paghat wrote:
In article , Alexander Pensky
wrote:


I'm not disputing whether or not Roundup is safe or
desirable to use in one's garden.
(I don't use it, personally.)

My point is that, of all the nasty synthetic chemicals you and
I might be tempted to use anywhere in our homes or gardens, some
are more dangerous than others, but NOT A SINGLE ONE has been
tested on human beings, and NEVER WILL BE, because that is NOT
an "accepted scientific method" for product safety testing. It
is in fact an UNETHICAL and ILLEGAL method of testing.

So, if you ever plan to use any product, whether Roundup or
anything else, you're just gonna have to trust the animal tests.

- Alex


This is not entirely true Alex. There are no valid models for human
allergy responses, or human headache responses, besides the fact that no
animal studies are regarded as having broad applicability to human
physiological responses even for things that can be measured without a
speaking subject who can tell the researchers what they are experiencing.
So herbicides & pesticides get tested as a matter of course on human
volunteers. "Only tests using human volunteers have the broad specificity
and relevance to human physiology needed to detect the wide range of
allergens & toxins that might result from unexpected side-effects of the
genetic engineering process" notes Dr John Fagan, who purports to be an
activist for safety in such human testing, but primarily argues like a
lobbyist trying to keep Congress from banning scientists from feeding
toxins to people desparate for the fifty dollars.

Human test subjects volunteered to breathe extremely high levels of toxic
fumes from the resins used in those yellow pesticide strips, trade-name
Vapona. It had already been done on dogs & all sorts of other mammals &
always found that when delivered as a gas it could not reacha toxic level
in the bloodstream, even though with long-term physical contact with the
resins one's liver can be completely destroyed. The manufacturers found
out all they could with animals then wanted to try it on people too, &
you'd be surprised how easy it is to get volunteers -- mainly unemployed
students & the homeless.

[other examples snipped]

Such studies were in fact MOST necessary because
Monsanto wants to "prove" it is safe to eat fruits & vegetables that have
been genetically engineered to survive glyphosate dosings. In fact
Monsanto has the lion's share of their future invested in the idea that
future crops will be so resistant to glyphosate, that all the weeds can be
poisoned by just dumping HUGE amounts of the toxins in agricultural
fields. So of course Monsanto is paying for & orchestrating a number of
studies the intent of which is to prove you can eat a lot of herbicide &
not get sick & die.
[...]
Any of us who do not radically seek out & pay more to restrict ourselves
to organicly grown produce are already the non-volunteer human test
subjects, with a few independent studies in progress to track how bad off
we get.

I don't disagree with anything you said here, Ms. paghat. Perhaps
I should rephrase what I'm trying to say. I don't mean literally
that these products are never tested on humans. I mean that, since
it is extremely unethical to test them on humans, and since (as you
state) the main proponents of human testing are often the manufacturers,
it is disingenuous for someone who opposes the use of the products
to cite lack of human testing as part of their argument.

Moral consistency can be a good thing. Each of us must make our own
decision whether a particular product is safe to use or harmful.
I believe it is better to make these decisions based on imperfect
information resulting from animal testing, than to insist on
human testing in order to increase our certainty. I would certainly
not consider Monsanto to be acting "more responsibly" if the human
testing practices you've described were to become an "accepted
scientific method" for demonstrating the safety of the products.

- Alex