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Scientists Thought Parkinson's Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water (wired.com) 93

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
For decades, Parkinson's disease research has overwhelmingly focused on genetics -- more than half of all research dollars in the past two decades flowed toward genomic studies -- but a growing body of evidence now points to something far more mundane as a primary culprit: contaminated drinking water.

A landmark study by epidemiologist Sam Goldman compared Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where trichloroethylene (TCE) had contaminated the water supply for approximately 35 years, against those at Camp Pendleton in California, which has clean water. Marines exposed to TCE at Lejeune were 70% more likely to develop Parkinson's.

The latest research suggests only 10 to 15 percent of Parkinson's cases can be fully explained by genetics. Parkinson's rates in the US have doubled in the past 30 years -- a pattern inconsistent with an inherited genetic disease. The EPA moved to ban TCE in December 2024. The Trump administration moved to undo the ban in January.
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Scientists Thought Parkinson's Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water More

Scientists Thought Parkinson's Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water

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  • "Make America healthy again"; unless it's bad for business.

    • Re:Story checks out. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Monday December 15, 2025 @12:59PM (#65859615)

      The fact RFK is taken seriously by anyone is a stain on our collective intelligence. I mean come the fuck on, they think we're stupid rubes and we are proving them right [the-independent.com]

      Never forget Michelle Obama wanted to get your kids access to more vegetables and Republicans practically went into open revolt about it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        skimming the article, it uses statistics incorrectly to fearmonger, it then uses "correlation is causation", while discussing where, everywhere in the USA, the thought cause is. Then calls it "natural occurrence"

        So, if MAHA is saying outside chemicals are causing us problems, but they arent capitalistic born chemicals, just natural ones, so we cant do anything. Then they all they are doing is fearmongering and trying to distract people from the actual cause. You know, the exact thing they use as a baseli

        • Re:Story checks out. (Score:4, Informative)

          by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Monday December 15, 2025 @02:13PM (#65859817) Homepage Journal

          What the MAHA people don't do is read papers. I do.

          E.G. Here's a train of thought:

          1) A long time ago, in the UK, a study showed a significant correlation between Parkinson's and exposure to insecticides.

          2) More recently, a study showed lectins from wheat forming a ring around the vagus nerve and traveling up it to the Parkinson's site in the brain where biosimilarity between the lectins and tissues in the brain set up the autoimmune reaction that is part of Parkinson's. This wasn't a dodgy correlation study, they took photographs.

          3) 99+% of the insecticides modern human's encounter are the "natural" insecticides in plants.

          Conclusion : I'm suspicious of wheat and not for the usual reasons.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by jma05 ( 897351 )

            Everyone can read papers. Not everyone is qualified to understand them in proper context.

            Unless you have at least a masters in the related subject, ideally a PhD, your ability to vett the papers in that domain should be assumed to be rather limited, especially when you are arriving at conclusions that the experts aren't by consensus.

            In biology and medicine, evidence works differently than in tech. Controlling for confounders is much harder.

            • >Unless you have at least a masters in the related subject, ideally a PhD

              I disagree. You can spend a few years studying the nomenclature, norms, methods and underlying science and be entirely capable of reading and understanding a paper in context for a field that is not the one you started in.

              Sometimes it's what you bring to the party that helps. I bring some knowledge on statistical inference and experimental methods, which arises from my day job. My interest was understanding my own health. It took ab

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jma05 ( 897351 )

                I disagree. I see both sides. Medicine and the computational side.

                Research in medicine is full of con-founders, inadequate samples, and imperfect experiments. The confidence you bring from clean and sophisticated methods and analyses misleads you in interpreting messy evidence (I understand that you say that education research is similar). I care as much or more about where the research was conducted than what they wrote in the paper because most research in medicine is plain wrong in its conclusions.

                https: [wikipedia.org]

                • >The statistical methods used medical studies are relatively much simpler than in say, engineering. That's not where gotchas are. So we need robust studies, a convergence of evidence, and meta-analyses from competent centers.

                  I don't follow (that last line). Engineering, at least in my area uses fairly simple models because we can get lots of data and we can control confounders because silicon doesn't care the same way that human subjects do. E.G. for PUF reliability you can measure the distribution of pa

          • What the MAHA people don't do is read papers. I do.

            E.G. Here's a train of thought:

            1) A long time ago, in the UK, a study showed a significant correlation between Parkinson's and exposure to insecticides.

