Free Republic

A federal judge cast doubt on Bayer AG ’s proposal to neatly resolve all future lawsuits over the safety of its Roundup weedkiller, potentially snagging the German company’s attempts to move past the massive liability. Bayer said recently it would pay up to $10.9 billion to settle tens of thousands of current Roundup cases and create a system for handling future cases. The deal came after three juries in recent years awarded large verdicts to plaintiffs alleging Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, spooking investors. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, who must approve the class action, said Monday he...

The vagaries of American tort law were on display in San Francisco last week as six jurors decided that Bayer AG is liable for $80.3 million in damages for allegedly causing a Sonoma man’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The scientific consensus is that Bayer’s Roundup herbicide is safe, but the company is now open for looting as it faces lawsuits from some 11,200 similar plaintiffs. Yet there’s overwhelming evidence that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is unlikely to have caused Mr. Hardeman’s illness. His lawyers emphasized 2015 findings from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which concluded...

Rats or Humans? Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant(August 29, 2002)This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/ He was introduced as director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons. Asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, Dr Mohammed Frah played a straight bat: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical centre in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 — Bayer A.G., the German pharmaceutical giant, failed to reveal to federal drug officials the results of a large study suggesting that a widely used heart-surgery medicine might increase the risks of death and stroke, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday. Bayer scientists even appeared at a public meeting called by the F.D.A. on Sept. 21 to discuss the possibility that the drug, Trasylol, might have serious risks. But they did not mention the study or its worrisome results. In a highly unusual move, the food and drug agency released a public health advisory saying it...

A new study has found that Aleve, a popular over-the-counter painkiller made by Bayer, could increase heart problems, and federal officials are warning patients not to exceed the recommended dose of two 200-milligram pills a day or continue therapy for more than 10 days without consulting a physician. It was the fourth big-selling pain medicine in recent months to be suspected of hurting the heart, and federal drug officials said that similar drugs, like Advil, might also increase heart risks. The study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, was intended to measure whether Aleve and Celebrex, made by Pfizer,...