Talking Biotech Podcast - "High Levels" of Glyphosate in Sperm? - Dr. Andrea Love

Hi everybody, and welcome to a special journal club session of the Talking Biotech podcast, brought to you by Collabora. Now, the peer-reviewed literature, it's viewed as a gold standard of scientific veracity. So when the general public sees an article in the peer-reviewed literature, they take it super seriously, even if they don't fully understand how to vet the information within. It has kind of a halo that it's been approved by people who know how to approve. science or confirm the veracity of experiments. And let's face it, it's really hard to be good at that. And today we see more and more problems in the peer-reviewed literature because you see lax reviewers, we see it very hard to recruit reviewers from the side of an editor. It's a lot going on there. The other side of this is that once it reaches peer review, it's hard for someone to judge its quality. The average person can't really do that. They sometimes will sift through titles of papers, sometimes abstracts, until they find something that they think confirms what they've already concluded, something that simply confirms their bias. But what if the authors themselves overstep the data and give significance to something that maybe didn't show what they're claiming it showed, that maybe the title doesn't even match what's inside the paper itself, you know, what the data actually say. And then you have traditional and social media that amplify that misinformation, spreading the falsehoods through all those networks. It really harms the public understanding of science and breaks trust in food and farming. So today we'll talk about a recent paper published in Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety in June 2024. So a paper from the future. And we're joined today by Dr. Andrea Love, who dominates the debunking space on Instagram and her Substack Immunologic. Welcome, Andrea. Thank you, Kevin. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Love.

Thanks for having me, Kevin.

I think it's cool. We've been doing a lot together lately, and the first time we've done this.

We have. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, it's been fun. So, uh, so here, here's where I, I hate to do this to people, but I'm gonna ask you, can you give me a one-word answer? Okay, here we go. Uh, the article is titled Glyphosate Presence in Human Sperm: First Report of a Positive Correlation of Oxidative Stress in Infertile French Population. And then The Guardian says, High levels of weed killer are found in more than half the sperm samples. Uh, so are high levels being found in sperm?

I would say no. I would say that the title is inflammatory and is intentionally leading those who might come across it.

Yeah, I think the big thing for me was that they say they detected it in sperm, but they didn't actually look in sperm. They looked in seminal plasma, which is produced in entirely different glands and different parts of the body than where sperm are manufactured in the seminiferous tubules and things like that. So, they didn't even look in sperm themselves. And so, what did they— but they detected— let's go backwards a little bit more. Who did they study here?

Yeah. So, they were looking at male partners of infertile couples. Who were aged between 26 and 57, and they were recruited from an infertility clinic because they and their partners had been seeking consultations for infertility, which in this instance is defined as they had not been able to conceive after one or more years of unprotected intercourse. And so they basically were like, oh, well, these people are having you know, reproductive issues. Let's see if we can source them for some study that we're trying to find a needle in a haystack, as it were, is kind of the impression that I was getting. So it first started with a questionnaire-based survey where the males were asked to answer questions about what jobs they had, where they worked, what sort of trade they worked in. Um, you know, where, where, uh, what, what healthcare access they had, um, what their diet was, and, and so on and so forth. And, you know, they, they recruited 128 people, um, but only 47 of them actually filled out this preliminary questionnaire.

Yeah, or had complete questionnaires, right? Just, just to be completely accurate. The other thing was it asked if they were smokers. And that was a really important part of what we'll talk about in just a minute.

Yes.

One of the things that I give the authors big praise for is their ability to measure glyphosate and things like blood and urine using LC-MS and some of what I'm guessing are the most recent derivatization methods and other ways in which you prepare samples for analysis because they're measuring in the parts per trillion. So do you have a favorite standard that you like for how much a part per trillion is?

1 second in 31.7 years.

Or 31,000 years. No, this is parts per trillion, right?

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you're only at parts per billion. You're off by 3 orders of magnitude.

I'm only at parts per billion.

So it's parts per trillion. This is, this is nanograms per gram, but it's fractions of nanograms per gram, right? So we're looking at parts per trillion of this stuff, which is seconds in 30,000 years. So very cool that they can measure that much and do it with some certainty. And I, I don't doubt their ability to be able to do that. I think that's fantastic. The problem for me is, is that one article that was a news article said 100% of people where glyphosate was detected were infertile.

Right.

And or and that basically was because they tested it in an infertility clinic. The good part of this is that they can detect something that is almost not there. It's four times higher in the seminal plasma than in blood, and that seems to be pretty consistent. But what about how it affects sperm? So they did some tests on quantity and quality, and what did they find?

