Thousands of U.S. farmers have Parkinson's. They blame a deadly pesticide
58 comments
·December 15, 2025zug_zug
kwanbix
[delayed]
peppersghost93
You should consider dropping that instinct. If you look into how corporations have behaved historically you'd assume evil until proven innocent. Especially US corps.
Permit
> You should consider dropping that instinct.
This is the reason we have people mistakenly repeating the conclusion that AI consumes huge amounts of water comparable to that of entire cities.
If you make any other assumption than "I don't know what's happening here and need to learn more" you'll constantly be making these kind of errors. You don't have to have an opinion on every topic.
Edit: By the way, I also don't think we should trust big companies indiscriminately. Like, we could have a system for pesticide approval that errs on the side of caution: We only permit pesticides for which there is undisputed evidence that the chemicals do not cause problems for humans/animals/other plants etc.
christophilus
Your edit was a good one.
It's a rational default position to say, "I'll default to distrusting large corporate scientific literature that tells me neurotoxins on my food aren't a problem."
As with any rule of thumb, that one will sometimes land you on the wrong side of history, but my guess is that it will more often than not guide you well if you don't have the time to dive deeper into a subject.
I'm not saying all corporations are evil. I'm not saying all corporate science is bad or bunk. But, corporations have a poor track record with this sort of thing, and it's the kind of thing that could obviously have large, negative societal consequences if we get it wrong. This is the category of problem for which the science needs to be clear and overwhelming in favor of a thing before we should allow it.
bombcar
Corporations have to be assumed to be amoral, which means that practically speaking, you can assume they'll tend towards evil.
At least you have to continually monitor them as such.
armonster
Corporations should be assumed to act in line with their interests, which is the bottom line. "Morality" isn't the lens that you need to try to view them through to understand their intentions and actions. But yes, their motivations pretty much always lay outside of any moral good due to the nature of them.
throwaway132448
Perhaps, but it’s much easier to find contrived ways to stay neutral, than take a stance and actually be the change you want to see.
reactordev
Legislatively allowed evil
keiferski
An excellent movie on basically the same topic is Michael Clayton, with George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Tilda Swinton in IMO each of their best career performances.
jamestimmins
Excellent movie. Worth noting that it was written by Tony Gilroy, who created Andor and cowrote The Bourne Identity, so if you enjoyed those you're likely to enjoy this.
losthobbies
One of my favourite movies. Everyone in it is so good.
JumpCrisscross
"Critics point to research linking paraquat exposure to Parkinson’s, while the manufacturer pushes back, saying none of it is peer-reviewed."
What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom and China"?
zug_zug
So assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science. They are statistical judgment calls (often based on things like giving a much, much higher dose to a rodent and looking for short-term effects).
And the reason that is is because there's no affordable, moral way to give 100 farmers [nor consumers] a small dose of a product for 20 years before declaring it safe. So the system guesses, and it guesses wrong, often erring against the side of caution in the US (it's actually quite shocking how many pesticides later get revoked after approval).
Europe takes a more "precautionary principle" approach. In those cases of ambiguity (which is most things approved and not), they err to the side of caution.
Notice how this claim here is again shifting the burden to the victims (their research doesn't meet standard X, allegedly). Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
threethirtytwo
The US is very capitalist and consumer based. They error on the side of “does it make money?” Or “will I lose money?”
witte
Chevron clasically has ignored health and safety requirements to the point where there was once the “Chevron Doctrine” which deferred legal interpretations to specialized regulatory agencies which established clearer guidance against murky legislative directives. The Doctrine was recently overturned by the ostensibly rogue SCOTUS as highlighted by the harvard business review: https://hbr.org/2024/09/the-end-of-the-chevron-doctrine-is-b...
stuffn
Chevron didn’t establish clearer guidelines.
It was weaponized by both parties to create defacto laws without proper legal procedure. It should’ve been unconstitutional from the beginning as only Congress can make laws. Regulatory agencies are far easier to control, generally contain administration-friendly plants, and are not expected to provide any justification for their decisions. The result is laws that change as the wind blows, confusions, and rights restrictions done by people who should have no business doing so. The “reasonable interpretation” rule allowed Congress to completely defer to them and force citizens to spend tremendous capital getting a case to the Supreme Court.
Chevron’s overturn was objectively a huge win and hardly a “rogue” decision. That editorialization is not a fair representation of the problems it has caused when regulatory agencies begin attempting to regulate constitutional rights. It was overly vague and gave far too much power to people who cannot be trusted with it.
