Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson is dying of cancer. He looks on after hearing the verdict to his case against Monsanto at the Superior Court Of California in San Francisco, California, on August 10, 2018, before the award was reduced to $78 million. Josh Edelson / POOL / AFP / Getty Images
A California groundskeeper who won a landmark cancer trial against Roundup-maker Monsanto has agreed to accept $78 million, a significant reduction from the jury's original award of $289 million, the Associated Press reported.
A new trial would have taken place if plaintiff DeWayne "Lee" Johnson did not accept the lessened damages ordered by Judge Suzanne Bolanos of San Francisco's Superior Court of California last week.
During a House Science Committee hearing on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers sided with the chemical industry in questioning the International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) classification of glyphosate—the key ingredient in the Monsanto-produced weedkiller Roundup—as a probable carcinogen and threatened to cut off the agency's funding.
Sometimes the truth about our food is not very appetizing.
As many gather this holiday season for shared family meals, it is likely that they'll be serving up small doses of pesticides with each plate passed, including a prevalent type shown to be harmful to children and reproductive health.
Three years ago this month Monsanto executives realized they had a big problem on their hands.
It was September 2014 and the company's top-selling chemical, the weed killer called glyphosate that is the foundation for Monsanto's branded Roundup products, had been selected as one among a handful of pesticides to undergo scrutiny by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Monsanto had spent decades fending off concerns about the safety of glyphosate and decrying scientific research indicating the chemical might cause cancer or other diseases. And even though the IARC review was still months away, Monsanto's own scientists knew what the outcome would likely be—and they knew it wouldn't be good.
