The World Health Organization has deleted important findings from a report on the weedkiller glyphosate. According to a Reuters report, the final version of the report omitted the experimental result that glyphosate couldn’t be linked to cancer.
One effect of the changes to the draft, reviewed by Reuters in a comparison with the published report, was the removal of multiple scientists’ conclusions that their studies had found no link between glyphosate and cancer in laboratory animals.
When Reuters inquired about the changes that make glyphosate look much worse, the WHO refused to answer.
The mean green machine
In Germany, where I live, the Green party has used the final WHO report for an relentless attack on industrial farming.
Even the very low probability of a link between glyphosate and cancer in humans from this version of the report was enough to send the media into a frenzy.
Green party politicians were all over the news spreading fear of the chemical. The fact that modern techniques can detect the slightest quantities of anything didn’t help.
Drink heartily
When glyphosate was found in beer, the Greens wouldn’t stop warning about the dangers. The big problem with their reasoning: You would have to drink thousands of liters of beer daily to reach the risk threshold.
Certainly the alcohol would kill you long before the remote chance of getting cancer arises. But that finer point was lost in the cancer panic.
This development should worry anyone who cares about feeding the growing world population.
Feeding the world
Glyphosate as a weedkiller allows farmers to increase the yield of their crops. This in turn results in more abundant and cheaper food for the world.
The constant attacks on affordable and effective food production call into question whether the Green party actually cares about humanity.
Millions of people can afford food thanks to chemicals like glyphosate. Without those chemicals we would face mass starvation worldwide.
Even if mass produced food carried a small risk of cancer, the certainty of starvation is much worse than the unlikely possibility of getting cancer.
We should be grateful that scientific and commercial progress allows us to feed the world safely. Those who try to sabotage these developments should be ashamed of themselves.