Several weeks ago, the Washington Post ran an article titled “The mysterious rise of cancer among adults in the Corn Belt.” It leads with Mackenzie Dryden, Winterset, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer at 18 years old.
Corn Belt, Iowa, the land. You know what’s coming. And sure enough, later in the article, there it is: “At the turn of the century, Iowa ranked 18th in the nation for cancer rates among adults under 50. Today, it’s fifth.” (It’s actually seventh.) And then comes this observation: “At the center of the controversy is glyphosate ….”
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- IF glyphosate is the cause, one would think this would all be neatly proportional – it’s not. For instance, why the disparity between Iowa and Illinois? They’re essentially equivalent in terms of annual acreage, [but] Illinois’ cancer rate is roughly 8 points lower than Iowa.
- Alternatively, Nebraska and Minnesota plant only two-thirds of Iowa’s acreage, yet those two states possess higher cancer rates among young people.
All this focus on glyphosate represents lost opportunity towards solving the real problem. That ultimately cheats all cancer patients (now, and in the future).
