Parkinson’s is a human -created disease, according to a neurologist
In the summer of 1982, seven people, addicts who used heroin, were admitted to a hospital in California in a paralyzed condition and with blocked speech. They are 20 years old, generally healthy until the synthetic drug, which they have done in a laboratory.
| The drug literally « freezes » them in their own bodies. Doctors quickly find the cause: MPTP is a neurotoxic agentwhich has destroyed a small but critical part of the brain, namely the structure in the middle brain (Substantia Nigra), which plays a key role in the control of movement, writes Bartos Szezinski from Politico. |
Thus, patients within a day develop symptoms of Parkinson’s in the late stage.
The cases shock doctors. So far, it is believed that the disease is part of aging in humans, although its origin is mysterious. Doctors are proof that a single chemical can produce the same impact effect. And even more worrying: MPTP turns out to be a chemical agent similar to a charter, a widely used weed fightingwhich has been sprayed on farms and farms in the United States and Europe for decades.
With the help of medication, doctors manage to improve patients’ condition, but the week never recovers completely.
For the young then Dutch doctor, Bass Bloom, the story becomes a fate and a professional cause. In 1989, shortly after he graduated from Medical University, Bloem traveled to the United States, where he worked with neurologist William Langston, who discovered the connection between MPTP and Parkinson’s. What Blom understands there completely overturns his understanding of the disease and its causes.
This was a case similar to lightning. A single chemical that replicates the whole disease. Parkinson’s not just bad luck. It can be triggered.
Babbat. Dutch doctor-neurologist
How the man created the disease
Today, Bloom is 58 years old and runs a world -renowned clinic and research team based at the Medical Center of Radbow University in Nimegen, a medieval Dutch city near the German border. The center cures hundreds of patients every year, with the team being a pioneer in early diagnosis and prevention studies.
There is no tension in the lobby in front of Blom’s office, but it is overcrowded. Patients move slowly, some have crutches, others with accompanying. One patient is hunched over and walking stiff, wearing. Another stops silently to the stairs, his face was relaxed. It’s not absent – it’s just frozen, as if every gesture has become too expensive.
On its busiest days, the clinic examines over 60 patients. « They come even more, » Blom says.
| Blom’s posture is charismatic, it is over 2 meters high. He says he likes to walk while he talks. Wears a white apron with a few colored chemicals in his pocket. His long, silver -gray hair is cut back, with a few strands separating as he walks around the room. Patients paint his portraits, write poems about him. His team calls him « the doctor who never stops moving. » |
Unlike his colleagues of similar status, Bloem is never behind the scenes. He participates in international conferences, consults with MPs, as well as communicates his public cases and the scientific community.
His work is related to both care and cause – to promote movement and personalized treatment. It always focuses on what may be the cause of the disease. Along with the focus on exercise and prevention, Blom has become one of the most outraged votes for the influence of environmental factors leading to Parkinson’s disease. He perceives as increasing failure with eco-problem because of the long-term impact on the human brain.
Parkinson is a human -created disease. The tragedy is that we do not even try to prevent it.
Babbat. Dutch doctor-neurologist
When the English surgeon James Parkinson first described the « trembling paralysis » in 1817, it is perceived as something curious by medicine, a rare disease in elderly men. Two centuries later Parkinson’s disease has already been twice the world in the last 20 yearsas expected to double again in the next 20
Currently, the disease is among the fastest growing neurological diseases in the world, ahead of stroke and multiple sclerosis. Parkinson’s progressively leads to the death of the neurons that produce dopamine. Gradually, people are deprived of the ability to move, speech, and ultimately by cognitive abilities. There is no treatment.
Ecological disease as a result of a toxic environment
Age and genetic predisposition play a role. But according to Bloem and most of the neurological community, these two factors cannot explain the sharp increase in cases. In an article of 2024, co -authored with American neurologist Ray Dorsy, Blom writes that Parkinson’s is a « mainly ecological disease » – a condition formed not so much by genetics as by prolonged exposure to toxins such as air pollution, industrial solvents and especially pesticides.
Most of the patients at the Bloem Clinic are not farmers, but many live near agricultural land where pesticides are used in large quantities. Over time, Blom noticed that Parkinson’s expanded in regions with intensively developed agriculture.
Parkinson’s was a very rare disease until the early 20th century. Then, with a boom in agriculture, chemistry and the use of pesticides, levels of disease begin to increase.