            2) More recently, a study showed lectins from wheat forming a ring around the vagus nerve and traveling up it to the Parkinson's site in the brain where biosimilarity between the lectins and tissues in the brain set up the autoimmune reaction that is part of Parkinson's. This wasn't a dodgy correlation study, they took photographs.

            3) 99+% of the insecticides modern human's encounter are the "natural" insecticides in plants.

            Conclusion : I'm suspicious of wheat and not for the usual reasons.

            Parkinson's and Parkinsonism have a lot of causes. If a person is exposed to any chemical that has defatting or nerve harming properties, like TCE, or various insecticides, they are at risk.

            The way to avoid - or mitigate against this is to just limit exposure. A co worker ended up with Parkinsonism because he used a lot of hexane that was in contact cement for mounting photos without ventilation. Avoiding all exposure is probably impossible.

            • Parkinson's and Parkinsonism have a lot of causes. If a person is exposed to any chemical that has defatting or nerve harming properties, like TCE, or various insecticides, they are at risk.

              The way to avoid - or mitigate against this is to just limit exposure. A co worker ended up with Parkinsonism because he used a lot of hexane that was in contact cement for mounting photos without ventilation. Avoiding all exposure is probably impossible.

              Yes. There is clearly more than one "cause", but the proximate cause is chemicals tricking the immune system into attacking specific cells.

      • The fact RFK is taken seriously by anyone is a stain on our collective intelligence.

        There are more and more every day. And thanks to him, more kids will die [nbcnews.com]. Have to give him credit, he's doing his part to stop over population.
        • RFK Jr is a quack. But that does not mean he didnt have a message that resonated. Some of his ideas I actually got behind like reducing coloring agents and "flavor" chemicals in our food. It's unfortunate this administration squandered a bunch of good will and political capital that would have actually done some good. America was ready to ban HFCS and all the other shit additives that are clearly responsible for at least some of the health issues facing America. Instead, they did what all politicians do (I

          • Sorry but no you were purposefully ignorant, people were screaming from the rooftops about RFK for months and months about his flawed reasoning, obvious conflicts of interest and questionable grasp of science. Thousands of doctors and scientists wrote and made clear how dangerous he would be.

            That you didn't want to listen to them and lump it altogether as "they all do it" is blinding nihilism and ulterior motives.

            https://civilrights.org/resour... [civilrights.org]

            https://www.apha.org/getconten... [apha.org]

            https://www.citizen.org/art [citizen.org]

            • No. You are citing doctors. Many of whom work with the FDA and other regulatory bodies in the various states. They are therefore responsible for our current state which hasn't changed in decades. Tell me, other than your objection to the guy in the video, what is wrong with his argument that we fix it? Tell me.

              Our citation is that Trump just undid a ban that was a year old, so we are just back to square one. It isnt like Kamala was screaming out about food additives and would have done any better. You're

              • Nobody and I mean NOBODY is opposed to "fixing" these health concerns. That's a bad faith distracting argument RFK apologists continue to use to cover for the fact you chose liars and obvious hucksters to do it and for some reason expected them to suddenly become effective public advocates while everyone was screaming at you to realize they have no intention of doing that.

                But let's not pretend RFK Jr is uniquely bad because he isnt doing what no one has done for 70 years.

                RFK is uniquely bad because he helped kill 83 kids in Samoa, he rejects 70 years of immunology research and breakthroughs, he has creat

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by Anonymous Coward

                Lump 'em together when it serves your argument and keep them separate when it doesn't.

                Who upmodded your worm-brained, bag of cats post, anyway?

          • RFK Jr is a quack. But that does not mean he didnt have a message that resonated. Some of his ideas I actually got behind like reducing coloring agents and "flavor" chemicals in our food.

            So what you're saying is that this quack's message resonated with fucking morons even though they knew he was a quack. Cool story!

        • We already fixed overpopulation. Birthrate is at 1.7 and falling, 2.1 is replacement.

          Turns out "1st world lifestyle" is plenty effective birth control. As the world becomes more prosperous, birthrates fall.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by haruchai ( 17472 )

        "Michelle Obama wanted to get your kids access to more vegetables and Republicans practically went into open revolt about it"
        Jim Sensenbrenner, who helped create the Patriot Act thought she should shut up because she has a big butt.
        Unsurprisingly, he weighed about 300 lbs at the time with a sagging ballsack under his chin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sinij ( 911942 )
        So you don't trust RFK because of a turkey photo op? If not, please be specific.

