The latest in a series of injury lawsuits across the country against the agrochemical giant Monsanto accuses the company of causing the lymphoma blood cancer of plaintiff Sharlean Gordon after her use of its weed killer Roundup.
The trial, which began Wednesday in the 21st Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri in St. Louis County, is being streamed live courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
Monsanto’s headquarters is in St. Louis and past Roundup trial results in the city and county have been split. A decision last summer in St. Louis County went in favor of Monsanto while in another case in the City of St. Louis Monsanto settled with the plaintiff after three days of testimony.
During opening remarks, Aimee Wagstaff, Gordon’s attorney with Andrus Wagstaff PC in Denver, called the case a “big deal” and said the company knew its Roundup product was a danger but failed to warn customers.
“This is a simple case,” Wagstaff said. “It’s about choice. If Ms. Gordon exposed herself to risk they (Monsanto) have to warn about it and if they don’t, they have the responsibility. Monsanto knew of the dangers.”
Gordon reportedly used three versions of the Roundup for 25 years including a concentrate that had to be mixed before spraying the chemical in her yard. After noticing a lump in her groin she was diagnosed in October 2006 with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), a rare form of blood cancer that makes up only 4% of cancers, or found in 20 out of 100,000 people.
“She (Gordon) was a big gardener,” Wagstaff said. “She read the (Roundup) label and followed the instructions.”
Plaintiff expert witnesses will include researchers Beate Ritz and Dennis Weisenburger, medical doctors, as well as William Jameson, a member of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The agency in 2015 found that glyphosate the ingredient in Roundup is a “probable carcinogen” to humans.
The IARC finding has been a point of contention in past Roundup trials. Defense attorneys characterized it as a superficial, unrealistic exaggeration of cancer causatiob which also included such things as breathing barbecue smoke, eating red meat and working late hours on a job.
“Glyphosate is the killing agent that kills the weed,” Wagstaff said in her opening. “A chemical called surfactant binds it to the plant and spreads it out. It (Roundup) penetrates the skin (in humans) and gets into the blood stream.”
Wagstaff said Monsanto only retained a single epidemiologist (scientist) to study the impacts of the chemical and the company performed no long-term animal (rodent) studies. She said evidence in the case would focus on three areas: animal studies, cell studies and epidemiological evidence.
“You have to look at all three,” Wagstaff said. “There are too many (cancer) signal signs.”
Wagstaff accused Monsanto officials of not being concerned about the safety of customers but only the economic repercussions if the public found out the product was a cancer causer.
“They worried it would become public what they’ve been keeping under wraps for so long,” Wagstaff added.
Wagstaff displayed a 2009 document from Donna Farmer Lead Toxicologist in Product Safety for Monsanto from 1991 to the present. Farmer said in the document the company could not say its Roundup didn’t cause cancer because studies proving so had not been done.
“They (Monsanto) haven’t done the studies,” Wagstaff said. “Roundup promotes cancer.”
Attorney Katherine Hacker of Bartit Beck LLP in Denver, for Monsanto, said the defense will base its case on science.
“Science has come a long way and we’ve learned a lot about how DNA causes cancer,” she said.
Hacker said Gordon had been told by doctors she was cured of her cancer in 2009.
“She has been cured for over 10 years,” Hacker said. “We may hear that she’s worried the cancer will come back. But doctors will tell you the risk is the same as every other person’s risk.”
Hacker said naturally occurring cell errors almost always cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Roundup does not cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” she said.
Hacker said agencies including Health Canada in 2019 found no cancer risk to humans from glyphosate. She added that while the rate of use of Roundup went up during the 1990s, the rate of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma remained flat during the same period.
“If Roundup use goes up the rate of lymphoma should go up too,” Hacker said. “Roundup did not cause Ms. Gordon’a cancer.”
Hacker explained that cells in human beings are constantly dividing and making copy errors but the body repairs the errors or lets the cell die harmlessly.
“It’s only when a cell error tells a cell to keep replicating (errors) that cancer results,” she said. “There are 5 million blood cells replicated in three seconds in our bodies, that’s a lot of opportunities for copy errors. Copy errors are overwhelmingly the cause of Ms. Gordon’s cancer.”
Defense witness experts, such as Dr. Christian Tomasetti, director for Cancer Prevention with the City of Hope, should support these conclusions, Hacker said,
Hacker recalled that Gordon had a history of health issues including smoking as a teenager.
She displayed a slide that listed federal agencies including The National Cancer Institute, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and an Agricultural Health Study in 2018 that found no link between glyphosate and cancer.
Hacker said IARC looked at “hypothetical hazards” and not the “realistic risks” that would be considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“IARC is not a public health agency,” Hacker said. “They met for a week in Lyon, France eight years ago. The science hasn’t stopped since then.”
Hacker said the idea that glyphosate and surfactant in combination causes cancer is wrong and described surfactant as merely a slippery type of soap to help spread the glyphosate on a plant leaf.
“That it penetrates into our skin is not right,” Hacker said. “Our skin is not like a leaf.”
Hacker asked the jury to find Monsanto blameless for Gordon’s cancer.
“We hope you will follow the science.”
The trial is expected to last a month. Circuit Judge Brian May is presiding.