I grew up in New Brunswick. It is a strange place politically.
I find it wild that the BBC never mentioned the most glaring underbelly of this:
New Brunswicks most significant employer for the past 100 years is Irving Oil & Irving Paper and Irving Forestry. They are different arms of a privately held family-run business, run by the descendants of the original founder (whose records are not as public as a traded company), in charge of the main industries of the province. They owned every newspaper in the province, and are known to be adversarial to any community paper, starting new papers just to drive out of business the small upstarts they don't own -- I've seen it play out in my community. People are literally afraid to criticize this family publicly, because they fund SO MUCH of the nonprofit sector. If you are trying to get a project off the ground, you can't look sideways at them or your project will be buried. And their papers certainly won't speak kindly of your criticism.
And most glaringly, one of their ex-Vice Presidents was premier of the province during this time.
So there is an extra level of concern that some locals have about the optics of the province shutting down the research.
The Irving family is highly manipulative of political affairs, and imho have held the province back for decades (e.g. influencing what schools get funded/built, to create the working stock that support their businesses, etc)
This was one of the more surprising things to me when I lived in Canada: that there is so much of this. Depending on which region you are in you will either have state monopolies on the strangest things and/or a couple of families that have their fingers in just about every pie. And don't get me started on the telecommunications sector.
The fact the BBC article doesn't even mention the Irvings is a pretty glaring omission.
The Irvings basically own NB like its their own private fiefdom, and if anyone's doing any major polluting in the province its almost certainly them.
They own politicians, they own institutions, and they have an inordinate amount of influence on provincial politics and policy, so personally I have a pretty strong suspicion they are likely responsible for this outbreak, they know they are responsible, and in order to avoid consequence, they are using their wealth and political power to shut down any further investigation into this outbreak.
Its a story as old as time honestly... Some rich bastards do some shady shit in the pursuit of even more money and power, us regular folks suffer, the rich bastards use their wealth and political power to cover it up, and around the world spins until the next act of billionaire malfeasance and none of the rich bastards are ever held accountable.
Seriously, Occam's razor to me at least makes what's going on here pretty damn self evident. What's more likely, that hundreds of people are making up a mystery illness, or that this is just yet another of the innumerable instances of billionaires polluting the earth in the pursuit of profit and making people sick in the process?
I certainly know which scenario I consider most likely.
The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients.
Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conversion-di... , which is a horrible condition that accounts for a plurality of cases seen by most neurologists. This phantom diagnosis will probably make recovery almost impossible for those people. Acceptance of that diagnosis is the number 1 positive indicator for recovery.
Source: I live in the canadian maritimes, and know many neurologists.
> 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.
It seems to me that it's doctors reaching out to Marrero. It also seems odd that [these|this] illness(es) disproportionately affected young people.
Another article I just read stated Marrero reached out to get second opinions but was blocked.
> He claims he made arrangements in 2020-21 for "subject-matter experts" to travel to New Brunswick to evaluate patients, but the province "chose not to avail itself of this invaluable expertise."
This guy is probably chasing moonshine, but TBH "functional neurological disorder" sounds like one of those face-saving labels that doctors use when they don't have any idea what's going on.
Right, but what is causing the functional neurological disorder? Speaking as someone who has had alot of of chronic pain [CPPS] there is some sort of neuro issue going on but we don't know what it is. But "dementia, weight loss, unsteadiness, jerking movements and facial twitches" does seem like more than just neuro?
Wait by “nothing” do you mean that there is no cause for the disease that the link you posted says has an unknown cause, or “nothing” do you mean that they don’t actually have anything wrong with them but you’re sharing a neat link about a disease that has an unknown cause?
I normally wouldn’t question an hour old throwaway that knows many neurologists, but what exactly are you applying the word “nothing” to here? You started with one statement, said that you don’t like a guy, and then wrote another statement that negates your first statement.
Like by “nothing” do you mean “I personally do not know, so my knowledge of what is causing this is nothing, but I want to share that I don’t like that one doctor”?
Part of the concern is the structural opposition to clarity in a response. I don't know if this runs along party lines, or interpersonal relationships, or a state/national funding issue in public health, but something about how the problem was handled and public trust has gone badly wrong.
It's entirely possible as for cancer clusters there is no single causative agent. That stuff demands really careful thoughtful handling, not just brush-offs. Getting the public past personal experiences to epidemiology and subsequently things like mental health, is very hard.
