{"id":70805,"date":"2017-10-19T13:44:19","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T20:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=70805"},"modified":"2017-10-19T13:44:19","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T20:44:19","slug":"weedkiller-scientist-was-paid-120000-by-cancer-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/19\/weedkiller-scientist-was-paid-120000-by-cancer-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Weedkiller scientist was paid \u00a3120,000 by cancer lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Times (UK)<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

A scientist who advised a United Nations agency to classify the world\u2019s most widely used weedkiller as carcinogenic received $160,000 (\u00a3121,500) from law firms bringing claims by cancer victims against the manufacturer.<\/p>\n

Christopher Portier advised the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organisation, which concluded in March 2015 that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen\u201d.<\/p>\n

He did not declare his links to the law firms in a letter to the European Commission urging it to accept the IARC classification.<\/p>\n

The commission is debating whether to continue to allow sales of glyphosate, which is used by thousands of British farmers to protect their crops and also by millions of gardeners to control weeds. The UK is expected to support renewing\u00a0glyphosate\u2019s licence for ten years but France, Germany and Italy may oppose it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The National Farmers\u2019 Union said a ban on glyphosate, which is used on a third of wheat and oilseed rape fields, would cost the UK economy \u00a3900 million by reducing crop yields and farm incomes. Guy Smith, NFU vice president, said it allowed farmers to kill weeds without cultivating land, reducing fuel consumption by tractors and preserving soil structure.<\/p>\n

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency rejected IARC\u2019s findings and declared glyphosate to be safe.<\/p>\n

However, Greenpeace and other environmental groups said it should be banned because residues of the chemical remain in the crop and soil and leak into water supplies.<\/p>\n

Dr Portier began advising Lundy & Lundy, one of the US law firms about two months before IARC\u2019s decision on glyphosate. He said he had been hired by the firm to advise on an unrelated matter and his contract to advise on glyphosate cases was dated nine days after the IARC announcement.<\/p>\n

His payments from the law firms were revealed in documents disclosed to Monsanto, which sells glyphosate and is facing lawsuits from hundreds of people in the US who claim it caused their cancer. Dr Portier denied that his advice had been influenced by financial interest.<\/p>\n

He accepted that he had been paid $160,000 but said he had not realised he had earned so much. I didn\u2019t add it up. One of Monsanto\u2019s lawyers pointed it out to me. I went \u2018really?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

He added: My only defence is: \u2018should I work for free?\u2019 I have expertise and years and years of experience.<\/p>\n

If I was out to make money would I be working for the law firms or for Monsanto? Monsanto would love to have me switch sides. I could probably ask for anything I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Portier said he was motivated by anger that regulators had overlooked evidence from experiments on rodents that glyphosate caused cancer.<\/p>\n

He admitted that he probably should have\u201d declared his links with the law firms in an open letter sent in November 2015 to Vytenis Andriukaitis, the European health commissioner, urging him to disregard EFSA\u2019s finding that glyphosate was safe. He said he had disclosed the links before December 21, 2015.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Times (UK) A scientist who advised a United Nations agency to classify the world\u2019s most widely used weedkiller as carcinogenic received $160,000 (\u00a3121,500) from law firms bringing claims by cancer victims against the manufacturer. Christopher Portier advised the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organisation, which concluded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}