The GMOA Guns Glyphosate & Misses A Milestone Study On 90,000 People?
Dr. Chandre Dharmawardana
In a press conference held on 11th April, the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) stated that fresh laws should be introduced to take “stern action” against people involved in smuggling in such “harmful chemicals” like glyphosate. The GMOA considers glyphosate to be “harmful” because it allegedly causes cancer and kidney disease. However, just last November, the world’s largest study on the health effects of glyphosate covering over two decades and involving 90,000 people, found NO harmful effects even on applying powerful statistical analysis to scrutinize the data.
Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) on 9-November 2017, the long-term large-numbers study found that there was NO association between glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s popular herbicide RoundUp and any type of cancer. In particular, there was no association with “any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including non-Hogkin Lymphoma and its subtypes”. The new study used long-term data collected through the Agricultural Health Study. The study carefully monitored the health of nearly 90,000 people in Iowa and North Carolina from 1993 to 2010. These included farmers licensed to apply pesticides to their crops, and their spouses. The impact of more than 54,000 pesticide applications is taken into account in the study of which 83 percent contained glyphosate. Many of the farmers had been using glyphosate even before the study. Yet, after some two decades of continuous and intense use of glyphosate herbicides, they found NO significant increase in cancers among those exposed to the chemical.
Most scientists acknowledged the quality, clarity and decisiveness of the study, funded entirely with government and university sources. Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, said:
“This large and careful study shows no significant relationship between Glyphosate use and any cancer. The reported possible association with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is no more than one would expect by chance when looking at 22 different cancer types. In fact the association that comes closest to statistical significance is a negative link with testicular cancer – that is, higher Glyphosate use was associated with lower risk – but again this is just the sort of chance result one would expect.”
So, how did the GMOA miss this decisive, massive study which in fact looks at the type of diseases that the GMOA thinks is caused by glyphosate? Even though we can excuse Ven. Ratana and his acolytes to be out of touch with the scientific community, one would expect that the GMOA would have its committee of mavens when it comes to technical matters, even though we recognized that the GMOA is a trade union with the primary mandate of protecting its own turf.
The most important “non-communicable disease” that the GMOA refers to is cancer. This is precisely what is now definitively excluded from any association with the use of glyphosate, even if the latter were used continuously and intensely for two decades by a farmer. Perhaps the GMOA also has in mind the form of chronic kidney disease of unknown origin (CKDu) that is prevalent mainly in the Rajarata. There is no scientific evidence at all in support of this, while there is compelling evidence against the claim. In Sri Lanka, a small but politically powerful group of individuals led by Ven. Ratana, and a small number of scientists on the fringe of the main scientific community have claimed that chronic kidney disease is caused by the glyphosate in the environment and the food chain, and that too only if arsenic, hard-water and other agents are found in conjunction with glyphosate.
But the cats, dogs, cattle, and many villages in the Rajarata itself where the residents drink water from agricultural channels, rives and lakes do NOT get CKDu, while those who drink water from their private wells, located away from the paddy fields, get CKDu. So there is a strong anti-correlation between agrochemical use and CKDu. We also know that countries like Malaysia or NewZealand, which use many dozens of times more agrochemicals than Sri Lanka have no such chronic diseases.
Furthermore, the 90,000 people monitored by the US-NCI study would have also alerted the researchers to any higher incidence of kidney disease, since many different health indices of these subjects were a part of the inputs to the data base. While the presence of correlations does not establish a causal connection, the LACK of any correlation is a very strong indication that glyphosate cannot be a causative factor in diseases that the GMOA has indicated.
This US-NCI study is just one of the many studies that have come to this conclusion. Over 190 countries of the world are satisfied and approve the use of glyphosate. However, strong political movements that take a nostalgic, romantic and often anti-science approach to agriculture have become very powerful during recent decades. Their strength is the unreasoned fear of the public, fanned by the “MANTHRA” that chemicals “in the food” cause all sorts of chronic diseases. These groups join hands with the commercial interests of large consumer chains that offer “organic-foods”, “natural foods” “holistic foods” etc., catering to the elite classes who also control the politics of most countries, constituting about 1% of the world population. It is not surprising that many educated people and indeed medical doctors who do the “daily grind”, but do not follow the research, fall for the “chemicals are poisoning our food” MANTHRA. In fact, many agrochemicals, if applied in sufficiently high doses can be toxic, as with ALL pharmaceuticals and industrial substances like gasoline, chlorine, or common detergents. Even spices like chillies and cloves are potent toxins when their familiar-use thresholds are exceeded.