I’m not qualified to comment intelligently on what might be going on here, but I’d like to add some background color that the article lacks.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease is a prion disease [0] for which there is no definitive diagnosis in vivo. A confident diagnosis can be made only after examining brain tissue under a microscope.
Prions are an unusual type of mis-folded protein that induce other proteins to take on a similar mis-folded shape when they come into contact with them. The mis-folded shape of the prion itself is what causes the mis-folding in adjacent proteins. It’s a chemical-bonding thing at the molecular level. It’s the shape of the prion that causes other proteins to take on a similar shape and become prions, etc.
Some prion diseases occur spontaneously (when a protein takes on a mis-folded configuration due to mis-transcription or random energetic impulses) and some are transmitted, typically by eating some part of an animal that contains prions, which then end up in your own body, inducing proteins in your body to take on prion configurations.
Prion diseases are the only known transmissible diseases that do not involve the replication of a pathogen’s genetic material in a host cell. The only known prion diseases affect nervous tissues, and in humans the only known prion diseases affect brain tissues.
I’m not an expert on prion diseases, but I’ve had a bit of a fascination with them since having to report on a bunch of USDA surveillance lectures on mad-cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) and to summarize a bunch of symposia on prion diseases in a previous life. The symptoms reported in the article sound very much like a prion disease, and the tests for CJD indicate that the doctors in the region suspect as much.
But we simply don’t have good tests for prion diseases in vivo. And prion diseases are not well understood in general, so it wouldn’t be surprising that a new one would present as something of a mystery.
It is also the case that I know very little about New Brunswick, but I will mention that prion diseases in humans are thought to be far more commonly acquired than spontaneous. The most common cause of acquisition is eating animals with endemic prion diseases; this is most often nervous tissue of venison, but rarely nervous tissue of cattle infected with BSE, which is present in Canada more than anywhere else (by a small margin).
It is also possible (but not likely) that a prion disease can arise de novo.
I was diagnosed with a mysterious tachycardia last year, coincidental to this headline: while I was living in Canada.
At one point I checked into the ER with a resting heart rate around 200 BPM, and on some days my smartwatch couldn’t even detect a pulse because it was racing so fast.
I eventually recovered-though I still avoid wearing smart devices because seeing my heart rate triggers anxiety-but the whole period ended without a root cause and with me just being put on heartrate reducers for a while.
I really feel for anyone dealing with "mystery" medical conditions. It’s a tough place to be.
Ha, same! The first time I noticed it, coupled with palpitations, I thought I was dying and went to the ER. I swear nobody teaches you how to get older, so everything feels like something is going way wrong. They treated me like a baby, said avoid caffeine, and maybe see a cardio.
And I did. He was an old guy, didn't seem at all worried. He said he worked in pro sports and a surprising number of people have it, including top athletes, try not to worry too much about it. It's been nearly 10 years and I'm still kicking so I guess they were right.
But to this day I avoid smart watches/rings, because I know it'll be nothing but anxiety inducing alarms.
Fun story to add: I can't get my heart rate measured. I get so nervous about it that I immediately double my heart rate. Of course it's impossible to communicate that with doctors. One even equipped me with a 24h heart monitor. Only to have my stupid brain go on overdrive and clock my heart at 120+ for the entire time, with 0 sleep. I literally fainted when getting ekg cables on me. I now have on record a heart condition without having one: I just get nervous from measurements lol
I know doctors who've worked with Marrero and they seem to be split in their opinion. They seem to agree he tends to be "excessively thorough", frequently sending tests to labs across the world. This makes him liked by desperate patients with potentially incurable diseases who want someone to "do something".
They are split on whether his thoroughness is just fueling false hopes and sending patients down unnecessary rabbit holes or if he could have potentially identified a real issue.
I think it would be worth it to investigate cyanobacteria toxins in water over there as they can cause similar symptoms. Next thing to check would be local sea food. I feel like glyphosate is a red herring here. Heavy metals could come from frequently eating local fish/shellfish.
I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease a year ago at the age of 67. For several months I had noticed tremors in my right hand and the shaking of my right foot when I was sitting. My normally beautiful cursive writing was now small, cramped printing. And I tended to lose my balance. The neurologist had me walk down the hall and said I didn't swing my right arm. I had never noticed! I was in denial for a while, as there is no history in my family of parents and five older siblings, but I had to accept I had classic symptoms. I was taking amantadine and carbidopa/levodopa and was about to start physical therapy to strengthen muscles. I used different supplements that didn't work, so last July, I tried the PD-5 protocol—the best decision ever! My tremors eased, my energy returned, and I sleep soundly. I feel like a new woman, and I can walk and exercise again. I got the PD-5 from limitlesshealthcenter. com
This is such a frustrating situation to read about, because it is clear that Dr. Marrero is out of his depth, but it’s also clear that whatever this cluster is - real or imagined - was horribly mismanaged by the health officials in charge.