Yeah, I mean, you know, the the claims and and particularly how this study is being interpreted by news headlines. Is insinuating that these parts per trillion or subparts per trillion levels of glyphosate are somehow related to dysfunction of sperm, which is supposedly the cause of these patients' infertility. But if you actually look at functional sperm metrics like the actual concentration of sperm in the semen samples and the motility of the sperm in those semen samples, as well as the shape of the sperm in those semen samples, they're all exactly the same across the groups. So the sperm have regular motility. The data essentially overlap between samples that had detectable levels of glyphosate and those that didn't. The concentrations of the sperms were overlapping as well, and the morphology of the sperm were overlapping. And so what that suggests is You know, irrespective of these minuscule levels of glyphosate that were detected in seminal plasma, which again is not the sperm, as you already noted, uh, the sperm are behaving as they should regardless of where the sample was coming from. Now, whether the sperm is related to the infertility, that's an entirely different question that wasn't actually investigated in this study.

Right, because you'd have to look at acrosomal enzymes, you'd have to look at other aspects of the sperm itself, which they just looked at gross morphology, and there was no differences in deformity.

Exactly. And motility is often, you know, a benchmark. It's, it's used in husbandry and other sorts, you know, even in animal research. But again, they're swimming at the same proportions amongst the populations of the samples that they collected.

Okay. So, so these minute traces of almost nothing seem to not have, at least there's no correlation with sperm effects on sperm themselves. Yet the title says glyphosate in sperm and then implies that they're connected to infertility, but they're showing here there's no reason that we can say that based upon the data accumulated because they didn't measure in sperm and the sperm are perfectly fine. So, it's— the other thing they measured—

Okay.

So, the other thing they measured was oxidative stress. And so, what is this and why is this a frequent place where people go when trying to connect a chemical of interest to some sort of dysfunction?

Yeah. So, oxidative stress is essentially stress put upon cells or encountered by cells as a result of metabolic processes. And so, we often think of it in the context of metabolism. So, every time your cells are implementing a catabolic process, you're breaking apart bonds, you're releasing energy, which can be in the form of these reactive oxygen species. And these reactive oxygen species are essential for certain cellular processes. But if they get to be too high, they can lead to cellular damage, DNA damage, and ultimately that can cause defects in cells, which if they accumulate and are not repaired appropriately, can lead to defects in the cells, cancer, etc. And so oxidative stress is a very common buzzword in many spheres that are related to health and wellness and things like that. But I think people also forget that it's an essential function, these oxidative stress markers, in order— it's an indicator that these cells are actually able to conduct the metabolic processes that they need. So, a lot of times, you might find people that are comparing various metabolites or various indicators of oxidative stress and saying that You know, well, this population has higher levels and therefore it must be related to some observed, you know, disease state. But often you're looking at some byproduct, some indirect measure of this, and it's often not corrected for other variables that might be in play. Yeah.

And there's many things that could contribute. If you exercise the day before, if you drank too much last night, if you smoke, if you There's so many things that can change the status of this. And the biggest problem in this paper is, is they don't talk about what is the normal range that you would see. Like, what would you consider to be problematic, potentially leading to a disease state or, or even associated with a disease state? They simply say that the ones that are in the population that has more glyphosate also has higher levels of, of oxidative stress. Again, higher levels of oxidative stress that they go back and say, well, there's the basis of the problem. But we go back to the sperm and they were unaffected. So even if the levels are a little elevated, they don't relate to a functional problem in at least the gamete and its reproductive capacity.

Yeah. And the other interesting thing was, is that the way that they present the data is very misleading because in one table and in their figures, they're looking at these total oxidative stress markers and they're comparing You know, samples that had detectable glyphosate again in parts per trillion versus the undetectable, which is anything less than their limit of detection, which was 0.05 nanograms per gram. But then in a completely separate table, they're looking at, you know, the self-reported consumption of organic food or no organic food or smoking or not smoking, but they're not actually assessing the oxidative stress markers based on smoking versus nonsmoking. They lump the oxidative stress markers into glyphosate detection, not glyphosate detection, but things that can damage your DNA like smoking cigarettes are going to be much more likely to cause oxidative stress than these minuscule trace levels that clinically are meaningless. And that is, you know, those levels of glyphosate have been demonstrated Yeah, or animal health.

If you think about the most majority of soybeans and corn, things that are treated with glyphosate that have the trace amounts are consumed by animals, farm animals, that kind of thing. And we've never seen a widespread problem with animal fertility. And they're just— I'm not convinced that we have a fertility problem that would be associated with glyphosate. Yeah, I think that's a good point. That there's many more probable causes that I can think of.