        • I don't trust RFK for many reasons, the turkey photo op is just exemplary of the fact that hes a fucking liar and nothing more than an overprivileged and spoiled waste of human potential who if he didn't have the Kennedy name attached to him he would have zero notoriety. My disrespect is the very least of what he should get.

          One example:

          A stark example of the devastating impact of vaccine misinformation is Samoa's 2019 measles outbreak. In this island nation of 200000, more than 5700 people were infected a

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sinij ( 911942 )
            Fact-checking Mainstream Media. [publicheal...ournal.com]

            Prasad reviewed the outbreak timeline, which he said began in July 2018. That's when two nurses killed two infants with the MMR shot after mistakenly mixing it with a paralytic rather than a saline solution.

            Instead of admitting their mistake, the nurses hid the vials and tried to cover up the infants' cause of death.

            When the cover-up came to light and the public learned what really caused the deaths of the two infants, the revelations sparked a public outcry. The nurses were convicted of manslaughter - and the Samoan government - not Kennedy - paused Samoaâ(TM)s MMR vaccine program for 10 months.

            • The fact you are quoting Prasad is already suspect for reasons I don't have the time to get into but to say he's conflicted is an understatement. Antivax crank.

              https://insidemedicine.substac... [substack.com]

              https://www.beckershospitalrev... [beckershos...review.com]

              Also are you suggesting RFK didn't do all the stuff he did in Samoa? Did he not go there and preach against vaccines? Are you denying he did that? That he continues to do so?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by sinij ( 911942 )
                While I happen to agree with a lot of what he said, right or wrong, it does not mean he caused (as in responsible for infections) any of what is being attributed to him. Epidemic in a poor country would not be that surprising even if the vaccine program was not suspended for a few months and people that died are not the same people that you could credibly claim would have gotten vaccinated if the program was running.

                The key ideological divide between us is that you think that letting individuals make th

                • Re:Story checks out. (Score:4, Insightful)

                  by Himmy32 ( 650060 ) on Monday December 15, 2025 @10:27PM (#65860817)

                  letting individuals make their own decisions

                  This conveniently ignores that exposing others to preventable sickness goes beyond being an individual choice.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by sinij ( 911942 )
                    In a vast majority of cases vaccinations do not confer sterilizing immunity (where you can't get the disease and therefore won't transmit). So exposing others is irrelevant, as it would happen anyways. Most vaccinations make a targeted disease, when you still get it, milder. That is well within individual choice.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Himmy32 ( 650060 )

                      Right, they don't confer sterilizing immunity on an individual scale, which is a large part of the issue with it not being a solely individual choice. Because often the advantages are at a societal scale because of herd immunity, which has lead to eradication (e.g. measles).

                      So the expectation that a head of policy adequately explains the individual risks and the societal risks is important. As only so many individuals can chose not to get vaccinated before the loss of herd immunity increases everyone's risk

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by sinij ( 911942 )
                      You are oversimplifying herd immunity by ignoring natural immunity. You achieve herd immunity when a large percentage of "the herd" was either vaccinated and/or recovered from a disease. In most cases vaccine reduces severity of the disease but actually getting the disease and recovering is what likely give individuals sterilizing immunity. So the actual process of getting herd immunity is as follows: 1) get vaccinated, get infected and have mild or asymptomatic illness, get immune 2) not vaccinated, get in

                • "Caused" is a weasel word you are using. I said helped or contributed.

                  Theres no escaping the fact that measles has been a solved problem, if those people were vaccinated its 98% likely they would be alive, full stop.

                  We restrict people from making their own decision all the time. You are not allowed the maximum freedom to punch me in my face unprovoked. Your freedome will be taken from you for that action.

                  You can maximum freedom or you can have functioning society. The US, in my opinion, has done a good

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by sinij ( 911942 )
                    We either live in a society where you have body autonomy or we don't. You advocate for latter case for reasons. This means "Gonna have to get vaxxed." is a small step away from being forced to lose some weight, stop smoking and drinking, eat less meat and go to bed early. For you Own Good Citizen! The issue is that "functioning society" or greater good or whatever is never defined. Last but not least, in case of vaccinations, if a vaccine is effective and you are vaccinated, what does it matter if others ar

            • We can see here that sinji is one of the lease sincere posters on all of slashdot.
              If you add him to your foes list, he'll always have a red dot next to his name to help remind you that the things he says are often deliberately misleading.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        Obama replaced protein with canned veggies, soy products, and other low-nutrient foods. That increased the amount of processed foods the kids eat (unless you don't think canned veggies counts as processed?)