The fact that the investigation was disbanded simply because the patients had symptoms that can be tied to existing diseases is utterly asinine. As if there’s no reason to investigate why so many people in such a small area have similar conditions, or even to investigate whether or not the demographics of the supposed cluster are out of the ordinary in the first place. Even if there was no related cause at all, such an investigation could be used to determine that Dr. Marrero was the cause of a problem and stop him from doing harm. But instead the result was that no satisfactory conclusion was reached for the majority of people, and the patients continue to suffer.
These people need help and they are being failed by their doctors, their administrative officials and their representatives all at the same time.
The doctor is a distraction that keeps tripping up everyone here. Once the real cause is discovered, he will move on. If a real cause is not discovered, it's probably due to an insufficient investigation, in which case the investigation should continue.
I watched a documentary about Morgellons, and the patients would often seem quite reasonable at first, but the more they spoke, and the more they described their symptoms, the crazier they sounded.
One patient, whose brother, ironically, was a physician (and one skeptical of Morgellons as anything other than delusional parasitosis), seemed earnest, if intense, in describing how Morgellons had destroyed his quality of life... but then he started describing how he felt like he was able to inadvertently affect electronic devices, especially RF-based ones, because the Morgellons "fibers" in his extremities caused some kind of interference. At this point, he sounded squarely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
However, one could very well imagine an infectious disease, with or without a dermatological component, causing delusional parasitosis. Maybe they have some virus or something that makes them think they have these "fibers?" Or a parasite? Toxoplasma gondii is known to affect inhibition. UTIs in the elderly are notorious for making them crazy.
Besides that fact that in this particular case there probably really is 'something' (it would be rare for the brain to spontaneously exhibit CJD symptoms, though it does happen this would most likely not lead to a cluster of cases), you don't need to propose an infectious disease for people that say they have symptoms where there are none, when there is ample proof of people being able to influence each other into believing all kinds of crap to the point that it becomes part of their identity.
I once had a woman and her husband visiting to inquire about buying a house I owned in Northern Groningen, pretty much as far away from anything as you could possibly get in this crowded country. They arrived in a taxi that was blanked for the day (it turned out the man was a cab driver) and after looking the place over and liking it visibly the woman said 'oh, we really like it, but there is one more thing, I am allergic to electromagnetic radiation so let me verify that' (eye roll by the man at this point). She went to the car and came back with a box with a dial on it that she had bought online (a pretty basic field strength meter, set to the most sensitive part of the range) and started walking around muttering to herself and waving the box around like a modern day dowser.
After a while of this she came to me and said she was really sorry but she had to drop her interest because the house was absolutely infested with EM fields. In Amsterdam, where they lived, they had turned their whole apartment into a cage of Faraday with copper mesh nailed against every surface (it turned out they lived right opposite the KPN microwave tower next to the RAI so maybe she even had a point, that thing featured multiple RF links beaming 100's of Watts on tight beam links between other such towers, at some point in the past these carried our long distance phone calls before fiber came along).
I asked if I could see her box for a second and pointed it at the sun: the needle pegged instantly and she was most surprised, so I explained that what she is measuring is real, but so faint that the chances of any kind of interaction with her body are most likely delusional.
Here the conversation abruptly ended...
As for TFA: prions, the agents responsible for CJD are remarkably resilient and annoying and can make it through the foodchain across the digestive barrier and into the brain and even a single one of them can cause CJD.
Perhaps a bit tangential to the main topic, but it is of course true that UTIs can adversely affect cognition in the elderly, even precipitate delirium, etc., depending on type and severity of infection. Naturally that also occurs with other sources of infection, and factors including intoxication due to drugs (prescribed or otherwise) and a host of others. Vulnerability to such decompensation is greater among those already functioning marginally. As such accurate diagnosis can be hard to establish particularly when multiple factors are implicated, hardly a rare circumstance. (At least in my physician-practice that's frequently been the case.)
I appreciate your comment pointing to the importance of carefully evaluating individuals manifesting new onset delusional ideation or other "mental" disturbance. It might be associated with an obscure condition, but likely enough it's the result of common maladies. The worst error is thinking one knows what's going on before (or not at all) thoroughly investigating the possibilities.
