To date, the CDC has not conducted any additional studies in response to IOM’s recommendations, according to the authors of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,”

“Unethical retractions of peer-reviewed journal articles were all too frequent after 2020 and represent a very insidious form of censorship,” Mead said. “Even papers of the highest technical scientific quality will be retracted if they challenge the position of the Bio-Pharma Complex.”

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is hosting a new initiative, The Covid Index, a volunteer-run directory of scientific resources on COVID-19, ranging from peer-reviewed journal papers to whistleblower accounts.

The index’s creators describe it as “censored science and expertise” that is “categorized, excerpted, and searchable.”

Ursula Conway, president of CHD’s Arizona Chapter, is one of the volunteers involved in the initiative. She told The Defender The Covid Index “is a research tool, a quick reference guide” that “cuts through” online censorship.

Kim Bare, another volunteer with the project, said The Covid Index is akin to “an online card catalog … of information sources related primarily to COVID.”

Epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead is also involved with this project. He told The Defender, “Only contributions from accredited scientists and medical professionals are included, with care taken to exclude non-expert opinions.”

“Whistleblower claims may also be included, provided that the sources themselves have the necessary qualifications and are able to provide credible evidence to back up their claims,” Mead said.

He said the database also includes “reviews and analyses that help elucidate the various types of subterfuge used to mislead the general public and medical communities.”

Goal of making scientific ‘information more accessible’ to a ‘broader audience’

The idea for The Covid Index originated in 2021, when one of the volunteers involved in the project, who goes by the pseudonym “Juror No. 8” — a reference to the classic film “12 Angry Men” — developed a document — “COVID-19: The Science We Should Know.”

The document, hosted by the National Health Federation, is organized by topic and serves “as a reference resource for anyone curious about the science and data underlying such contrarian positions” related to COVID-19.

The document was the impetus behind developing an online research database of credentialed resources questioning mainstream positions on COVID-19. Conway said the goal was to “make the information more accessible and readily available to a much broader audience.”

This led to the formation of an independent team of volunteers and a search for a host organization for the website — with CHD ultimately being selected.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender:

“CHD is very excited about helping to maintain and expand this resource through volunteers who will continue to help screen and summarize the literature relevant to the virus, the vaccine and other details of the pandemic.”

A ‘counter-response’ to ‘mass media censorship’

The censorship of scientific papers questioning widely held COVID-19-related narratives has ramped up recently, with the retraction or deletion of papers approved by the peer-review process.

Mead said The Covid Index is a response to the widespread censorship of scientific papers that questioned mainstream narratives related to COVID-19, the response to the pandemic and the COVID-19 shots.

“The Covid Index exposes the fallacious nature of rhetoric such as the ‘science is settled’ or ‘there’s a strong scientific consensus on safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines,’” Mead added.

Conway said The Covid Index “bypasses the censorship throttles, to bring real science to the people.”

Mead said it serves as a necessary counter-response to the “mass media censorship of critiques of public health agencies for their failed pandemic strategies” and has the potential to act as a public record of such censorship. He said:

“Those papers may still be cited in The Covid Index, and we are in the process of writing up explanatory paragraphs to help Index users understand more about the context of each retraction, i.e., why the retractions were devoid of merit or lacked substantiation.

“This part of The Covid Index is still a work in progress, but it could be a very useful way to keep a record of this aspect of the Bio-Pharma Complex’s censorship, and a repository of papers that were rejected simply because they threatened the COVID cartel’s agenda.”

Bare said that if a paper included in the index is subsequently removed from the internet, it, too, can potentially remain in the index. “For articles that are academically or scientifically sound but have disappeared for various reasons, we go to the Wayback Machine and find a URL for the information source and add an entry for it.”

“We’ve witnessed an astonishing degree of fraud, corruption and abuse in the COVID era,” Bare said. “Ultimately, we hope The Covid Index can help hold the perpetrators accountable.”

