Stacey Malkan, co-director at US Right To Know (USRTK) attends the hearings and reports live on https://usrtk.org/live-updates-monsanto-hearing/

03. 08 & 09. 2018 Science Week Concludes in Federal Court. After this week’s testimony, lawyers for both sides will get their chance to make oral arguments to the judge sometime in the next two weeks. The judge will make a ruling on whether or not the plaintiffs’ witnesses who are providing their scientific opinions regarding causation will be permitted to testify at trial.

The focus for the judge’s decision is whether the experts are using recognized, reliable methodology to arrive at their opinions. If he determines any or all of the witnesses are not relying on this proper scientific foundation he can exclude them from testifying, a move that would be a powerful blow to plaintiffs’ case and a win for Monsanto.

Stacey Malkan reports : the last two witnesses presented: Dr. Chadi Nabhan for the plaintiffs (he couldn’t get here until today) and Dr. Lorelei Mucci for the defense. Dr. Nabhan is an oncologist who serves as medical director of Cardinal Health and has 17 years of clinical practice and academic research focused on lymphomas.

Dr. Nabhan discussed the process by which the International Agency for Research on Cancer conducts its monographs to determine whether chemicals cause cancer. The agency has a high bar to consider what it reviews, he said – exposures must be high and animal data strong. Since 1965, IARC has reviewed 1003 agents and found 20% to be carcinogens; 120 classified as carcinogenic and 81 classified as probably carcinogenic, including glyphosate.

“In my opinion, the (NHL) risk (of glyphosate exposure) is clinically significant enough that patients should be aware of it,” Dr, Nabhan said. “The IARC report is very convincing.”

Dr. Nabhan does not have a high opinion of the Agricultural Health Study (AHS) that was the topic of much of today’s discussion. “There are so many flaws in this study that it’s impossible to draw any conclusions,” he said. He shrugged off the updated analysis is “an updated analysis of an already flawed study.”

Last up was Dr. Lorelei Mucci for the Monsanto defense. Dr. Mucci is an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her major research and teaching area is cancer epidemiology.

Much of Dr. Mucci’s testimony focused on the importance of the AHS study, with a lot of back and forth and questions from the judges about the validity of self reporting in the questionnaires about glyphosate exposures. Dr. Mucci’s opinion, based on her review of AHS and all the available epidemiological data, is that there is no evidence of positive association between exposure and NHL risk and no evidence of dose response.

In cross examination, Dr. Mucci clarified that her opinion is based on the epidemiological data only and she did not look at toxicological data or animal data.