I followed that argument a bit, and what I found was a Seralini study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756058/). He is known for some really bad studies about GMOs, those were simply terrible science and he obviously has an axe to grind.
The POEA experiments in that paper were about exposing cell cultures to different roundup compositions and components. It is not surprising that POEA kills the cells in this kind of experiment as it is a kind of detergent. Human cell cultures have no defense against having their cell membranes disrupted by detergents. Real humans are not cell cultures and can't be easily killed that mechanism. We have skin and other barriers like mucous membranes that protect the cells.
I didn't look much further, but seeing that paper as the first result does make me very skeptical about the idea.
yeah, you have to be careful with the studies that equate stuff in cell culture with stuff in real organisms.
we have metrics for "chemical X probabalistically causes cancer Y in tissue Z".
you can play games with the ROA and the probability. but the type of chemical (detergent, etc) is a non sequitor. if you expose cells to a detergent in high enough concentration, they'll lyse.
lysed cells are an ENTIRELY distinct "type" of cell death than the kind of cell death signature that you would see if the cell were cancerous. the author of that study didn't do any flow cytometry on his 293 T samples by the looks of it, but if he had, the differences would be enlightening. compare someone who has died in a plane crash to someone who died of ebola. you'd know that one was not the other very easily even if you couldn't attribute a cause.
anyhow, i looked at that paper you linked. the other big problem with the monsanto chemical -- which was not even mentioned in the lawsuit (!) was that it is an endocrine disruptor even in situations where it is not toxic. in other words, it's terrible for you and will distort your body's hormone chemistry in ways we probably don't even understand yet. that's just as big of a story as the chemical being legally confirmed as carcinogenic.
Cell cultures are plain cells growing in a plastic bottle. Human cells have only a cell membrane made of phospholipids around them, which can get easily disrupted by detergents. Humans don't die when exposed to a drop of soap, cell cultures do.
That doesn't mean that a detergents can't have other effects that are harmful to humans. It just means that I don't think a cell culture experiment proves anything in such a case. A study in animals would be something different.
That's not how I'd interpret this sentence: "We have skin and other barriers that protect the cells." It sounds to me like the author claims that humans have skin, which is true, and that skin forms a barrier that protects internal cells, which is extremely plausible.
That's a literal interpretation. A contextual interpretation implies that Roundup cannot cause harm through the observed means because it cannot clear the skin, the latter of which is patently false.
No. The contextual interpretation says that the above-mentioned study doesn't prove Roundup is harmful because the same results would be observed with any detergent, to which we are regularly exposed without suffering any harm.
Therefore, Roundup might or might not be harmful, but the study doesn't tell us much about it.
> to which we are regularly exposed without suffering any harm.
Right, because we're instructed not to consume detergents. Following this instruction keeps the detergents outside the body.
We are instructed to consume food grown with herbicides such as Roundup, and Roundup is often (if not always) delivered in a sprayed manner with significant aerosolization.
The POEA experiments in that paper were about exposing cell cultures to different roundup compositions and components. It is not surprising that POEA kills the cells in this kind of experiment as it is a kind of detergent. Human cell cultures have no defense against having their cell membranes disrupted by detergents. Real humans are not cell cultures and can't be easily killed that mechanism. We have skin and other barriers like mucous membranes that protect the cells.
I didn't look much further, but seeing that paper as the first result does make me very skeptical about the idea.