Making censored science more accessible

More than just bypassing online and offline censors though, volunteers involved with the project told The Defender that information in the database is organized and presented in an accessible manner for a non-scientific audience.

A significant component of this effort are the “key excerpts” that The Covid Index’s volunteers curate for each indexed resource.

“The key excerpts highlight the most important parts of the study, or they represent the passages from the information source that made the contributor decide the source is important enough to include in The Covid Index,” Bare said.

Volunteer Jenna Ellis said this curation is the result of a collective effort.

“We go through [potential resources] to see if this is worth going into the index,” Ellis told The Defender. “We make sure to have our searchable keywords picked … so that it’s easily findable by someone who’s coming to search for different articles.”

Bare said the public can contribute to these efforts.

If people “want to contribute on a regular basis, the website is set up so contributors can get registered and add potential index entries themselves via a form on the website,” Bare said. Bare invited those interested to contact info@covidindex.science.

“To the extent that we can expand the number of discerning contributors, then the content of The Covid Index grows and therefore its value grows — and that will drive who’s using it, how useful it is to people,” Conway said.

Public health officials are urging families to get vaccinated against whooping cough, citing an uptick in cases, particularly among adolescents. However, critics say the vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission and contains dangerous toxins that may harm human health.

Connecticut Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said that there were 111 confirmed cases of pertussis in the state so far in 2024 — nearly a 10-fold increase compared to 2023, NBC Connecticut reported this week.

Juthani told The Hour that public health officials are concerned the spread will increase when school begins in just a few weeks.

“We are raising attention to this, both to providers and to families,” she said, “so that theoretically, people can get back up to date on their vaccines before children potentially are going back to day care, are going back to school.”

Other states, including New York and Pennsylvania, have also seen an uptick in whooping cough cases this year, Newsweek reported in early June. Outside the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia have also reported increases.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a highly infectious respiratory tract infection, according to the Mayo Clinic. Deaths from it are rare and typically occur in infants.

It’s caused by a bacteria called Bordetella pertussis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC recommends that “everyone” — from babies as young as 2 months old to adults, particularly pregnant women — should get either a DTaP or Tdap vaccine, which also is intended to protect against tetanus. The CDC claims the DTap vaccine also protects against diphtheria.

According to the CDC, the vaccine is “the best way to prevent whooping cough.”

Pertussis can be treated with antibiotics

However, Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense (CHD) told The Defender the pertussis vaccine may contribute to the spread of the infection — because it doesn’t prevent transmission.

“The pertussis vaccine is one of those that breaks the mold of what we think a vaccine is,” Jablonowski said. “Pertussis is probably the best case I can think of for a vaccine that does not prevent transmission.”

He added, “Every time there is a case of it, health officials will get on TV urging people to get vaccinated — wrongfully believing it will stop transmission.”

As The Defender recently reported, the CDC has been tracking changes in the prevalence of bacteria causing whooping cough for years.

Although the CDC’s whooping cough website still says the illness is caused by Bordetella pertussis, the most recent CDC data found that the Bordetella parapertussis type of whooping cough has significantly overtaken Bordetella pertussis in prevalence — and according to research published in Vaccines in March, the existing vaccines “scarcely provide protection” against this strain.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD chief scientific officer, told The Defender pertussis can be treated with antibiotics — “erythromycin and azithromycin are standard,” he said — and high doses of vitamin C.

The CDC’s website acknowledges whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics and fails to explain why the agency favors vaccination over antibiotics.

Pertussis vaccine may prevent herd immunity

Earlier this year, Jablonowski spoke on the poor efficacy and high-risk profile of the pertussis vaccine before Tennessee lawmakers as they weighed a bill to prohibit the state’s Department of Children Services from “requiring an immunization as a condition of adopting or overseeing a child in foster care if an individual or member of an individual’s household objects to immunization on the basis of religious or moral convictions.”

During March testimony before the Tennessee General Assembly Civil Justice Committee, Jablonowski cited scientific studies that debunk the notion that the vaccine is the best way to prevent whooping cough.