Babbat. Dutch doctor-neurologist
The toxic pesticide charavat continues to be used outside Europe
Europe has contributed to science. In 2007, the highly toxic pesticide charavat was banned, which killed plants and was very dangerous to humans. It is similar to the drug MPTP. This happens after Sweden sues the European Commission for neglecting proof of his neurotoxicity. Other pesticides, which are also associated with Parkinson’s, are Rotenon and Maneb, which are no longer approved for use.
But this is not the case everywhere. The chart is still produced in the United Kingdom and China, is sprayed in farms in the United States, New Zealand and Australia and is exported to parts of Africa and Latin America – regions in which the incidence of Parkinson’s disease is now increasing.
Once the second best -selling herbicide in the world – after glyphosate – a charter brings significant profits for its manufacturer, based in Switzerland and China’s property, Syngenta. However, the peak in sales has long since passed away and at the moment the chemical is only a small part of the company’s overall business.
In the US, Syngenta is part of thousands of lawsuits from people who claim that their chemical has caused Parkinson’s disease. Similar cases are being conducted in Canada.
Syngenta has consistently denied having a connection between the Park and Parkinson’s, citing regulatory examinations in the United States, Australia and Japan, who have not found evidence of a causal relationship.
The glyphosate, or the chemical that Europe cannot give up
Among the chemicals used to this day, there is no other who has caused more attention or has experienced more court battles as much as glyphosis.
| This is the most widely used herbicide on the planet. Traces of it can be found in agricultural land, forests, rivers, raindrops and even in the crowns of trees deep in the nature reserves of Europe. Located in house dust, animal feed, products in supermarkets. In one study in the United States, 80% of the urine samples were found. |
For years, glyphosate sold under the Roundup brandis at the center of international heated legal debates and regulations. In the United States, Bayer, which has acquired Monsanto, the original Roundup manufacturer, has paid over $ 10 billion to settle court cases connecting glyphosis to the non -Hodgla lymphoma (rare cancer – ed.).
Glyphosate is no longer patented and is manufactured by many companies in the world. However, Bayer remains the largest seller company, with revenue of EUR 2.6 billion from glyphosate sales in 2024, although competition in the market and legal pressure reduced profits.
EU renews permits for use under pressure from the chemical industry
In Europe, the lobbies of the agricultural sector and the chemical industry are fighting a fierce battle to maintain its use. They warn that the ban on glyphosis would break agricultural productivity. EU countries remain separated. France tried to gradually remove it. Germany promised a complete ban, but never introduced it.
Despite increasing concerns, the lack of sufficient safety and political pressure data in 2023 has resumed the permission to use glyphosate for another 10 years.
Although most debates about glyphosis focus on the risk of cancer, some studies detect possible relationships with reproductive damage, developmental disorders, endocrine disorders and even cancers in children.
The current EU regulatory framework for the evaluation of pesticides, as well as that of many other regulatory systems, focuses mainly on acute toxicity – short -term signs of poisoning such as seizures, sudden organ damage or death. Manufacturers provide safety data, many of which are based on animal studies that seek visible behavioral changes.
But unlike heroin users in California, which have been exposed to unusually severe intoxication, Parkinson’s disease does not manifest with dramatic symptoms in the short term. It sneaks as the neurons die – often for decades.
We are waiting for the mouse to start going to Zigzag. But with Parkinson’s damage has already been inflicted when symptoms occur.
Babbat. Dutch doctor-neurologist
Regulatory tests also isolate individual chemicals and rarely examine how they interact in a natural environment. But a 2020 study in Japan showed how dangerous this assumption can be. When rodents were exposed to glyphosate and MPTP, the same compound that caused Parkinson’s symptoms in cases of heroin in California – the combination caused dramatically greater loss of brain cells than any of the substances separately.
« This is already the nightmare scenario, » Blom says. « And we don’t even explore it. »
Some governments have already officially recognized the links between Parkinson’s and Agriculture. France, Italy and Germany as an occupational disease related to pesticide exposure. This is related to compensation for farmers. According to Blom, even this recognition of the problem did not lead to a greater trigger of the response systems.
| « I don’t know a farmer who deliberately does things in the wrong way, » Blom says. « They just follow the rules. The problem is that the rules are wrong, » says a researcher doctor. |
To blossom, preventing the epidemic means a change in the way of thinking from reaction to prevention. This means that there are requirements for longer-term neurotoxic studies, chemical experiments, actual reporting of poisons, genetic predisposition, and brain damage caused by Parkinson’s. Also, the safety guarantees from manufacturers, instead, to prove the presence of damage.