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mistrial9
"Under Chevron, if a judge found that the agency had made a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous congressional directive, they were obliged to defer to the agency’s interpretation of the law, effectively ending any substantive review of a challenged rule. The repeal of Chevron is a huge blow to regulators, evidenced by the fact that the decision had been cited more than 18,000 times over 40 years."
the Chevron Doctrine is new to me; it appears that the parent comment was not answering "why was it banned internationally" but rather emphasizing weakness in US procedures
JumpCrisscross
Did we have a regulation banning paraquat that was overturned when Chevron was overturned? If not, it’s irrelevant.
tastyfreeze
Paraquat is also linked to the polio pandemic. It was sprayed everywhere gypsy moths were found. Great success at killing moths. Also weakened human children to to where a common disease could get into spines and cause paralysis.
Researching this kind of stuff is not for the faint of heart. Its horrible all the way down. Not recommended for the faint of heart.
blibble
in most civilised countries: chemicals added to food are banned until proven safe
... then you have the USA
JumpCrisscross
> chemicals added to food are banned until proven safe
Is that the case here? Paraquat wasn’t banned for any reason, it just hasn’t been approved yet?
That doesn’t comport with how the word “banned” is usually used.
blibble
yes, the companies producing it tried getting it approved, and it was for a bit
and then the approval was overturned as the evidence was crap
so, back to the original state: banned until proven safe
clivestaples
I got shingles-ish rash after sitting in an outdoor jacuzzi in Salinas, California. Visited the urgent care and the Standard-trained doctor of immigrant farm laborers said it was related to the pesticides. Said he lost both parents in their 40s and suspects it was the indiscriminate spraying from the air in the 70/80/90s. Eye-opening and thought-provoking.
stickfigure
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VtUGoGZtI8
ChubbyEmu video for "A Farmer Mistakenly Drank His Own Herbicide. This Is What Happened To His Brain."
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MarkMarine
I just read another article about this, but the affected group is military from Camp Legume. The water in Legume was contaminated, and its actually given a control group test for the incidence of Parkinson’s with Camp Pendleton, where the water was not contaminated.
Spoiler: it looks like the farmers are right
https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-thought-parkinsons-wa...
Amazing thing is TCE was banned by the Biden EPA in 2024 and Trump’s EPA stopped its ban.
brendoelfrendo
Minor correction: it's Camp Lejeune. I just had to chime in because Camp Legume is both very funny and kind of an appropriate typo for the topic.
Infernal
For anyone stopping by looking for more info, it’s Camp Lejeune not Legume.
krustyburger
Camp Legume may be a reference to this scene from the film Blazing Saddles:
calebm
"With evidence of its harms stacking up, it’s already been banned in dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom and China, where it’s made. Yet last year, its manufacturer Syngenta, a subsidiary of a company owned by the Chinese government, continued selling paraquat in the United States and other nations that haven’t banned it."
jmclnx
>Chevron, which never manufactured paraquat and hasn’t sold it since 1986 ... should not be liable
I think Chevron may have a point, no one knew back then and they stopped selling it ~40 years ago. But ---
To me, if the US had a real Health Care System, people would not have to file lawsuits to get the care they need.
But in the US, this is how things work. The care these people need is unaffordable by everyone in the US except for the very rich. So they will be waiting probably 10 to 20 years for relief as the lawsuit works it way through the courts and appeals.
SideburnsOfDoom
A related, recent story: "Scientists Thought Parkinson’s Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water"
Highlighting the role of environmental pollution in causing Parkinson’s.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46216422
https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-thought-parkinsons-wa...
jtbayly
Am I the only one that thinks it's weird to call a weed killer a pesticide?
JumpCrisscross
Herbicides are a pesticide [1]. (Alongside insecticides, fungicides and fumigants, among others.)
[1] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-01/documents/pe...
Reminds me of "cancer alley" [1].
As somebody who's looked in to this a bit, the deeper I dug the more I ultimately moved toward the conclusion (reluctantly) that indeed big corporations are the baddies. I have an instinct to steel-math both sides, but not every issue has two compelling sides to it...
One example of them clearly being the baddies is them paying people to social media astroturf to defend the roundup pesticide online [2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
2. https://galiherlaw.com/media-manipulation-comes-out-during-m...