In a case to determine if a woman’s use of Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup caused her cancer, attorneys at trial on Wednesday argued over interpretation of cancer rate charts with plaintiff lawyers saying they showed increases while defense attorneys countered that rates have stayed flat.
Defense logic maintains that if the use of Roundup by the public - and if the chemical causes cancer - the cancer rate should also have gone up over the same period. Roundup use increased dramatically in the 1990s.
“It would be much higher (cancer rate) if that was the case,” Dr. Cristian Tomasetti, an expert witness for Monsant, told the company’s attorney Katherine Hacker.
The trial in the 21st Circuit Court of Missouri in St. Louis County is being streamed live courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
Plaintiff Sharlean Gordon claims that Roundup caused her to develop NHL, also called large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), a rare cancer of the blood. Diagnosed with the disease in 2006, Gordon underwent treatments and the cancer went into remission but recurred requiring further treatments. Gordon was in remission after 2009 but she still has to visit doctors checking for a possible recurrence.
The lawsuit seeks damages for medical bills, anxiety, physical pain and suffering caused by the disease including the continuing worry today that it could again recur.
Tomasetti, a director and researcher with the California-based City of Hope cancer treatment center, testified Tuesday and Wednesday. He told a jury that available studies did not link glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, with cancer and that most cancers were caused by naturally occurring cell mutations.
“At least 96% of mutations cause NHL,” Tomasetti told Hacker.
Called “SEER Data,” chart information was generated by the National Cancer Institute.
During Wednesday’s session a chart was exhibited that showed the number of cancer cases portrayed as a flat line between the years 1995 and 2020. However, under cross examination, Gordon's attorney Fidelma Fitzpatrick questioned the chart and its accuracy.
In an analogy, she said Tomasetti had likened getting cancer to getting into a car accident. The longer the car trip (representing the older a person gets), the higher there is a risk of an accident (cancer cell mutation).
“It (cancer) can be caused by carcinogenic chemicals, correct?” Fitzpatrick asked.
Tomasetti agreed.
“You believe that most cancers are caused by (cell) replication errors. That is consistent with your theories.”
“Correct,” Tomasetti said.
The chart exhibited showed that by 1995 the number of NHL cases had doubled to about 20 people with cancer per 100,000 people.
Tomasetti agreed the chart showed a big increase between 1975 and 1990. However, after that he said the rate remained static.
“Doesn’t that (increase in NHL) suggest that something different is going on,” Fitzpatrick said.
Under redirect examination, Hacker asked Tomasetti to interpret his idea of what the chart showed. He said it showed that cancer rates for NHL remained flat over the period from 1992 to 2020.
“Have the rates changed from 1975?” Hacker asked.
“Tremendously,” Tomasetti said.
Tomasetti indicated that new testing methods, data and definitions of different cancer types were in the process of being refined by doctors in the 1970s. This resulted in a big jump in identified cancer cases during the period from 1975 to 1990.
“It’s simple,” Tomasetti said. “NHL as a class was (data) entered in 1995. It shows as an enormous jump but before that the data was not classified as such. From the 1990s on the NHL rate is quite stable.”
“For DLBCL as well?” Hacker asked.
“Yes.”
Tomasetti also said that life expectancy had increased over the decades resulting in more people with cancer as people are living longer.
“Cancer rates go up because of an older population,” he said. “You can clearly see it (chart) is a flat curve (from the 1990s on).”
He added that the majority of scientific opinion agreed.
In 2015, Tomasetti authored a paper exhibited for the jury that said mutations were responsible for making random cell errors in humans. The document pinned cancer development on factors including bad luck, bad genes, bad environment, family inherited genes and exposure to carcinogens.
“It’s impossible to know the contributions of each,” the document concluded.
“What is your knowledge of glyphosate?” Hacker asked.
“My understanding is that there is no evidence that glyphosate causes NHL,” Tomasetti said.
He added that if glyphosate caused cancer, the number of NHL cases should be much higher, but it was not the case.
In the afternoon, Dr. Jennifer Rider, a Boston cancer epidemiologist, told Monsanto attorney Mark Ouweleen that glyphosate does not cause cancer.
During this and other Roundup trials, defense attorneys have relied heavily on an Agricultural Health Study in 2018 and also a finding by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that found no association between glyphosate and cancer. Plaintiff attorneys have cited a finding by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.
Rider said the Agricultural Health Study was funded by a number of national organizations including the National Cancer Institute and involved 50,000 test participants.
“Was it big enough to give us reliable information?” Ouweleen asked.
“Yes,” Rider said.
“Where do you rank the Agricultural Health Study?”
“It’s the best study to tell us if glyphosate causes NHL,” Rider said.
Expert witnesses testifying for Gordon earlier in the trial said the Agricultural Health Study was flawed because it only asked questions of participants. It did not for example perform urine tests to see what trace amounts of glyphosate was in their systems.
Plaintiff attorneys exhibited a paper authored by Rider several years ago in which she had said that cases of NHL were rising rapidly.