For instance, a 2016 review published in JAMA that reviewed more than 10,000 whooping cough cases found that more than half the cases in the five largest statewide outbreaks occurred in individuals who were partially or fully vaccinated against pertussis.

A 2019 review published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society concluded that “all children who were primed by DTaP vaccines will be more susceptible to pertussis throughout their lifetimes, and there is no easy way to decrease this increased lifetime susceptibility.”

Another review, also published in 2019, concluded that pertussis vaccines “do not reduce the circulation of B. pertussis and do not exert any herd immunity effect.”

Jablonowski told lawmakers that not only does the pertussis vaccine not “exert” a herd immunity effect, but the vaccine “has a negative effective on herd immunity.”

He explained:

“A vaccinated person can asymptomatically carry and transmit the disease, and cannot then learn how to fight it naturally.

“If you accept that in order to achieve herd immunity 90% of the population needs to not retransmit the bacteria once exposed to it, then once you have vaccinated more than 10% of the population herd immunity becomes impossible, as the vaccinated citizens will be contracting and transmitting the disease.”

Jablonowski told The Defender the only two scenarios in which getting the vaccine might protect someone else is when it’s given during pregnancy or to a nursing mother.

According to the CDC, pregnant women should get the Tdap vaccine to provide their babies with the “best protection” from whooping cough, ideally between 27 and 36 weeks gestation. Protective antibodies pass from the pregnant woman’s body to the fetus, the agency said.

Researchers funded by the pharmaceutical company Sanofi — which sells pertussis vaccines — in 2022 published a statement saying that vaccination against pertussis during the second or early third trimester of pregnancy is “highly protective” against pertussis in young infants.

Both the CDC and Jablonowski said that vaccinating nursing mothers doesn’t appear to be effective in protecting babies from whooping cough.

A 2012 study conducted in a Houston area hospital found that giving postpartum moms the Tdap vaccine didn’t reduce the number of infections in babies when compared to prior years in which the hospital didn’t readily give the vaccine postpartum.

The hospital implemented a standing order that all new mothers get Tdap, Jablonowski said.

The researchers looked at health data from moms and babies 7.5 years before and almost 1.5 years after this standing order, he said. “Cases of infant pertussis practically doubled and the mortality rate practically tripled” after the standing order.

Vaccine contains aluminum and formaldehyde

Both of the two current formulations of the pertussis vaccine contain toxins known to harm human health, including aluminum and formaldehyde, Jablonowski told the lawmakers.

Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that can affect more than “200 important biological reactions” and cause “negative effects on [the] central nervous system,” according to a 2018 paper published in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences.

Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen that is toxic to the respiratory system, central nervous system, optic nerve, kidney, liver, testicles and other body systems.

The pertussis vaccine, typically administered as part of combination vaccines like DTaP or Tdap, contains several other potentially harmful ingredients. These typically include inactivated B. pertussis toxin and several of its components, polysorbate 80, gluteraldehyde, 2-phenoxoyethanol and in some cases, trace amounts of mercury, according to the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).

Some researchers suggest the chemically inactivated pertussis toxin in DTaP may retain some bioactivity, potentially inducing brain inflammation in certain individuals.

CDC didn’t follow up on 2012 report on adverse events following DTaP/Tdap vaccines

For the past 70 years, researchers have used the pertussis toxin in animal studies to purposefully trigger various physiological responses. Responses include heightened sensitivity to histamine, serotonin and endotoxins. Researchers also used the pertussis toxin to induce experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

The toxin’s ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier under certain conditions has long been a concern. This property makes brain inflammation, or encephalitis, and its potential for lasting neurological damage a particularly severe complication associated with both whooping cough infection and pertussis vaccination.

According to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), from 1990 to 2024, there were 190,994 injury reports following pertussis-containing vaccines, including 3,377 deaths, according to NVIC. Over 85% of these deaths occurred in children under age 3.