Yeah, so absolutely. And it's, and it's interesting because you hear a lot about fertility and in the context of even broader kind of anti-science messaging. I mean, we hear it demonized in the context of vaccines, and we hear demonized in the context of microplastics and PFAS and all of these other things. And it's like, but we're not also factoring in health behaviors, right? Are we, are we scoring Everyone's quantitative fertility? Are we looking at the number of babies being born? And certainly some of that is probably impacted by individual couples or certain populations that have infertility. But, you know, we're kind of in a place in society where many people are opting to not have children. And, and that is not a result of infertility. It's a result of active, conscious decision.

That's right. Yeah. So affluence tends to correlate very well with smaller family size because you're able to— you don't have to have 13 kids to work the farm after you're gone.

Right.

You— it's— so yeah, we would expect populations to be going down as conditions improve and the overall nutrition, people, number of people in abject poverty is lower than it's ever been. These are some major scores for science. And so when the authors of this paper, here's their conclusion. Our results suggest the negative impact of glyphosate on human reproductive health and possibly on progeny. And yeah, and they didn't show any data that would support that statement. Yes. They also say that policymakers should consider the precautionary principle, you know, based on these data. How do we feel about that?

I mean, I feel like there's no data here to suggest that The precautionary principle even applies, you know, I haven't seen— there's not even convincing information. I mean, even if you look at the, the trends of some of their markers, I mean, their R-values are just not even related. They're just kind of fitting a line through whatever dot plot they have. And, and, you know, but the problem is, of course, that this gets picked up because the headline is very sensational. And, and, you know, I'm not familiar with these authors per se, and I don't know if they have personal biases, you know, or they're simply trying to publish to get more funding for their lab. And that's a hugely problematic issue with, with kind of this publish or perish mentality where a lot of weak studies or flawed studies are published with abstracts and data and titles that are not really characterizing what the data are actually saying in order for them to say, okay, well, I have this preliminary data that I published, therefore fund my lab for another 3 years. And so, you know, I think what this ends up doing is it, it undermines the quality of peer-reviewed studies, but it also creates this perception that, you know, everything that you can find in a peer-reviewed journal is quality data. And I think the public doesn't realize that data on a certain topic accrues, right? You can't look at a single paper in isolation and be like, oh, well, that that is what it is, you know, it has to be viewed in the context of all of the other studies on the given topic. And we see that everywhere, right? People will go to PubMed, and they'll think because it says NCBI NIH, that it's NIH-funded studies, when it's simply a repository. And that's just very poorly misunderstood. And so they'll kind of use very selective keywords when they're searching, because they haven't been trained on how to do a literature review, which is fine. Like, that's That's not their job. But then it's going to lead them to find these studies that are mischaracterizing and misrepresenting reality. And often they're reading the abstract, which we know is kind of like an advertisement for the paper. It's often not even what the data in the paper say in an abstract, which I find very frustrating. I would love to have plain language summaries instead of abstracts. To be honest.

Yeah. And the trend maybe is heading that way. For what it's worth, the work was funded in part by the Office of France Biodiversity Office under a grant that was called— under, you know, they have these little acronyms at the beginning called PestiFerti. So my guess is that they're— that in this group has, if you look at their other work, they have done a very nice job quantifying small amounts of chemistry and correlating it with other stuff. Although correlations, as we're aware, don't necessarily mean causation. And as we say all the time, and but the problem that I have is when you start to overstep the data and start to develop language or use language which is implying causality, because that's what gets picked up by the media. And I don't know if you've looked at any of the headlines, but when you look at, for instance, The Guardian says, High levels of weed killer found in more than half of sperm samples, study finds.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was the— I got sent that probably 30 times as soon as that social media post came out, and I kind of went on a little rant, um, about, you know, just that statement, high levels. I'm like, this, this isn't a high level in any world whatsoever. Um, and, and, but what it does is it really exploits this, this health, you know, this health anxiety. And so now people, you know, you're, you're pitting things against each other that have no impact on your life, and it undermines our ability to produce food in a sustainable way. And, and it, it really conflates a lot of the other topics that I think are tangentially related to things like pesticide use into this bucket where the chemicals themselves are now the demons, when in reality, you know, I was talking to another farmer recently, and he's like, why on earth would we use more than we need to? It costs money. So we're gonna use as little as we need to grow the food that we need to grow. Why would we waste something that we have to, to buy? It just, it makes no logical sense. And I think people don't actually think about that.

