A Cancer Epidemiologist Discusses Glyphosate Claims

The report saturated the popular media, claims that the herbicide glyphosate increased cancer risk by 41%.  This alarming statistic punctuated news reports, based on a new analysis of old data performed by a statistics team at the University of Washington.  These claims did not study cancer in general, but instead focused on a rare cancer known as Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL).  Their conclusions were generated from re-analysis of previous reports, the most powerful of which showed absolutely no association between glyphosate use and NHL.  So how do reports with marginal/no associations and a powerful report with no association morph into a report claiming a definitive association?  In this week’s podcast I discuss the analysis with Dr. Geoffrey Kabat, retired cancer epidemiologist and risk expert.  We discuss the new report, its strengths and weaknesses, and his concern that the data put into the study may have been selectively chosen to produce the desired outcome.