> However, one could very well imagine an infectious disease, with or without a dermatological component, causing delusional parasitosis.
Except what's more likely is that it's just psychological - which doesn't mean it doesn't have physiological treatments, it's just going to be for the psyche issue though.
Put it another way: it's well recognized eating disorders exist. But they're psychological disorders: they respond to psychological interventions and treatments, and are curable, but can also "spread" in viral like ways - i.e. an eating disorder can be induced by environmental (peer group) factors.
We don't generally posit that a virus spreads eating disorders, nor has any evidence of one been identified. And so in the same way, there's no reason to think Morgellons should have any underlying pathological cause that's any different, since none has been identified but we are aware of a number of psychological self-harm disorders (which can be amplified or spread sociologically but also just be unusual presentations of other conditions).
These sick people there need to move out permanently to go live far away from the province and see if they get better. If it's prion disease, they probably won't reliably get better by moving alone. They also should do private testing for heavy metals.
This is a textbook case of mass hysteria. A whole lot of people in one place, all coming down with a mystery illness, with no apparent cause, and everyone has different symptoms. Instances like these have been reported multiple times in the past 20 years, as well as for thousands of years in the past. They all genuinely feel the symptoms. But the cause is clearly no physical thing in the environment.
Deep dive into New Brunswick, JD Irving, and their ongoing issues with Glyphosate pollution. Canadian researchers specializing on CJD have been blocked from investigating this case [0].
Sadly, the Irvings have extremely close ties with both the Liberals [1] and Conservatives [2][3] and are essentially untouchable due to Canada's parliamentary nature.
The NYT has been doing an on-the-ground report on this issue for a couple years now [4][5]
It reminds me of similar stories I heard while growing up from family friends of mine who ran a construction business on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland about how cheap it was to "lobby" and get a personal meeting and photograph with Martin and Harper, and this was after Railgate.
The doctor in question here explicitly pointed out increased levels of glyphosate in their blood:
> He also warned that some patients' blood work showed elevated levels for compounds found in herbicides such as glyphosate, and said more testing should be done to rule out environmental toxins, including the neurotoxin BMAA, which is produced by blue-green algae.
If it was glyphosates, this would be a much more widespread problem. Roundup/glyphosates are used extensively all across the US and we would be seeing similar statistics everywhere.
* are all the patients really sick or as sick as the symptoms he documents, or is it some kind of Munchausen induced or lied about by the doctor?
* Or are they all sick, they're just not getting the help they need because he wants to have a mystery disease?
* If they're all sick, is it then a higher prevalence than expected, so even if there is no mystery disease there is still something environmental or similar that should've been explored? Aka, is there a cluster, it's just a known disease?
A bit of a messy situation, since there is both documented precedent for undisclosed chemical use to cause severe population illness (e.g. numerous times in "cancer alley"), however there is also precedent for charismatic doctors to create a cult of personality that might create noise.
Its hard not to see this as FND and similar conditions with a cult of personality around a charming but misguided doctor. Lang's team really seems to have solved this mystery, but some patients seem to prefer the allure of a mystery illness and the one young lady in the article seems to have munchausen by proxy-esque parents.
The article ends in a heart breaking way. The one woman is applying for MAID. I wonder if she had better care if she could have been properly diagnosed and treated. Instead, she is going to try to end her life.
I think there's a real indictment here about how liberal Canada's MAID program is which the article glosses over.
[+] [-] patcon|1 month ago|reply
I find it wild that the BBC never mentioned the most glaring underbelly of this:
New Brunswicks most significant employer for the past 100 years is Irving Oil & Irving Paper and Irving Forestry. They are different arms of a privately held family-run business, run by the descendants of the original founder (whose records are not as public as a traded company), in charge of the main industries of the province. They owned every newspaper in the province, and are known to be adversarial to any community paper, starting new papers just to drive out of business the small upstarts they don't own -- I've seen it play out in my community. People are literally afraid to criticize this family publicly, because they fund SO MUCH of the nonprofit sector. If you are trying to get a project off the ground, you can't look sideways at them or your project will be buried. And their papers certainly won't speak kindly of your criticism.
And most glaringly, one of their ex-Vice Presidents was premier of the province during this time.
So there is an extra level of concern that some locals have about the optics of the province shutting down the research.
The Irving family is highly manipulative of political affairs, and imho have held the province back for decades (e.g. influencing what schools get funded/built, to create the working stock that support their businesses, etc)
[+] [-] jacquesm|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] Kina|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] rfwhyte|1 month ago|reply
The Irvings basically own NB like its their own private fiefdom, and if anyone's doing any major polluting in the province its almost certainly them.