While this data includes pre-1996 reports, when the whole-cell pertussis portion of the DTP vaccine formulation was changed due to its serious side effects, it’s important to note that a significant portion would be related to the DTaP vaccine given its widespread use since 1996.

Over 6,000 claims for injuries from pertussis-containing vaccines were submitted to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) as of Aug. 1, 2024. The cases include 872 deaths and over 5,000 serious injuries. Pertussis-containing vaccines comprise the highest number of VICP death claims and the second most compensated vaccine injury claims.

A 2012 study published in JAMA found an increased risk of febrile seizures in children 3-5 months old on the day of or day after receiving the first two doses of DTaP-containing vaccines.

The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 2012 report, “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality,” evaluated 26 reported adverse events following DTaP/Tdap vaccination. They included encephalopathy, encephalitis, chronic hives, autism, sudden infant death syndrome, arthritis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, diabetes mellitus, immune thrombocytopenic purpura, transverse myelitis and others.

For 24 of the 26 adverse events, the committee said there was not enough data either to support or reject vaccine-related causality, primarily due to a lack of adequate studies.

To date, the CDC has not conducted any additional studies in response to IOM’s recommendations, according to the authors of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Hooker and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD’s chairman on leave.

A 2017 study led by Dr. Anthony Mawson published in the Journal of Translational Science, compared the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children ages 6-12. The study found that while vaccinated children had fewer cases of chicken pox and pertussis, they had significantly higher rates of other health issues.

According to the study, vaccinated children were more likely to be diagnosed with allergic rhinitis, eczema and neurodevelopmental disorders. The vaccinated group also showed higher rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, learning disabilities and chronic health problems.

Additionally, the study reported that vaccinated children had a higher incidence of pneumonia and ear infections compared to unvaccinated children.

The Defender on occasion posts content related to Children’s Health Defense’s nonprofit mission that features Mr. Kennedy’s views on the issues CHD and The Defender regularly cover. In keeping with Federal Election Commission rules, this content does not represent an endorsement of Mr. Kennedy, who is on leave from CHD and is running as an independent for president of the U.S.

Two doctors who spoke out about vaccines and alternative treatments for COVID-19 received notice that their medical certifications were revoked, while another doctor said her certification was revoked without her knowledge.

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) last week revoked the certifications of Drs. Pierre Kory and Paul Marik, following a two-year investigation into their promotion of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19 and their statements questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

According to The Washington Post, the two physicians continued “to promote ivermectin, an anti-parasitic medication, as a treatment for COVID long after the medical community found it to be ineffective.”

Kory and Marik are co-founders of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which promotes alternative treatments for COVID-19.

Citing unnamed experts, the Post claimed the FLCCC “spread misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.”

MedPageToday quoted an ABIM spokesperson, who said the organization “does not comment publicly on the reasons for the revocation of certification.”

However, in a summary of the ABIM’s decision reviewed by The Defender, the organization stated that the doctors’ “conduct poses serious concerns for patient safety and undermines the trust that the public and the medical profession place in the meaning of ABIM board certification.”

In a press release, the FLCCC Alliance said it “categorically disagrees” with ABIM’s decision.

“We believe this decision represents a dangerous shift away from the foundational principles of medical discourse and scientific debate that have historically been the bedrock of medical education associations,” the press release states.

Marik told The Defender:

“The bottom line is we’re disappointed because we stand up for the truth. To censor science is to censor progress. Science is based on dialogue and people can have different points of view. That is the principle of science: it’s people having different points of view.

“We’ve never been in a situation before where physicians who have opposing points of view are silenced … It sets a really bad precedent that you can’t really challenge the status quo, and as we know, in medicine, there have been very dramatic changes based on changing understandings of science.”

In the FLCCC Alliance press release, Kory said, “This fight is about more than just our right to speak — it’s about protecting the future of healthcare. When doctors are silenced for questioning the prevailing narrative, we all lose.”

