U.S. defunding International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), UN-affiliated group that issued cancer warnings for glyphosate, steak, and getting a haircut

The United States’s withdrawal this year from the World Health Organization (WHO) is having knock-on effects on an influential global organization for cancer research …. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is cutting ties with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), WHO’s 60-year-old cancer research arm.

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The move, which has not been announced publicly, also appears likely to end long-running collaborations between IARC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and other federal agencies. 

IARC may be best known for its monographs, reviews of the carcinogenicity of chemicals and other types of exposure, from very hot drinks to the herbicide glyphosate. The reports assess whether a substance has the potential to cause cancer, not whether people are exposed enough to develop disease, and critics have argued they create confusion.

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But that’s because scientists and the public sometimes misunderstand their purpose, says toxicologist Dave Dorman of North Carolina State University, who has served on several monograph working groups. “They’re probably the authoritative global reference evaluating carcinogenic hazards” and give countries a starting point for risk assessments, Dorman says.

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