Viewpoint: IARC glyphosate cancer advisor Christopher Portier’s history of lying about conflicts of interest

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Christopher Portier

In a deposition last month for a court case pending against Monsanto for glyphosate “damages,” [Christopher Portier, the scientist who initially encouraged the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to conduct the glyphosate analysis and served as a special advisor to the committee that drafted the final IARC report] admitted he was retained by a law firm representing glyphosate victims less than two weeks after the IARC report was published. Since then, Portier has been a hired gun, giving expert testimony on behalf of cancer-stricken farm workers and their family members who believe glyphosate caused the disease.

[Editor’s note: Read the GLP’s profile on IARC.]

It has been a profitable gig. Over the past two years, Portier has banked about $160,000 for his time and has another $30,000 in billable hours now outstanding. During that time, as he pressured EU and U.S. agencies not to publish favorable findings about glyphosate, Portier failed to disclose his conflict of interest; in fact, Portier insisted “nobody has paid me a cent to do what I am doing with glyphosate.”

Portier has a history of such obfuscations. In a May 5, 2016, email to me objecting to an NRO article I wrote about his involvement in the IARC report, he told me this: “I am no activist. I realize that you will probably not change a word of your article, but felt the need to correct you simply because I believe that by characterizing a scientific debate as activists with an agenda, you are doing a diservice [sic] to your readers.” At that time, he had been getting paid by law firms representing alleged glyphosate victims for more than a year.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Glyphosate Ban: Not about Green. About Greed.

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