Imagine thinking that people obsessed with hoaxing the world with fake diseases would hide a fake disease.
A leading federal scientist in Canada has alleged he was barred from investigating a mystery brain illness in the province of New Brunswick and said he fears more than 200 people affected by the condition are experiencing unexplained neurological decline.
The allegations, made in leaked emails to a colleague seen by the Guardian, have emerged two years after the eastern province closed its investigation into a possible “cluster” of cases.
“All I will say is that my scientific opinion is that there is something real going on in [New Brunswick] that absolutely cannot be explained by the bias or personal agenda of an individual neurologist,” wrote Michael Coulthart, a prominent microbiologist. “A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many (now over 200).”
New Brunswick health officials warned in 2021 that more than 40 residents were suffering from a possible unknown neurological syndrome, with symptoms similar to those of the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Those symptoms were varied and dramatic: some patients started drooling and others felt as though bugs were crawling on their skin.
A year later, however, an independent oversight committee created by the province determined that the group of patients had most likely been misdiagnosed and were suffering from known illnesses such as cancer and dementia.
The committee and the New Brunswick government also cast doubt on the work of neurologist Alier Marrero, who was initially referred dozens of cases by baffled doctors in the region, and subsequently identified more cases. The doctor has since become a fierce advocate for patients he feels have been neglected by the province.
A final report from the committee, which concluded there was no “cluster” of people suffering from an unknown brain syndrome, signalled the end of the province’s investigation.
But leaked emails viewed by the Guardian tell a starkly different story and suggest senior research scientists in Canada’s public health agency (PHAC) remain increasingly concerned over the cause – and the debilitating symptoms – of an seemingly unexplained illness that disproportionately affects younger people.
In an October 2023 email exchange with another PHAC member, Coulthart, who served as the federal lead in the 2021 investigation into the New Brunswick illness, said he had been “essentially cut off” from any involvement in the issue, adding he believed the reason was political.
Coulthart, a veteran scientist who currently heads Canada’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System, did not respond to a request for comment by the Guardian. But in the leaked email, he wrote that he believes an “environmental exposure – or a combination of exposures – is triggering and/or accelerating a variety of neurodegenerative syndromes” with people seemingly susceptible to different protein-misfolding ailments, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Coulthart argues this phenomenon does not easily fit within “shallow paradigms” of diagnostic pathology and the complexity of the issue has given politicians a “loophole” to conclude “nothing coherent” is going on.
“I believe the truth will assert itself in time, but for now all we can do … is continue to collect information on the cases that come to us as suspect prion disease,” Coulthart wrote.
Disease is… really overrated.
But the idea that Western governments that poison you every chance they get really care about your health is so goofy that I can’t even believe a retarded person would believe it.
But they do.
What happens when the news industry is gutted?
Important stories go unreported. So we try to fill in the gaps. Like the mystery brain disease in New Brunswick.
It’s worse than you were told. 1/x 🧵 pic.twitter.com/2BB2ei5hvF
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) June 19, 2023
They announced a “cluster” of 47 patients, and struck provincial and federal task forces of scientists to investigate it. Then, in May 2022, they called the whole thing off. They said there was no mystery disease. The news coverage all but stopped. 3/x
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) June 19, 2023
But he didn’t talk about ANY of this for fear of losing his job.
Today, he breaks his silence. Dr. Alier Marrero interviewed by @SarahLawrynuik on our podcast. A new possible cause turns up in test results.
You need to hear this. https://t.co/Wzg6yE9kY5
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) June 19, 2023