They own politicians, they own institutions, and they have an inordinate amount of influence on provincial politics and policy, so personally I have a pretty strong suspicion they are likely responsible for this outbreak, they know they are responsible, and in order to avoid consequence, they are using their wealth and political power to shut down any further investigation into this outbreak.
Its a story as old as time honestly... Some rich bastards do some shady shit in the pursuit of even more money and power, us regular folks suffer, the rich bastards use their wealth and political power to cover it up, and around the world spins until the next act of billionaire malfeasance and none of the rich bastards are ever held accountable.
Seriously, Occam's razor to me at least makes what's going on here pretty damn self evident. What's more likely, that hundreds of people are making up a mystery illness, or that this is just yet another of the innumerable instances of billionaires polluting the earth in the pursuit of profit and making people sick in the process?
I certainly know which scenario I consider most likely.
[+] [-] subpixel|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_9879|1 month ago|reply
The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients.
Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conversion-di... , which is a horrible condition that accounts for a plurality of cases seen by most neurologists. This phantom diagnosis will probably make recovery almost impossible for those people. Acceptance of that diagnosis is the number 1 positive indicator for recovery.
Source: I live in the canadian maritimes, and know many neurologists.
[+] [-] culi|1 month ago|reply
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/03/canada...
It seems to me that it's doctors reaching out to Marrero. It also seems odd that [these|this] illness(es) disproportionately affected young people.
Another article I just read stated Marrero reached out to get second opinions but was blocked.
> He claims he made arrangements in 2020-21 for "subject-matter experts" to travel to New Brunswick to evaluate patients, but the province "chose not to avail itself of this invaluable expertise."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-n...
[+] [-] ajb|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] enceladus06|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] jrflowers|1 month ago|reply
Wait by “nothing” do you mean that there is no cause for the disease that the link you posted says has an unknown cause, or “nothing” do you mean that they don’t actually have anything wrong with them but you’re sharing a neat link about a disease that has an unknown cause?
I normally wouldn’t question an hour old throwaway that knows many neurologists, but what exactly are you applying the word “nothing” to here? You started with one statement, said that you don’t like a guy, and then wrote another statement that negates your first statement.
Like by “nothing” do you mean “I personally do not know, so my knowledge of what is causing this is nothing, but I want to share that I don’t like that one doctor”?
[+] [-] RobotToaster|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] killerstorm|1 month ago|reply
A doctor following diagnostic criteria might assign "migraine" diagnosis and provide standard recommendations for migraine management.
Another doctor seeing a quick uptick of patients with migraine symptoms will try to investigate toxins and infections.
Which doctor is doing something useful here?
[+] [-] yawnxyz|1 month ago|reply
this stuff is hard, because our tools suck and everything and everyone is an an unreliable narrator
[+] [-] jacquesm|1 month ago|reply
That's a fairly weak claim for an appeal to authority.
[+] [-] vasco|1 month ago|reply
They all live in the same province too. If you're already wrong here it's hard to trust anything else
[+] [-] unknown|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ggm|1 month ago|reply
It's entirely possible as for cancer clusters there is no single causative agent. That stuff demands really careful thoughtful handling, not just brush-offs. Getting the public past personal experiences to epidemiology and subsequently things like mental health, is very hard.
Look at ME and what post covid syndrome showed.
[+] [-] closewith|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] pash|1 month ago|reply
Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease is a prion disease [0] for which there is no definitive diagnosis in vivo. A confident diagnosis can be made only after examining brain tissue under a microscope.
Prions are an unusual type of mis-folded protein that induce other proteins to take on a similar mis-folded shape when they come into contact with them. The mis-folded shape of the prion itself is what causes the mis-folding in adjacent proteins. It’s a chemical-bonding thing at the molecular level. It’s the shape of the prion that causes other proteins to take on a similar shape and become prions, etc.
Some prion diseases occur spontaneously (when a protein takes on a mis-folded configuration due to mis-transcription or random energetic impulses) and some are transmitted, typically by eating some part of an animal that contains prions, which then end up in your own body, inducing proteins in your body to take on prion configurations.
Prion diseases are the only known transmissible diseases that do not involve the replication of a pathogen’s genetic material in a host cell. The only known prion diseases affect nervous tissues, and in humans the only known prion diseases affect brain tissues.
