Scientific journal withdraws Monsanto Roundup safety study: ‘serious ethical concerns’ | US News

The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has officially retracted a major scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key argument in defense of Monsanto’s claim that the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, do not cause cancer.

Martin van den Berg, editor-in-chief of the journal, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he took this action because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented.”

The document, titled Safety Assessment and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkillers posed no risk to human health – no cancer risk, no reproductive risk, no adverse effects on the developing endocrine system in humans or animals.

Regulators around the world have cited the document as evidence of the safety of glyphosate herbicides, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this assessment.

The paper’s listed authors, Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro, were scientists who did not work for Monsanto, and the study was presented by the company as a defense against conflicting scientific evidence linking Roundup to cancer. The fact that it was written by scientists outside the company, apparently independent, gave it additional validity.

But over the past decade, internal company documents, revealed in litigation brought by U.S. plaintiffs suffering from cancer, exposed Monsanto’s influence over the paper. The documents included an email from a company official discussing the research paper and praising the “hard work” of several Monsanto scientists under a strategy Monsanto called “Freedom to Operate” (FTO).

Company records showed how company officials celebrated the newspaper’s publication.

In an email following the publication of the Williams paper in April 2000, Lisa Drake, then Monsanto’s head of government affairs, described the harmful effects of working on “independent” research papers on several Monsanto employees.

“The publication by independent experts of the most comprehensive and detailed scientific assessment ever written on glyphosate… is due to the perseverance, hard work and dedication of the following group of people,” Drake wrote. She then listed seven Monsanto employees. The group was applauded for “their hard work over three years of data collection, writing, editing and building relationships with the authors of the papers.”

Drake further highlighted why Williams’ article was so important to Monsanto’s business plans: “This human health publication on the herbicide Roundup and its companion publication on ecotox and environmental fate will undoubtedly be [sic] considered “the ‘gold standard’ for Roundup and glyphosate safety,” she wrote in the May 25, 2000, email.

“Our plan now is to use it both to defend Roundup and Roundup Ready crops around the world and to strengthen our ability to competitively differentiate ourselves from generics.”

In another email, a company executive asked if polo shirts with the Roundup logo could be given to eight people who worked on the research papers as a “token of appreciation for a job well done.”

Monsanto’s Hugh Grant, who at the time was a senior executive in line to be named CEO and chairman, added his own praise, writing in an email: “This is a very good job, well done to the team, please keep me posted as you build the PR information to go with it.” »

In 2015, William Heydens, a Monsanto scientist, suggested that he and his colleagues “write” another scientific paper. Monsanto could pay outside scientists to “edit and sign their names” on work that it and others would do, Heydens wrote in an email. “Remember this is how we handled Williams Kroes and Munro 2000.”

The emails came to light during jury trials in which cancer plaintiffs won billions of dollars in damages from Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer AG in 2018.

Gary Williams, one of the authors of the now-retracted 2000 research paper, could not immediately be reached for comment. In 2017, Williams’ former employer, New York Medical School, said it found “no evidence” that any faculty member had violated the school’s ban on authoring a paper written by Monsanto employees. The paper’s two other authors, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro, have died.

In explaining the decision to retract the 25-year-old research article, Van den Berg wrote: “Concerns have been raised regarding the authorship of this article, the validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of contributions by the authors and study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors. »

He noted that the paper’s conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate were based solely on unpublished studies from Monsanto, ignoring other outside published research.

Van den Berg did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about the retraction, Bayer said in a statement that Monsanto’s involvement had been properly mentioned in the acknowledgments section of the document in question, including a statement referring to “key Monsanto personnel who provided scientific support.” The company said the vast majority of the thousands of published studies on glyphosate did not involve Monsanto.

“The consensus among regulatory agencies around the world who have conducted their own independent assessments based on the weight of evidence is that glyphosate can be used safely as directed and is not carcinogenic,” the company said.

An EPA spokesperson said the agency was aware of the retraction but “never relied on this specific article in developing its regulatory conclusions on glyphosate.”

The spokesperson said the EPA had “extensively studied glyphosate, reviewing more than 6,000 studies across all disciplines, including human and environmental health, to develop its regulatory conclusions.”

The updated human health risk assessment the agency is currently conducting for glyphosate “builds on gold standard science,” the spokesperson said. This assessment is expected to be released for public comment in 2026 and will not rely on the retracted article.

“The retraction of this study is a long time coming,” said Brent Wisner, one of the lead attorneys in the Roundup litigation and a key player in releasing the internal documents to the public.

Wisner said Williams, Kroes and Munro’s study was “the quintessential example of how companies like Monsanto could fundamentally undermine the peer review process by using ghostwriting, cherry-picking unpublished studies and biased interpretations.”

“This phantom study written in the trash finally received the fate it deserved,” Wisner said. “Hopefully, journals will now be more vigilant in protecting the impartiality of the science on which so many depend.” »

News of the study’s withdrawal came the same week the Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to act on Bayer’s attempt to stop thousands of lawsuits claiming Roundup causes cancer.

In a brief filed in court, Solicitor General Dr. John Sauer said the company was correct that the federal law governing pesticides preempts lawsuits that make claims for failure to warn on products under state law.

The plaintiffs said they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides sold by the company, either at home or at work.

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group.