New Brunswick Residents Urge Province to Allow PHAC Probe Into Mysterious Brain Disease

New Brunswick's provincial flag flies in Ottawa, on July 6, 2020. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

A group of New Brunswick residents are calling on the provincial government to allow the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to investigate the cause of a mysterious neurological disease that has affected over 100 patients.

In a joint statement released on March 28, patients suffering from “atypical neurological decline” and their families, alongside Leader of the New Brunswick Green Party David Coon and MLA Megan Mitton, urged Health Minister Bruce Fitch to clear the way for PHAC to launch an investigation into “potential environmental causes” of brain disease reportedly affecting a number of New Brunswick residents.

“Minister Fitch has a responsibility to remove all barriers so the experts at the Public Health Agency of Canada can determine if there is an environmental basis for this increase in neurodegenerative syndromes in New Brunswick,” Mitton said in the statement.

“The panel of neurologists appointed by the province to review the cases did not rule this out. The patients and their families deserve no less, and New Brunswickers deserve to know if there are environmental factors involved or not.”

The call comes a little over a year after Public Health New Brunswick concluded an investigation into a cluster of 48 patients who suffered from neurological decline accompanied by symptoms including pain, insomnia, hallucinations, and a loss of balance, among others. Those cases, identified between late 2020 and May 2021, raised questions about whether environmental toxins were behind the disease.

“We are formally demanding that federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos unmuzzle Canadian scientists and direct the Public Health Agency of Canada to uphold the Canada Health Act and reinstate federal experts into the investigation,” said Steve Ellis, whose father, Roger Ellis, was among the 48 original patients.

In a final report published in February 2022, the provincial government concluded that “there is no evidence of a cluster of a neurological syndrome of unknown cause,” saying that the patients “didn’t have symptoms in common or have a shared common illness.”

Residents said in the March 28 statement that Dr. Alier Marrero, who identified most of the original 48 cases and was once appointed by the provincial government to lead the investigation, reported 147 new cases over the past year, including 57 early-onset cases and 41 young-onset cases. Marrero has sent a letter to Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Dr. Theresa Tam and New Brunswick’s Acting Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Yves Leger, the statement said.

Fitch said he has received the letter and that the public health department is working on a response, according to a video shared on social media by Mitton showing her raising the issue during question period in the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly on March 28.