Mounting scientific evidence links the pesticide paraquat to Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating and deadly brain disease on the rise in the US. Syngenta, the longtime international maker of the weed-killing chemical, knew of this link decades ago but spent the intervening years questioning and undermining research, internal corporate records obtained by The New Lede show. Now the company is facing thousands of lawsuits brought by people blaming the weed killer for causing Parkinson’s disease.
TNL editor-in-chief Carey Gillam talks to lawyers, farmers, researchers and health advocates about paraquat’s devastating toll and the fight to hold Syngenta accountable.
Read more: The Paraquat Papers
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Carey Gillam is the editor-in-chief of The New Lede and a veteran investigative journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering US news, including 17 years as a senior correspondent with Reuters international news service (1998-2015). She is the author of “Whitewash - The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science,” an expose of Monsanto’s corporate corruption of agriculture. The book won the coveted Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists in 2018. Her second book, a narrative legal thriller titled The Monsanto Papers, was released March 2, 2021.
She also has contributed chapters for a text book about environmental journalism and a book about pesticide use in Africa.
Gillam testified as an invited expert before the European Parliament in 2017 about her research, and was a featured speaker at the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, France in 2019. She also has been a keynote and/or panel speaker at events and universities throughout North America, Australia, The Netherlands, Brussels, and France.
Gillam writes regularly for The Guardian. Her work has additionally been published in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Time, and other outlets.
In 2022, Gillam helped launch The New Lede as a journalism initiative of the Environmental Working Group.
Gillam is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
November 11, 2025 @ 9:43 pm
PARAQUAT NEEDS TO BE BANNED AND THE COMPANIES WHO ARE SELLING THIS CRAP NEED TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DANGEROUS FALL OUT AND ILLNESSES THAT ARE BEING SUFFERED BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE USED THIS CHEMICAL OR WAS ANYWHERE AROUND THIS NASTY STUFF.