Kory and Marik participated in an ABIM hearing in May, but internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender that ABIM revoked her certification without her knowledge.

Nass said she was blindsided by ABIM’s decision to revoke her license, which she said she found out about only when she searched for herself in the organization’s database of certified physicians.

Nass told The Defender:

“After the Maine Medical Board suspended my license illegally — even though none of my alleged transgressions met the statutory requirement for an immediate suspension — the board later found me guilty of things I had not done and continued the suspension … All of this with never a single patient complaint.

“Now I learn, by chance, that the ABIM has suspended me without ever informing me I was even under an investigation, which is illegal according to the ABIM’s process.”

Dr. Peter McCullough also faced similar difficulties with the ABIM over his positions on COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. According to MedPageToday, ABIM revoked his certifications in 2022 — although, as of today, ABIM lists him as certified.

McCullough told The Defender, “The ABIM is violating principles of equal protection, due process, rules of evidence and has gone ex post facto to find reasons to attack qualified ABIM-certified doctors who innovated and saved lives early in the pandemic.”

Science based on ‘different points of view’

Kory and Marik held ABIM certifications in internal and critical care medicine, while Kory was also certified in pulmonary disease, according to MedPageToday.

They were initially notified about the risk of losing their certification in May 2022. Last year, ABIM’s Credentials and Certification Committee recommended the revocation of their certification for disseminating “false or inaccurate medical information.” A hearing followed in May.

According to the FLCCC Alliance’s press release, Kory and Marik “tirelessly defended their positions.” However, despite “presenting over 170 references in a detailed 60-page response submitted in January 2023, the ABIM has chosen to dismiss these robust scientific contributions in favor of a narrow, ‘consensus-driven’ narrative.”

According to the summary of ABIM’s decision, Kory and Marik’s “statements about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine” as treatments for COVID-19 “are false and inaccurate because they are unsupported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information.”

The ABIM also addressed the doctors’ positions on the COVID-19 vaccines:

“[The doctors’] statements about the purported ineffectiveness and dangers of COVID-19 vaccines are false and inaccurate because they are unsupported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information. …

“ There is extensive factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven medical information demonstrating that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and lead to better health outcomes.”

Marik questioned the board’s assertions regarding ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and the vaccines.

“What they do is, they cherry-pick articles which support their point of view and then they go on to say the vaccine is safe and effective. We know that’s completely not true. There’s overwhelming data to question both the safety and efficacy of the vaccine,” Marik added.

McCullough said:

“ABIM never updated its members on important risks such as fatal vaccine adverse events, including myocarditis, nor failing theoretical efficacy necessitating boosters that skipped human testing altogether.

“Setting a new dark milestone, ABIM is decertifying highly qualified physicians for nonclinical reasons and ignoring the evidence for early therapeutics and COVID-19 vaccine safety.”

ABIM engaging in ‘medical lawfare’

According to the Post, Kory maintains a license to practice medicine in California, New York and Wisconsin, where “there are no disciplinary actions listed against him.” Marik has retired and his medical license expired in 2022.

Revocation of their ABIM certification “effectively prevents them from practicing at large hospitals and academic institutions,” the Post reported.

Marik and Nass outlined the difficulties of practicing medicine without certification.

“It doesn’t affect us directly, but it affects us indirectly because we’re being accused of committing offenses that are just not true,” Marik said. “The indirect impact to our reputation … it’s a slap in the face, basically, for all the hard work we’ve done.”

Accusing the ABIM of being part of the “medical-industrial complex,” Marik said, “They seem more interested in making money than in protecting physicians. There have been a number of lawsuits against ABIM, so they don’t have the best of reputations. But unfortunately, they are the main certifying organization in the U.S., so they have enormous power and leverage.”

“If I get my license back — a big if, without board certification, I would have great difficulty getting hospital privileges and collecting insurance reimbursements. In other words, I would be unemployable, though I could potentially work on my own if patients paid me directly,” Nass said.

