Just last year Accountable Iowa reported on a peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers which found that certain pesticides may raise cancer risk at levels comparable to smoking cigarettes.

Meanwhile, the pesticide industry appears to be following Big Tobacco’s old playbook: ghostwrite their own “scientific studies,” spend millions on sleek advertisements to sway public opinion, and blame victims when the truth emerges. It worked…until it didn’t. And it won’t work now.

Bayer/Monsanto top-cited “scientific study” officially retracted

For 25 years, Bayer/Monsanto has leaned on this “study” to claim that glyphosate (found in Roundup) doesn’t cause cancer. The study was referred to as “foundational,” and the “hallmark paper in the discourse surrounding glyphosate and Roundup.” It has been cited over 800 times. This month, the entire study was officially retracted the original journal it was published in. Why? They discovered that it wasn’t independent science at all. It was corporate marketing dressed up in a lab coat.

We know this because litigation exposed it. Internal emails revealed that company employees drafted the study and paid outside academics to “just edit & sign their names.” That damning evidence didn’t come from a regulator, a university, or a newsroom. It came from farm families who got cancer, went to court, and forced the truth into daylight through discovery.

Here’s the devastating irony: the very people Bayer/Monsanto now want to shut out of the courthouse are the ones who uncovered one of the most consequential scientific frauds in regulatory history. And now Bayer is asking Iowa lawmakers to give them lifetime liability immunity so they can never be exposed again.

Bayer’s pitch to Iowa lawmakers is this: trust the Federal government’s regulatory system. But there’s one massive problem with that concept. The EPA relied on this very study to defend glyphosate’s safety. So did regulators around the world. The retraction proves what common sense already suggested: regulators can be fooled when companies lie. And the only reason we know they were fooled is because cancer survivors had their day in court.

Despite this, Bayer continues to push their pesticide liability immunity bill in Iowa (and nation-wide) designed to shield the corporation from accountability when its products cause cancer and other serious harm. If passed, it would strip Iowa farm families of their right to seek justice, the most powerful tool we have to expose dangerous products and hold wrongdoers responsible.

With Iowa facing the fastest-growing cancer rate in the nation, letting a multinational chemical giant off the hook is unthinkable. But Bayer will be back asking for their get-out-of-jail-free card, and we hope lawmakers will once againtell them to get lost.

Join 50,000 of your fellow Iowans in fighting back!