Dr. Heather Hying (18:59)
So, okay, so again, abstract of this now retracted paper from 26 years ago on that purported to conclude that glyphosate was safe, effective, I don't know, safe for human health. Reviews on the safety of glyphosate and Roundup herbicide that have been conducted by several regulatory agencies and scientific institutions worldwide have concluded that there is no indication of any human health concern. Nevertheless, questions regarding their safety are periodically raised. This review was undertaken to produce a current and comprehensive safety evaluation and risk assessment for humans. It includes assessments of glyphosate, its major breakdown product, ampa, its Roundup formulations, and the. I don't even know, and the something surfactant used in Roundup formulations worldwide. The studies evaluated in this review included the performed this is going to be tough to read. Included those performed for regulatory purposes. Something something, something. I'm going to just skip a bunch of this because it's actually very hard to read with retraction listed written through it. Multiple lifetime feeding studies have failed to demonstrate any tumorigenic potential for glyphosate. Accordingly, it was concluded that glyphosate is non carcinogenic glyphosate. AMPA and POEA were not teratogenic or developmentally toxic. There were no effects on fertility or reproductive parameters in something generation reproduction studies. On and on and on. Again, really hard to read exactly what is being said here. Skipping to the end of the abstract. Acute risks were assessed by comparison of oral LD50 values to estimated maximum acute human exposure. It was concluded that under present and expected conditions of use, Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans. I will the only thing else I'm going to share from the paper itself again retracted published in 2000 long the sort of the gold standard for what people point to when they want to assure you that glyphosate is safe. The herbicidal properties of glyphosate were discovered by Monsanto Company scientists in 1970. It is a non selective herbicide that inhibits plant growth through interference with the production of essential aromatic amino acids by inhibition of the enzyme enolpyruvalsikimate phosphate synthase which is responsible for the biosynthesis of chorismate and intermediate in phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis. This pathway for biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids is not shared by members of the animal kingdom, making blockage of this pathway an effective inhibitor of amino acid biosynthesis exclusive to plants. So right there at the very beginning of the introduction we have one of the primary claims that is made often about glyphosate and about other herbicides. Said this only works on plants, we assure you, or in some cases with some herbicides, this only works on monocots. This is only going to work on grasses or the opposite on dicots and not monocots. So there's often these claims given the particular way that the molecular mechanism of action is, and given that we know we're very very sure that this doesn't exist in pick your clade in this case animals, therefore it's totally safe in animals. And it's true that we believe that it is true that this pathway for biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids is not shared by us. For one thing, we know, for instance, that tryptophan is what we call an essential amino acid. Essential amino acid being a list of amino acids that we cannot synthesize ourselves and therefore they are essential in our d. So that much is true. But like the. The most obvious problem that. That pops out to me from this, and I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this paper, having just been made aware of it, you know, a couple days ago, is that we're not just made of us. We contain multitudes. We have many, many. In fact, you know, we have. We have so many species of. An abundance of individuals, of bacteria, mostly, you know, the good bacteria that you will always hear about in our guts and throughout our bodies. And I don't. I have not found any evidence that we are confident that those bacteria don't have their pathways impaired by glyphosate. And in fact, I find some evidence that in fact, they do. So the human body itself may actually be able to do what it needs to do, even in the presence of this ridiculous herbicide. But given that we aren't alone, like none of us is simply an individual that is only made up of mammal, we're also made up of all these bacteria. And if it's impairing the ability of our good bacteria to do what they do, then it's impairing our ability to do what we do.