In 2021, ABIM and the Federation of State Medical Boards collaborated to draft the statement used to discipline Nass.

Nass said organizations like ABIM are engaging in “medical lawfare.” She said they are:

“Creating crimes that do not exist, using procedures that do not exist, to try and silence people like me. What did I do wrong? I read the literature and told the truth about what it said, publicly. The COVID vaccines are very dangerous. They don’t prevent COVID. Drugs can effectively treat COVID. And I prescribed those drugs and helped hundreds of Maine citizens. That was my crime.”

With novel methods to provide a big-picture view of the overlap between high pesticide use and cancer incidence across the U.S., a new study has again linked pesticide exposure to a range of cancers.

The study by Jacob Gerken, D.O., and colleagues titled “Comprehensive assessment of pesticide use patterns and increased cancer risk,” published in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society, examines the association between high-pesticide use and cancer diagnoses along with smoking incidence data and the Social Vulnerability Index, a measure used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that includes variables such as poverty, poor housing and exposures to natural disasters and chemical spills.

The researchers consider 69 pesticides used in agriculture that are monitored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They use U.S. Geological Survey data to map areas of similar crops and pesticide use patterns and incorporate public health data from the CDC to develop their final picture.

In terms of threats to health, cancer remains top of mind for most people. Globally, about 10 million people die of cancer each year.

And while treatments for cancer and survival times have burgeoned over the years, many cancers — particularly colorectal and breast cancer — are on the increase, and the increase is most dramatic among people between 55 and 64. At the same time, the evidence of pesticides’ role in cancer incidence is also increasing.

Pesticides have been linked to numerous diseases, including Parkinson’s, dementia, allergies and diabetes, as well as many cancers. But the science behind pesticide-cancer associations is contested turf, with much resistance being mounted by the pesticide industry and skepticism being expressed by regulatory scientists.

For example, in 2022 Beyond Pesticides discussed evidence that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) colluded with Monsanto in 2017 to downplay the carcinogenic effects of glyphosate, even after the International Agency for Research on Cancer had made the connection in 2015.

An important assumption of the study, the authors write, is that “more pesticide use leads to higher cancer incidence” because “no evidence has ever been reported of pesticides reducing cancer rates.”

However, as is standard in epidemiological research, they stop short of drawing direct causal connections between pesticides and cancer because the study is population-based and does not reach the level of individuals.

Yet they do find associations between “pesticide use and increased incidence of leukemia; non-Hodgkin lymphoma; bladder, colon, lung, and pancreatic cancer; and all cancers combined that are comparable to smoking for some cancer types.”

Different pesticides correlate with added risks for different cancers, but overall there is strong evidence that most pesticides add risks for multiple cancer types as well as particular cancers. That is, it is not a one-pesticide, one-cancer association.

For example, atrazine adds risk for all cancers and colon cancers; dicamba is consistently at the top of the list in regions where there is a high risk of colon cancer and pancreatic cancer; and glyphosate is at the top in areas with a high risk of all cancers, colon cancer and pancreatic cancer.

Because the study also accounts for social vulnerability factors and smoking, it measures these against cancer types, overall cancer incidence and pesticide use patterns.

The researchers find that for some cancers, smoking is clearly the biggest risk factor, but pesticides are far more influential than social vulnerabilities or population size for individual cancer types.

For non-Hodgkin lymphoma, bladder cancer and leukemia, pesticides actually outpace smoking. For pancreatic cancer, smoking is the highest risk factor by orders of magnitude compared to other variables.

The current study contrasts with a 2018 analysis of glyphosate and cancer based on the Agricultural Health Study of 89,000 farmers and their spouses, which found no increased risk between glyphosate and lymph system cancers.

However, Gerken and colleagues point out that the Agricultural Health Study study population focused only on a subset of the whole communities that are embedded in agricultural areas, and observed that the whole population — not just farmers — is repeatedly exposed to multiple pesticides and frequent spray drift events.

