Cancer Case Against Monsanto's Roundup Moves Forward
Monsanto whistleblowers on deck in cancer case.
Hundreds of lawsuits cleared a huge hurdle Tuesday when Judge Vince Chhabria, a San Francisco U.S. District Judge, concluded that cancer victims and their families could present expert testimony linking Big Agg super giant Monsanto’s Roundup to cancer. The judge is reported as saying, it will be a “daunting challenge” to convince him to allow a jury to hear testimony that glyphosate was responsible for an individual cancer diagnosis, but that the three experts linking glyphosate to Hodgkin’s lymphoma would not be excluded from trial and were not “junk science”.
This decision comes the day after the first day of trial for 46-year-old Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s. He is a groundskeeper who worked for the school district where he was continually exposed to Monsanto products containing glyphosate. His trial remains underway attempting to prove that Monsanto’s products likely caused his Hodgkin's lymphoma. Johnson’s Attorney, Brent Wisner, argued that Monsanto - which recently merged with Bayer- ”has specifically gone out of its way to bully… and to fight independent researchers.”
According to The Guardian, “Wisner presented internal Monsanto emails that he said showed how the agrochemical company rejected critical research and expert warnings over the years while pursuing and helping to write favorable analyses of their products.”
“We are going to see for the first time evidence nobody has seen before, evidence that has been in Monsanto’s files that we’ve obtained” including depositions from 10 current and former Monsanto employees, along with a “mountain of data” showing the exposure to glyphosate can cause genetic damage that could lead to cancer.
This case may open the door for some kind of relief for the hundreds of other cases filed against the company. 400 are being heard by Judge Chhabria alone.
