Glyphosate and paraquat have led to the “fastest rate of new cancer in the history of human civilization.” This farmer just blew Tucker Carlson’s mind with the truth about pesticides. “I’m not a scientist, I’m just noticing.” Tucker put it bluntly: “Farmers are being abused.” “They’re the victims here.” “They’re the ones getting cancer.” Zach Lahn is a regenerative farmer in Iowa and a candidate for Governor. Agriculture is the top industry in Iowa, but most of it uses chemical pesticides. That means that many Iowans now have a 1 in 2 chance of getting cancer. Lahn revealed that Nevada has comparatively low cancer rates, and Tucker pointed out that comparing Iowa and Nevada reveals a shocking statistic about the modern cancer crisis: “Nevada has the highest smoking rate out of 50 states, but one of the lowest cancer rates.” “Iowa has very low smoking rates relative to Nevada, and has a really high cancer rate.”
ZACH LAHN: Hard no, it shouldn’t be used. But what I want is good science so farmers can say, “Do I want to use this product?” And we can say, “Should this product be allowed?” And also know, “If I’m going to use this product, this is how it should be used.”
We know how glyphosate enters the bloodstream. We know that if it’s on your skin, about 30% enters your bloodstream. About 10% of that is through cardiac output. About 10% goes into your bone marrow. In bone marrow, glyphosate disrupts the replication of hematopoietic stem cells as they’re differentiating from red to white. It’s genotoxic. There are 50 studies that show this. We know how it happens.
And yet there are commercials showing people using this product in flip flops and shorts, just being cavalier about it. We have many products we use — you go into my shop at the farm, there are many products on the shelf that, if used improperly, are bad for your health. And they warn about that on the label. These do not. Not in that same way.
The Williams Study: A Retracted Lie That Stood for Years
But in these papers were also examples like this. In 2000, there was a study called the Williams Study. It’s the most cited study on the safety of glyphosate. The most cited. 99.9% of all papers that cite the safety of glyphosate cite this study.
Last month, that study was retracted because it was found that Monsanto executives wrote it — wrote the study. But here’s maybe even the worst part. We found that out in 2017, and it was retracted in 2025. The Monsanto executive actually said, when sending it back, “He better not have any revisions.” That’s what he said.
And so look, I think very often when you talk about this subject, especially in my home state, there’s this desire to paint you as some liberal hippie that doesn’t like farming. I’m the exact opposite of that.
https://aristotle.science/share/thread/thr_dWsyuT833FsWRnBnUp7A5Fbe
Discrepancies in Data Weighting
The divergence is heavily quantified in the literature. The EPA relied predominantly on registrant-commissioned, unpublished regulatory studies, of which 99% were negative for genotoxicity. Conversely, IARC relied mostly on peer-reviewed public literature, of which 70% reported positive evidence of genotoxicity. Overall, the EPA evaluated only 43% of the assays considered by IARC.
Furthermore, the EPA focused primarily on dietary exposures to pure technical glyphosate, while IARC evaluated all exposure routes, including occupational dermal exposures to formulated GBHs. This distinction is critical because, as established above, formulated GBHs are frequently reported to be more toxic and genotoxic than technical glyphosate alone.
This data gap extends to GMO safety assessments. A review of 30 published reports on glyphosate-tolerant crops found that only 16 studies (53%) used plant material that was actually sprayed with glyphosate during cultivation. Strikingly, none of the 20 industry-funded studies analyzed the plant material for glyphosate residues, whereas independent studies frequently reported significant biological effects from GM feed.
Furthermore, the literature is highly polarized. Industry-sponsored studies consistently report negative findings for genotoxicity and rely heavily on bacterial Ames tests, which lack mitochondria and are unlikely to detect oxidative stress. Conversely, independent literature frequently utilizes high-concentration in vitro exposures that may exceed realistic human dietary or occupational levels. The reliance on secondary narrative reviews by authors involved in litigation also introduces potential selection bias, though the quantitative discrepancies in data weighting between the EPA and IARC are well-documented and reproducible.
I just saw Thomas Massie going scorched earth over Round Up…
If you care to listen, minute 3:20