The Agricultural Health Study is an ongoing program of the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Gerkin and colleagues assert that “organic farms that do not use pesticides often have 15%-50% lower yields compared to conventional farms.” This is somewhat misleading, as Beyond Pesticides has been established numerous times, and depends heavily on how the effects of pesticides are measured.

For example, Beyond Pesticides has covered how plant diversity in fields fosters productivity, and how pesticides’ harms to pollinators reduce productivity.

However, the study authors conclude that the highest cancer risk is associated with regions of the country with the highest pesticide use, making it clear that any increased productivity based on pesticides comes at an unacceptable price.

According to the 2023 review by New York University professor Leo Trasande, M.D., and colleagues titled “Exposures to pesticides and risk of cancer: Evaluation of recent epidemiological evidence in humans and paths forward”:

“Most evidence suggesting pesticide carcinogenicity — in the [2017] International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report [reviewing tetrachlorvinphos, parathion, malathion, diazinon and glyphosate] and elsewhere — has come from animal and mechanistic studies, as the epidemiology literature was insufficient to draw conclusions.

“Epidemiologic evidence has since increased in both quantity and quality, and now covers many other pesticides that were not included in IARC’s review, or in those of other national and international agencies.”

Trasande and colleagues conclude that “there is sufficient evidence for action to regulate pesticides based on their carcinogenicity.”

Regarding glyphosate, they also point out that regulators have mostly focused on the technical compound and ignored the more complex glyphosate-based formulations, for which the evidence of carcinogenicity is stronger than for technical glyphosate.

And while the 2015 IARC report considered only peer-reviewed literature, the EPA and the European Food Safety Assessment included “industry studies conducted by private companies that register the chemicals in question.”

This question of regulatory capture by industry affects every aspect of pesticide policy. Trasande and colleagues noted that “calls have been made within the scientific community for more independently conducted epidemiological research.”

There has been little success so far. A typical example of the pesticide industry’s influence on the scientific literature is a 2021 paper, “Cancer and occupational exposure to pesticides: an umbrella review,” by Carol J. Burns, Ph.D., and Daland R. Juberg, Ph.D.

The authors found that “there was neither strong nor consistent epidemiologic data supportive of a positive association between pesticide exposure in occupational settings and cancer.” Burns’ affiliation is listed as “Sanford, USA,” while Juberg’s is “Indianapolis, USA.”

These are completely inadequate identifications and are clearly an attempt to hide their industry connections. Further investigation reveals that Burns worked for the Dow Chemical Company for 21 years, while Juberg worked for the Dow Chemical Company for 15 years and is now retired from Corteva Agriscience.

Both are ostensibly independent consultants. Corteva is a spinoff from DowDupont. The study was funded by CropLife International. Studies have shown that there is a strong association between the conclusions of studies and review papers and their funding sources.

The current study by Gerken and colleagues is a significant addition to the epidemiologic literature on cancer and pesticides.

It is, the authors assert, “the first comprehensive evaluation of cancer risk from a population-based perspective at the national level.”

By accounting for possible confounders such as smoking, poverty and exposure to disasters, the authors have clarified that there is an undeniable link between pesticide exposure and cancer incidence.

The mechanism of carcinogenesis is not yet exactly clear for individual cancers, although it is obvious that smoking and pesticide exposure provide a lethal double dose of risk. This likely affects most of the very groups that do the bulk of agricultural work, have little job security, no health insurance and few other resources.

The authors point out one step that could help get the point across to farmers, government officials, healthcare professionals and the pesticide industry:

“If, when buying a new property, purchasers were notified that the land is in proximity to particularly elevated levels of pesticides or the use of certain pesticides that may be especially harmful, then public awareness of this issue would rise, garnering the attention that this issue calls for.

“The safety of these chemicals needs to be approached with more skepticism. Healthcare officials in these regions should exercise a level of skepticism of the safety of the chemicals used.”

Originally published by Beyond Pesticides.