By Craig Rucker
What price do we pay when we abandon science to the mob?
Science has provided safer, more reliable means to feed and care for people and our planet today than ever before.
Most of us who take today's prosperity for granted are only a few generations from hunger. Ask people who lived though the Great Depression or Soviet Socialism while they're still with us. Ask a Venezuelan.
The billions recently awarded by juries against the maker of the weedkiller Roundup, to people suffering from cancer, are perfect examples of science losing out to emotion and ignorance.
There may well be no scholar working and writing anywhere in America today with greater dedication, persistence and factual authority on these issues than CFACT's Paul Driessen.
Driessen lays out the facts on Roundup at CFACT.org:
Introduced in 1974, glyphosate is licensed in 130 countries. Millions of farmers, homeowners and gardeners have made it the world’s most widely used herbicide – and one of the most intensely studied chemicals in history. Four decades and 3,300 studiesby respected agencies and organizations worldwide have concluded that glyphosate is safe and noncarcinogenic, based on assessments of actual risk.
Reviewers include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Germany’s Institute for Risk Assessment, and Australia’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. Another reviewer, Health Canada, noted that “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.” Therefore no need to warn anyone.
The National Cancer Institute’s ongoing Agricultural Health Study evaluated 54,000 farmers and commercial pesticide applicators for over two decades – and likewise found no glyphosate-cancer link.
What if a confluence of greedy attorneys, anti-capitalist pressure groups and juries without basic scientific education win the day? What if the makers of not just safe methods of killing weeds, but also the fertilizers, and high-yield, drought and pest resistant crops that feed us decide the risk is just too much?
Perhaps it will take empty bellies to make people regret tearing down their nation's energy and agricultural infrastructure.
Cancer is terrible. Our hearts naturally ache for those afflicted with it. Last year CFACT lost our founding president, David Rothbard, to cancer. He was a friend and mentor to each of us. We miss him every day.
Cancer has always been with us. David's cancer wasn't anyone's fault. Neither were the cancers suffered by the people suing companies that produce weed-killing glyphosates for billions.
Advanced science bought David time he would not have had in ages past. He almost won.
This is the best time ever to fight cancer and win. It is the best time ever for human health and food security.
Paul Driessen labors every day to inform people of the essential facts they need to keep it so.
Keep it up, Paul.