Dozens of internal emails “reveal how Monsanto worked with an outside consulting firm to induce” a scientific journal “to publish a purported ‘independent’ review of Roundup’s health effects that appears to be anything but,” says Bloomberg Businessweek. The review, published as a supplement by Critical Reviews in Toxicology, rebutted the conclusion by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, is probably carcinogenic to humans.
The main article in the supplement said Monsanto paid the consulting firm to assemble a panel of experts but had no hand in their work or their manuscripts. The emails showed Monsanto’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists “were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts. At one point, Heydens even vetoed explicit requests by some of the panelists to tone down what one of them wrote was the review’s ‘inflammatory criticisms of IARC,” says Bloomberg Businessweek. The emails were released on Aug. 1 by lawyers for people who say they contracted cancer from contact with Roundup.
Monsanto and many regulatory bodies say glyphosate is safe at the levels experienced by people. The IARC classification in 2015 set off a global debate about glyphosate, the most world’s widely used herbicide. Monsanto says it performed “cosmetic editing” of the papers assembled for the 2016 supplement and that papers were the product of an independent review, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.