Posted by bikenaga 12/15/2025
ChubbyEmu video for "A Farmer Mistakenly Drank His Own Herbicide. This Is What Happened To His Brain."
My mother is also data point - grew up on a farm where her father used it. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's 2018.
A baseline rate or Parkinsons would be a good addition to the article. I have seen figures of 1 out of 331 for total or apparently about 1.1M total. Farmers make up about 2% of the population. Doing rough back of envelope math shows that you would expect 22K farmers to have Parkinsons assuming even distribution by population. The numbers aren't precise but if the article's thousands was taken literally it would ironically suggest paraquat has a protective effect against Parkinsons which is obviously absurd thing to assume from a known neurotoxin.
Not every farmer with Parkinsons is suing though. If we assume 1% of farmers are involved in lawsuits then thousands is alarming because it would imply 10x rates. 10% suing though and it is expected. 100% suing would be 1/10th the general rate which would fit with the absurd counterfactual hypothesis that non-lethal paraquat exposure prevents Parkinsons.