dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Mysterious Brain Syndrome Grips Canada

MONTREAL — Forty-eight people from the same small Canadian province struck with a baffling mix of symptoms including insomnia, impaired motor function and hallucinations such as nightmarish visions of the dead.

A quixotic neurologist working 12-hour days to decipher the clues.

Swirling conspiracy theories blaming the illness on cellphone towers, fracking or even COVID-19 vaccines.

These are just some plotlines of a mystery that has stumped Canada’s medical establishment, attracted the attention of some of the world’s top neurologists and fanned fears among residents of New Brunswick, a picturesque province of about 770,000 on Canada’s Atlantic coast. In the past six years, dozens of people have fallen ill from the disease, and six people have died.

“People are alarmed,” said Yvon Godin, the mayor of Bertrand, a village in the Acadian Peninsula in northeastern New Brunswick where residents have been afflicted. “They are asking, ‘Is it environmental? Is it genetic? Is it fish or deer meat? Is it something else?’ Everyone wants answers.”

As the coronavirus raged across the country the past 15 months, the medical enigma was initially slow to gain national attention. Canadian health authorities, distracted by the need to respond to the pandemic, scrambled to determine the seriousness of the outbreak, which was only publicly exposed after a memo about it by New Brunswick’s chief medical officer was leaked to the press in March.

Doctors investigating the disease say the sluggish response underlines the challenge for other medical conditions to compete for the spotlight during a global pandemic.

Medical experts said the murkiness surrounding the illness also reflected how, despite extraordinary advances in medical science, some conditions, in particular neurological diseases involving dementia, can puzzle even the world’s best scientific brains.

The Canadian outbreak could join the pantheon of other ailments that have mystified the world, such as the debilitating illness that impaired dozens of diplomats in Cuba and China beginning in 2016, prompting suspicions that victims may have been targeted by Moscow, Beijing or a rogue government. There was also a painful and puzzling kidney disease that afflicted workers harvesting sugar cane in Nicaragua four years earlier.

The mystery, however, could also fizzle, if it turns out that a variety of preexisting conditions have been prematurely ascribed to a strange new disease.

Among the youngest victims of the Canadian syndrome is Gabrielle Cormier, 20, once a straight-A student who participated in figure skating competitions and aspired to become a pathologist.

But as she began university two years ago, Cormier said she was suddenly and inexplicably overcome by fatigue, started bumping into things and had visions that looked like static from a television. No longer able to read easily or walk to class, she was forced to drop out of school.

Not understanding what was wrong amplified the illness’s horror. After being misdiagnosed with mononucleosis, Cormier said emergency room doctors then told her there was nothing wrong with her. A battery of tests yielded no diagnosis. She was eventually referred to a neurologist as her health deteriorated and she experienced involuntary jerking movements, memory lapses and hallucinations. She was among the first to be included in the cluster of those suffering from the unidentified syndrome.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-brain-syndrome-grips-canada-141709582.html