Cancer in small children: Bayer wins glyphosate process for the first time

Infant cancer
Bayer wins glyphosate process for the first time

In the year-long dispute over the possibly carcinogenic weed killer glyphosate from Monsanto, Bayer has achieved legal success for the first time. A jury concluded that the drug was not a substantial cause of cancer in a young boy.

The mother of a boy suffering from cancer lost a lawsuit against Bayer subsidiary Monsanto in California. The plaintiff’s attorneys informed the jury that there was no evidence of a link between the glyphosate weed killer Roundup and the boy’s disease.

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In her lawsuit filed with a Los Angeles court in mid-September, the mother blamed Monsanto for the fact that her son had what is known as Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare and particularly aggressive type of cancer. According to the complaint, the child was exposed to the weed killer when the mother sprayed it on her property. The boy was only four years old when he was diagnosed with Burkitt’s lymphoma in 2016. This lymphoma is one of the fastest growing types of tumors.

A Bayer spokesman said the company has “deep compassion” for the boy and his family. However, the jury had “carefully discarded the scientific evidence on this case” and came to the conclusion that “glyphosate is not the cause of his illness”. The plaintiff’s lawyers spoke of a “very unusual case” and want to examine an appeal

Bayer is faced with numerous lawsuits over Roundup in the USA, in which the herbicide is named as a cause of cancer. The Leverkusen-based pharmaceutical company bought the US company Monsanto in 2018 and thus also took over the company’s legal problems.

Harmfulness not finally clarified

Bayer always emphasizes that Roundup is safe when used properly and refers to corresponding assessments by the US environmental protection agency (EPA) and the supervisory authorities in the EU and Germany. The International Agency for Cancer Research, which is part of the World Health Organization (WHO), however, stated in 2015 that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic in humans”.

Last August, the Bavarian went to the US Supreme Court in the dispute and requested a revision of the so-called Hardeman case. In this case, a federal appeals court in San Francisco had upheld in May a condemnation of the group to pay millions in damages to Edwin Hardeman, who had cancer and who had used Roundup for years. The reason given was, among other things, that Monsanto had not warned enough about the health risks of using Roundup.

In May, Bayer got out of a settlement proceeding with the aim of reaching a billion-dollar settlement with tens of thousands of plaintiffs. Instead, the group developed a five-point plan to counter future legal risks to Roundup.

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