Government scientist investigating mystery brain disease ‘banned’ from researching outbreak

A top scientist who advises the Canadian Government said he was blocked from studying a freak outbreak of a mysterious and deadly brain illness in young adults and teenagers. 

More than 200 New Brunswick residents have bizarrely developed a dementia-like disorder that causes vivid hallucinations, an inability to talk and write, memory lapses and even physical paralysis.

While the disease has baffled doctors, local health officials put the outbreak down to misdiagnosis, concluding that most patients in fact suffered common illnesses like dementia and cancer. 

Now, damning evidence has come to light that suggests health chiefs may have purposefully blocked investigations into other potential causes — namely, exposure to toxic pesticides. 

In leaked emails sent between Dr Michael Coulthart, a microbiologist, and members of Canada’s public health agency (PHAC), Dr Coulthart said he was ‘essentially cut off’ from being involved in the research.

In the correspondence, seen by The Guardian, Government scientistDr Coulthart wrote that he believed he was cast aside due to ‘politics’, namely his desire to investigate links to environmental exposures.

The curious problem emerged in 2021, when New Brunswick health officials said that over 40 people in the area were suffering with an unknown neurological syndrome, which had symptoms close to the degenerative brain disorder Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a type of prion disease, which occurs when prions, a type of protein, trigger normal proteins in the brain to fold abnormally, which can cause illness and brain damage. 

Dr Coulthart is currently the head of Canada’s Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System.

Symptoms of patients’ symptoms were diverse but severe – some residents were salivating uncontrollably while others believed they had insects creeping up their skin.

Experts said the cases date back to 2015 and are among people aged 18 to 84, dozens of whom were healthy before being struck down by the mystery illness.

They noted they were seeing ‘more and more younger patients.’

And patients are still suffering. One young woman told the Guardian that ‘politicians don’t want to acknowledge there is something serious going on, because then they need to address it.’

She is forced to deal with muscle tremors and worsening coordination, and was told by a doctor that her failing memory is similar to patients decades older.

The woman can no longer cook because of her shaking hands, and she now has to eat only frozen meals. She has to also be reminded via a smart speaker to take medication, eat and shower.

Gabrielle Cormier had to pause her love of figure skating and leave university at age 20 when she fell ill in 2019, becoming so debilitated that she now needs a wheelchair.

Ms Cormier, now 24, experienced memory loss, vision problems, and the inability to stand for long periods, resulting in her having to walk with a cane or use a wheelchair after becoming sick.

The investigating committee, along with the New Brunswick government, also questioned neurologist Alier Marrero’s work.

Dr Marrero, along with Dr Coulthart, was first to identify the cluster in 2019, and he was originally leading New Brunswick’s investigation.

Dr Coulthart said in an email to a colleague, seen by the Guardian: ‘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.

‘A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many (now over 200).’

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The emails indicate that senior research scientists in PHAC are still preoccupied with the cause and symptoms of the illness, that seems to be impacting mainly younger people.

An email chain from October 2023, between Dr Coulthart and a member of PHAC, Dr Coulthart wrote that an ‘environmental exposure – or a combination of exposures – is triggering and/or accelerating a variety of neurodegenerative syndromes.’ 

Dr Coulthart added that because the illness is so complex, politicians have used this as a ‘loophole’ to say that ‘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,’ Dr Coulthart said.

He had previously supported the theory that a neurotoxin called BMAA produced by blue-green algae, might have been responsible.

In March 2023, Dr Marrero begged the Canadian government to do environmental testing, which he thought would demonstrate that the herbicide glyphosate has a part to play.

Glyphosate is regularly used by forestry companies in New Brunswick to restrict the plant growth.