The Crazy Verdicts Against Bayer/Monsanto in the Roundup Litigation
Reason | By David Bernstein
On Monday, a California jury ruled against Monsanto in a case alleged that the herbicide Roundup caused a couple’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The jury awarded $55 million in compensatory damages, and an additional $2 billion in punitive damages. This was Monsanto’s third straight loss before a jury in a Roundup case.
To say that these verdicts are not justified by the scientific evidence would be a massive understatement. Every regulatory body in the world that has studied Roundup has declared that it’s safe and that it’s unlikely that it’s a carcinogen. The only partial exception is that the International Agency for Research on Cancer has declared that the active ingredient in Roundup is a probable carcinogen based on animal studies–but at an undetermined dose through undetermined means of exposure. Regulatory agencies that have revisited Roundup’s safety in the wake of the IARC report have reaffirmed its safety, in part based on new studies not considered by the IARC.