I appreciate Dean's comments and tendency to add balance and a contrary
view to these discussions and willingness to read and research long
dreary, detailed articles.
Frankly, given Randy's disclaimer, the subsequent discussion and my lack
of time and interest, I had only taken a glance.
This line in the abstract struck me as a bit over the top: "Consequences
are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet,
which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart
disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s
disease." AFAIK, these diseases have been around far longer than Roundup.
Then we encounter this line from the body of the study, " As a
consequence, measurement of its presence in food is practically
nonexistent.", we wonder further and some of us (me) stop reading
Persevering, however pays off. It gets mope plausible.
On the whole, the paper seems -- on superficial reading -- to be well
researched, reasonable and plausible to me.
"Well researched, reasonable and plausible" is not the same as fact. The
paper seems highly speculative and does not pretend to be otherwise.
It seems the references, which I did not investigate, are to lab work
and as we have debated here at length, perhaps what is seen in the lab
may not manifest itself in the outside world in any obvious manner due
to buffering effects of the environment, dilution and other unknown factors.
All in all, I appreciate that people are thinking about these things and
even though the details are over my head and outside my interest area,
if there is anything to this, I'm sure we'll see more in future.
As it happens, we are seeing decreased vitality in our bees and are
unable to pinpoint a cause. At one time I said that if there was a
continent-wide change in motor fuel additives that affected the bees,
we'd never make the association. Roundup is ubiquitous and the use has
been escalating in recent decades, and during that time we have seen
changes in bee survival. Of course this is a coincidence, and
coincidence and cause are not the same, however coincidences always
merit close investigation.
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