        It's long been thought by alternative health folks that Parkinsons and other related neurological disorders are largely environmental - due to toxin loads, from everything from heavy metals to pesticides.

        My great-grandfather died of Parkinson's disease - or more accurately, hung himself at the sanitarium

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. So not happening. But make being sick more expensive is also in the works.

  • Or Herbicides (Score:3)

    by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Monday December 15, 2025 @01:21PM (#65859679)

    I read this article about Paraquat [mlive.com], a weed killer widely used in the U.S., but banned in many other countries, that has a link to Parkinson's. Sounds like some seriously nasty stuff. So if you farm, live near a farm, or... eat, you're exposed to this.

    I lived in a neighborhood built on abandoned military base and my taps were hooked up to the old base wells, which were contaminated with TCE from the army firefighters practicing putting out fires. My family drank that stuff for a decade and I found out after we moved away. Municipal water systems are required to publish water analysis. It's worth looking up.

  • It's all about our precious bodily fluids.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebunga ( 95613 )

      Except that PFAS dispersed in the atmosphere will fall out of the sky with the rain, so you're going to have sit back and allow the Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

  • anyone have better link?

    • Well yes. Scientists never thought it was a purely genetic disease. As explained by professor Sapolsky [youtu.be], there were a lot of ancient descriptions of all sorts of diseases, but not Parkinson's. That one has emerged since the industrial revolution and the use of pesticides. There may be a genetic component in how well you can survive the poisons causing it, but poisons were always the culprit.

      • That's not necessarily enough to implicate "poisons". All sorts of conditions were rare or functionally unheard of until Industrial Revolution periods, because our lives were rather closer to the conditions they evolved for (large amounts of time spent outdoors with a different mix of pathogens than you get in a fairly sterile indoor environment) until that point. Allergies, various autoimmune issues, asthma, and even nearsightedness were rare, less severe, or non-existent in the before times.

        For the first

      • Parkinson's was first identified/defined in 1817. Trichloroethylene was invented nine years later. I think the first synthetic pesticide was created in 1814, but it was used as a dye first.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

      anyone have better link?

      Archive.is is usually pretty good at getting around paywalls.

      Scientists Thought Parkinson’s Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water [archive.is]

  • you mean, it's due to pollution by neurotoxic pesticides ?
    who'd have thought !
    *fucking geniuses*

  • Trump didn’t unban it (Score:5, Informative)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday December 15, 2025 @02:31PM (#65859867)
    He delayed the ban, as part of his “all regulations are CanCeLEd MMAAGAAA FFRREEEDduuuuUUMMM” act.

    But, this is more theatre than anything else. TCE is toxic as f&%k. In the US, companies have been trying to stop using it since the 1980s and avoid it like the plague. Hardly anyone uses or stores much of it anymore. Dealing with it safely is a nightmare, and ignoring safety protocols means that their workers actively get cancer while on the job. As in, productive workers who get regular exposure to TCE tend to start feeling bad, go see a doctor, get an x-ray, and go home to die because of the metastatic cancer. Even if the CEOs completely dgaf, killing their workers is tough on insurance claims and bad for the bottom line.

    No, TCE isnt coming back, no matter what Trump says.

  • Certain Caribbean fruits contain a neurotoxin annonacin [wikipedia.org] which has a causal connection to a form of Parkinson and related diseases. A two decade long study [franceinfo.fr] was the latest to conclude that this July.

    I agree it's as idiotic to drink a herbal tea based on a toxic plant as it is to allow toxins in a drinking water.

    • Certain Caribbean fruits contain a neurotoxin annonacin [wikipedia.org] which has a causal connection to a form of Parkinson...

      I prefer to interpret that to mean some forms of Parkinson's disease make people crave and consume certain Caribbean fruits.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by piojo ( 995934 )

        Gesture typing doesn't know about context, so it thinks "causal" should be "casual", even after I've just corrected it.

      • You have found the answer to why older people like to go on Caribbean cruises and live in warmer climates. The use of woolly socks is another sign!

  • It just wasn't as popular or well funded as the genetic cause.

