write mostly on Global Health, Effective Altruism and The Psychology of Vaccine Hesitancy. If you’d like to read more on these topics in the future follow me here on steemit or on twitter @RichClarkePsy.
References:
[1] The Guardian: Meat and tobacco: the difference between risk and strength of evidence
[2] The Guardian: 116 things that can give you cancer
[3] The BBC: Weedkiller cancer ruling: What do we know about glyphosate?
[4] Guyton, K.Z., Loomis, D., Grosse, Y., El Ghissassi, F., Benbrahim-Tallaa, L., Guha, N., Scoccianti, C., Mattock, H. and Straif, K., 2015. Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate. The Lancet Oncology, 16(5), pp.490-491.
It wasn't quite clear to me from reading your post. Are you saying that the jury used the WHO's classification as glyphosate as a "Probable Carcinogens" in order to reach their decision?
I agree effect size of the cancer association should bear in both the judgement and damages. For example, if the magnitude of a glyphosate-cancer association is low, then the probability that the cancer was caused by other factors is higher. You could have a situation where glyphosate is associated with cancer, but with such a small effect, that there will never be a siutation where one's cancer is over 50% likely to have been caused by glyphosate. Now, I haven't actually reviewed the association studies here so I cannot comment if this is the case.
There argument seems to have been that there wasn't adequate warning on the product. With the jury concluding that:
All I can see is that the lawyers case rested heavily on the classification from WHO. I struggle to think what other evidence could be presented to make this statement accurate. However, like yourself, I have not reviewed the background literature on the subject. Probably best if I do at some point, lots of anti-vaccine people are talking about this at the moment so it's probably going to stick around for an long time.
The Center for Food Safety Report that I mentioned in my other comment cites a lot of relevant literature and mentions some differences of opinion and evidence. After reading the entire thing, I think we should demand a ban of glyphosate. This alone should give us all pause: "EPA’s latest high-end
estimate of infant exposure to glyphosate exceeds the level it regarded as safe in the 1980s;17 and is five times higher than the maximum level suggested by independent scientists." BTW, the EPA's "safe" level of exposure is 6 times higher than Europe's.
BTW I think you forgot to close the bold formatting in:
Also I assume you know, but with markdown you can do:
Nice one, thanks!
I thought the same when I saw the article on the weed killer. Don't get me wrong, I don't like Monsanto at all because of their business practices around their weed killers and GMO seeds. I don't think any company should own seeds once they are out in the wild, even GMO ones. I also believe that the burden of proof for many GMO products should be high, since once released, there is little we can do if they cause damage and we know for a fact that businesses will fight against individuals claiming damage. So while it seems unlikely that this weed killer could be definititively linked to a specific person's cancer, it does appear that there is evidence indicating that it is likely carcinogenic. This Center for Food Safety report sums it up well: "One important distinction here is that you can choose to wear sunscreen or drink less [alchohol], but for most of us it is difficult to
reduce our exposure to chemicals like glyphosate." Keep in mind that these companies often fight to obfuscate evidence that their products are harmful. On the whole I say no to them, unless they can be carefully contained, which, of course, they cannot be.
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On the whole I agree with you there, the burden of proof should be high (its very similar to vaccine development in this respect).
My view with this area of development, is that we are going to have to find ways to feed everyone during a century where population is increasing and the amount of land and fresh water for crops is reducing.
GMO and related pesticides are a spectacular way to do this. Us in high-income countries can fight against this because ultimately we’re always going to be largely fine either way, but development in this area is really going to be essential to avoid famine elsewhere. It’s really hard. I’m not arguing that we avoid the safety side, but instead trust in the scientific consensus, which currently has this product as a safe way to farm (much safer than the pesticide we used to use). Yes, science can be sometimes corrupted by big business but it is the only system of knowing that we have at our disposal.
But in the case of Roundup Ready crops, there are now so many weeds that are roundup resistant that farmers are now spraying other chemicals as well. So the chemical warfare just keeps escalating. Perhaps the real problem is overpopulation.
There are various issues with the current systems in place, the way the media portrays scientific results is incredibly misleading. This leads to the lay person thinking they have knowledge from a credible source which is backed by scientific evidence, their belief is "proven" by science.
Cycle
Another issues is that we, as a population, have been conditioned to believe that science is infallible, that is can not be questioned. however, any real scientist will tell you that there are no unequivocal truths. Science does not "prove" anything, it supports a theory until a better theory is presented.
What this means is that as much as we may believe that we have "the final answer" right now, in 10-50-100 years from now we will look back on this time and discuss how primitive our thinking was.... just like we do now looking back on theories which are no longer supported.
It can be a hard pill to swallow, that mankind is not as smart as we think we are and science is not as fantastic as some would try have us believe. Acknowledging science has limitations and what those limitations are is the first step to understanding any kind of scientific data presented, by media, or in any way.
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Ha! Yes, that cycle looks very familiar to me! Without a doubt you are correct here. However, it’s really hard not to fall into the trap with a story like this. That said I think the BBC have did a surprisingly good job with a couple of pieces of reporting they did on this 1 2
As a whole, as well, I think sci-com is getting better. Here in the UK I think we learnt a lot from the Wakefield scandal and now manage to have a MMR uptake over 95% and a particularly strong HPV uptake (a vaccine that could have easily have gone the other way a few years ago).
Thanks for your comment and resteem, I really appreciate it!
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I think the decision in this case is partly a result of the way the American legal system works. If you are a victim of an accident/disease the only way you can get financial help is to show it is someone’s fault. In countries with public healthcare and some kind of automatic compensation for accidents there isn’t such a great need to sue someone.
I agree that it needs to make be made very clear by what percentage something raises the risk of cancer. ‘Hot drinks may raise the risk of cancer by .001%’ doesn’t make such a good headline.
Yes, that is an excellent point that I didn’t not think of. It also explains why some courts pay out for dubious vaccine claims.