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0xbadcafebee 5 hours ago

Important to note it's not Glyphosate on trial, it's Roundup. There is a huge gulf between studies and conclusions on Glyphosate, and studies and conclusions on Roundup. Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide known to mankind. Roundup - which includes Glyphosate, in addition to other additives - may be unnecessarily dangerous.

Also worth noting that Monsanto could stop selling Roundup entirely, and it wouldn't really matter. Monsanto's Glyphosate patent expired, so you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Distancing the pesticide from the "evil corporation" might actually make people less afraid of it.

keane 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A key paper on its safety from 2000 was retracted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161125

Like the tobacco industry before them, a Monsanto employee proposed producing a scientific paper with outside scientists: “by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak” — see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-safety-art...

tptacek 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There isn't one single study that glyphosate safety is based on. It's an intensively studied substance.

keane 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I didn’t claim there was only one study. The concern is the corporate culture introducing biases into studies. In the tobacco industry, this was a pattern.

tptacek 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There was overwhelming evidence, some of it preceding modern human health science, that smoking was damaging.

pfdietz 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

Indeed. It's rare in environmental medicine to see an effect as strong as that from smoking. The straw the tobacco industry clung to for a while (it was debunked) was that people who had cancer smoked to sooth their lungs (or, that cancer caused smoking, not vice versa.)

parineum 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead.

Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical.

It really seems like you're looking for a reason to justify Roundup as uniquely bad, in the face of evidence, with extremely vague statements.

victorbjorklund 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They literally said that Roundup is bad because of the OTHER chemicals that it contains in addition to Glyphosate which is not dangerous. Then it makes total sense to use pure Glyphosate instead of Roundup.

Of course you can claim that they are wrong about their claim. But that is another point.

parineum 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Unspecified Glyphosate product isn't better because it's not Roundup. If some ingredient in Roundup is dangerous, let's drop the Glyphosate conversation and look for herbicides without that other mystery chemical.

2 hours ago | parent | next [-]
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victorbjorklund 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That makes no sense. If you accept that Glyphosate is 100% harmless. Why on earth would you drop it?

recursive 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Why on earth would you drop [Glyphosate]?

You wouldn't. You'd drop the conversation regarding whether it was safe.