  • It could be an epigenetic effect which means it's a combination of both genetics and environmental exposure. This is to say some are predisposed to developing Parkinson but it must also be triggered by environmental factors.

    Marines exposed to TCE at Lejeune were 70% more likely to develop Parkinson's.

    There is also the possibility that TCE doesn't cause Parkinson's but rather simply something that mimics the symptoms of Parkinson's.

    Occam's razor breaks down when you try to apply it to populations due to biological variation.

  • Good for profits though. Unfettered capitalism at work.

  • "The Trump administration moved to undo the ban in January."

    Of course!

  • Got an idea (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday December 15, 2025 @06:00PM (#65860283) Journal

    Let's redefine Parkinson's as a sub-symptom of autism, then Dr. Brainworm will finally do something about the chems.

    • Let's redefine Parkinson's as a sub-symptom of autism, then Dr. Brainworm will finally do something about the chems.

      Sure. But the chemicals he'll "do something" about will be something like... Vitamin C or calcium.

      The fewer illnesses he knows exist, the better.

  • While you techies ramble away about your favorite political motivations... Consider...

    TCE used to be used in bulk by mainframe and mini operators as tape head cleaner. My Dad brought home a quart can from work with a stack of patches for my sister and I to use to clean our walkman's. (I know dating myself here...) And no he didn't wear gloves in his DC, and neither did we. It was believed to be completely harmless.

    T

  • Given this study:

    Neurons depend on mitochondria for homeostasis and survival, and thus, mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD). Increasing evidence indicates the mitochondrial uncoupler, 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP), protects neurons against neurodegeneration and enhances neural plasticity. Here, the authors evaluated the protective effects of intraperitoneally (i.p.) administered low dose DNP in an acute mouse model of PD. Mice were administered DNP (1 or 5mg/kg) for 12 consecutive days, and then on day 13, MPTP (20mg/kg, i.p.) was administered four times (with 2h intervals between injections) to induce PD. It was found that MPTP-induced motor dysfunction was ameliorated in the DNP-treated mice versus vehicle-treated controls. Additionally, DNP effectively attenuated dopaminergic neuronal loss observed in MPTP treated mice. Moreover, in primary cultured neurons, DNP at 10μM, but not at 100μM, prevented MPP+-induced cell death and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) reduction. In addition, DNP was observed to cause the nuclear translocation of Nrf2 in primary neurons. Taken together, these findings of the present study suggest that DNP protects dopaminergic neurons against neurodegeneration and maintains MMP integrity in PD by activating adaptive stress responses.

    "DNP was observed to cause the nuclear translocation of Nrf2 in primary neurons" Activation of nrf-2 protected the cells. Why was nrf-2 not providing protection before? Dysfunction of KEAP-1?

    Doing an image search on nrf-2 here's a basic diagram: https://cdn.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

    P62 may need to be added to that diagram

    In mammals, the Keap1-Nrf2-ARE pathway (henceforth, "the Nrf2 pathway") and autophagy are major intracellular defence systems that combat oxidative damage and maintain homeostasis. p62/SQSTM1, a ubiquitin-binding autophagy receptor protein, links the Nrf2 pathway and autophagy. Phosphorylation of p62 dramatically enhances its affinity for Keap1, which induces Keap1 to release Nrf2, and the p62-Keap1 heterodimer recruits LC3 and mediates the permanent degradation of Keap1 in the selective autophagy pathway. Eventually, Nrf2 accumulates in the cytoplasm and then translocates into the nucleus to activate the transcription of downstream genes that encode antioxidant enzymes, which protect cells from oxidative damage. Since Nrf2 also upregulates the expression of the p62 gene, a p62-Keap1-Nrf2 positive feedback loop is created that further enhances the protective effect on cells. Studies have shown that the p62-activated noncanonical Nrf2 pathway is an important marker of neurodegenerative diseases. The p62-Keap1-Nrf2 positive feedback loop and the Nrf2 pathway are involved in eliminating the ROS and protein aggregates induced by AD. Therefore, maintaining the homeostasis of the p62-Keap1-Nrf2 positive feedback loop, which is a bridge between the Nrf2 pathway and autophagy, may be a potential target for the treatment of AD.

    Activating p62 might help? Something like green tea extract?

    "EGCG activates Keap1/P62/Nrf2 pathway"
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

    Or maybe its too much autophagy, too low of

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