Roundup, and its important ingredient glyphosate, act on a biological pathway only found in plants. In the American legal system, science is basically irrelevant in a jury trial, though, so anyone can sue over anything. Only in an appeal will science in science and health lawsuits be important.

Yet sometimes the science is so clear no jury outside California is so opposed to evidence that they will find harm. That is why Monsanto has prevailed for a fifth time against claims that a compound that only acts in plants magically caused someone's cancer. And the only financial victory anti-science activists and their predatory lawyers got was gutted on appeal, because judges looked at the science rather than emotion.

Carl Alesi, et al. v. Monsanto Company, case number 19SL-CC03617 in St. Louis County Circuit Court was three plaintiffs simultaneously. A woman and two men in their 60’s and 70’s who tried to claim sprayng weeds in their yards caused their cancer. Science knows if you live long enough, everyone will get cancer. Yet unless you fall into a giant vat of it, an herbicide cannot harm you. Yes, it has a warning label, as does organic certified copper sulfare on its buckets - and organic farmers douse produce in that one the day it is being shipped to market.


CVN screenshot of Fears Nachawati Law Firm attorney(plaintiff) Gibbs Henderson delivering his closing argument 

The allegation was so unconvincing that the jury returned the verdict quickly, and even after the lawyers had tried to invoke International Agency for Research on Cancer, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and even more fringe groups like Ramazinni Institute and their cult beliefs that statistical correlation was superior to science.

The COVID-19 pandemic was obviously terrible for those impacted, my own included, but one positive thing is that it made the public, and therefore juries and judges, a lot more skeptical of supernatural claims hiding behind the veil of epidemiology.