Well, and take the time to apply too. I mean, that's a huge pain in the butt when you have to go out and apply an insecticide or pesticide, herbicide, because you have a problem to mitigate in the field. It doesn't necessarily happen on your calendar. And so it takes time, it takes the product, it takes fuel, it takes everything. Let me throw a couple more headlines by you here. Environmental Health Issues says glyphosate found in over half of French sperm samples. Okay, they tested 100 guys in an infertility clinic. High levels of weed killer found in more than half of sperm samples, heightening fertility risk concerns. Sky News. Here's One Green Planet. High levels of weed killer found in over half of sperm samples, study reveals. Which, but it, but we, you know, just to kind of wrap it up here. This is where the major, where The online media and then social media take over with spreading the false information. The authors of the paper did not show what the title says. And the journal and the authors in traditional media are scanning those titles and those abstracts.

They're not, they're not, they're not pouring through the data. I mean, you don't even need to pour through the data here. You just need to read the materials and methods. But Most of these journalists are not scientists, right? They're not analyzing whether or not the materials and methods are even enabling you to assess what the study is saying it's doing. So they're just glossing over things and, you know, it's not even assessing any of the criteria that, that these claims are making. And of course, as soon as you go to defend it, you're a paid— what am I now, a big ag shill? So, you know, I get a new title every day.

Yeah. Join the club. I think there were, there was like one thing I was once accused of shilling for big cheese. I thought that was fun, but I'm a shill for, for big science. That's my big thing.

That's what I said. I was like, I'm literally just talking about a chemical and encouraging the journalists to actually look at the data before they write something. I feel like we're, we're in this ecosystem now and it's It's, it's a reflection of the, the media ecosystem where, you know, even the most basic fact checks aren't even done because everyone's trying to scoop another one or get more likes on their social page or drive people to their website. And so, you know, you find obvious typos, you find obvious things that, you know, weren't even— I mean, a Google, like a basic Google search could have told you that this thing was not true. Or a quote's taken out of context that's super obvious, and there's just no accountability. And what— it's harming the public, you know. It's, it's— and that's the big issue that I have, is that it's really eroding our ability to function as a society and actually use science to improve our lives and the planet. And I think That is the biggest thing I take issue with.

Yep. You don't trust farmers, you don't trust the food, you don't trust the scientists. Who are you going to trust? Well, the person with the website. Yeah. And so, so this is where we are combating this. And I appreciate you taking the time to do this with me today.

I think that— I think this paper in particular really goes to like the bigger issue is that there are media outlets that have a history of spreading these fear-laden claims and usually exploiting this chemophobia because people do want to do what's right by their families. They want to be healthy, they want to take control of their lives and ensure that they can, you know, know that they're making safe decisions. And so these media outlets, you know, they kind of scan the internet and try and find these things that they can evoke these very negative emotional reactions from, and that's going to exacerbate the health anxiety, drive traffic. And so like, for me, I always try to, you know, repeat and reiterate to people that, you know, science is much more nuanced than that. And usually, if these claims are made in a way that you're having this very immediate, you know, vicious response, it's usually not the real story.

Yeah. So if you had to come up with a new title for this paper, what would it be?

It would be Trace levels of glyphosate detected in a subset of seminal fluid. I don't— I guess I wouldn't even publish these data, I think.

Yeah, I think I would have to say there's almost nothing there. Your food is safe. Don't worry about it. And your fertility is— your fertility is just fine. Because the last thing you— well, the last thing you need is a bunch of high school kids shunning condoms and going out and eating burritos. Yeah.

And, and you know what, what I might say is I would reanalyze these data and look at the trace levels of glyphosate in smokers versus nonsmokers and see if there's a relationship there. But, but either way, there's no evidence to suggest these minuscule levels are related to the fertility problems of these people. And I feel like exploiting them for this study where they're already seeking medical care for this very stressful, um, you know, issue is just, just predatory.

Well, Dr. Andrea Love, did you ever try to get the, uh, song Calling Dr. Love released so that you could use— I, I almost wanted to try to find it, but I think Gene Simmons would send me a nasty email.

Totally get sued.

Yeah. So if people want to find you online, where do they look?

Um, I'm usually on Instagram or Threads at Dr. Andrea Love, and occasionally on Twitter @Dr_AndreaLove. And my website is immunologic.org.

Immunologic.org. And then that takes you to the Substack?

Yep. Yep. Or you can go directly there, substack.immunologic.com.

Very good. Yeah, you're really kicking butt and I really appreciate everything you do. And thank you very much for joining me today. Let's do it again.

Definitely. Thanks so much, Kevin.

And thank you very much for listening to this special Journal Club edition of the Talking Biotech podcast. Share this with friends who are afraid about food affecting their fertility. Let's focus on the real things that might be causing them to have problems that could affect their ability to start a family. It's not the trace chemicals in your corn chips. It might be something else. And by clouding these important issues and obfuscating them with misinformation doesn't help anybody. This is the Talking Biotech podcast by Collabra. Thank you very much, and we'll talk to you next week.