I’m not an expert on prion diseases, but I’ve had a bit of a fascination with them since having to report on a bunch of USDA surveillance lectures on mad-cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) and to summarize a bunch of symposia on prion diseases in a previous life. The symptoms reported in the article sound very much like a prion disease, and the tests for CJD indicate that the doctors in the region suspect as much.
But we simply don’t have good tests for prion diseases in vivo. And prion diseases are not well understood in general, so it wouldn’t be surprising that a new one would present as something of a mystery.
It is also the case that I know very little about New Brunswick, but I will mention that prion diseases in humans are thought to be far more commonly acquired than spontaneous. The most common cause of acquisition is eating animals with endemic prion diseases; this is most often nervous tissue of venison, but rarely nervous tissue of cattle infected with BSE, which is present in Canada more than anywhere else (by a small margin).
It is also possible (but not likely) that a prion disease can arise de novo.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion_disease
[+] [-] hedayet|1 month ago|reply
At one point I checked into the ER with a resting heart rate around 200 BPM, and on some days my smartwatch couldn’t even detect a pulse because it was racing so fast.
I eventually recovered-though I still avoid wearing smart devices because seeing my heart rate triggers anxiety-but the whole period ended without a root cause and with me just being put on heartrate reducers for a while.
I really feel for anyone dealing with "mystery" medical conditions. It’s a tough place to be.
[+] [-] silisili|1 month ago|reply
And I did. He was an old guy, didn't seem at all worried. He said he worked in pro sports and a surprising number of people have it, including top athletes, try not to worry too much about it. It's been nearly 10 years and I'm still kicking so I guess they were right.
But to this day I avoid smart watches/rings, because I know it'll be nothing but anxiety inducing alarms.
[+] [-] on_the_train|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] M95D|1 month ago|reply
https://en.my-ekg.com/arrhythmias/supraventricular-tachycard...
[+] [-] djmips|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] Retz4o4|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] whatsupdog|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|1 month ago|reply
They are split on whether his thoroughness is just fueling false hopes and sending patients down unnecessary rabbit holes or if he could have potentially identified a real issue.
[+] [-] CAP_NET_ADMIN|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] kravossedonna|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] devmor|1 month ago|reply
The fact that the investigation was disbanded simply because the patients had symptoms that can be tied to existing diseases is utterly asinine. As if there’s no reason to investigate why so many people in such a small area have similar conditions, or even to investigate whether or not the demographics of the supposed cluster are out of the ordinary in the first place. Even if there was no related cause at all, such an investigation could be used to determine that Dr. Marrero was the cause of a problem and stop him from doing harm. But instead the result was that no satisfactory conclusion was reached for the majority of people, and the patients continue to suffer.
These people need help and they are being failed by their doctors, their administrative officials and their representatives all at the same time.
[+] [-] OutOfHere|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 month ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anonnon|1 month ago|reply
One patient, whose brother, ironically, was a physician (and one skeptical of Morgellons as anything other than delusional parasitosis), seemed earnest, if intense, in describing how Morgellons had destroyed his quality of life... but then he started describing how he felt like he was able to inadvertently affect electronic devices, especially RF-based ones, because the Morgellons "fibers" in his extremities caused some kind of interference. At this point, he sounded squarely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
However, one could very well imagine an infectious disease, with or without a dermatological component, causing delusional parasitosis. Maybe they have some virus or something that makes them think they have these "fibers?" Or a parasite? Toxoplasma gondii is known to affect inhibition. UTIs in the elderly are notorious for making them crazy.
[+] [-] jacquesm|1 month ago|reply
I once had a woman and her husband visiting to inquire about buying a house I owned in Northern Groningen, pretty much as far away from anything as you could possibly get in this crowded country. They arrived in a taxi that was blanked for the day (it turned out the man was a cab driver) and after looking the place over and liking it visibly the woman said 'oh, we really like it, but there is one more thing, I am allergic to electromagnetic radiation so let me verify that' (eye roll by the man at this point). She went to the car and came back with a box with a dial on it that she had bought online (a pretty basic field strength meter, set to the most sensitive part of the range) and started walking around muttering to herself and waving the box around like a modern day dowser.
After a while of this she came to me and said she was really sorry but she had to drop her interest because the house was absolutely infested with EM fields. In Amsterdam, where they lived, they had turned their whole apartment into a cage of Faraday with copper mesh nailed against every surface (it turned out they lived right opposite the KPN microwave tower next to the RAI so maybe she even had a point, that thing featured multiple RF links beaming 100's of Watts on tight beam links between other such towers, at some point in the past these carried our long distance phone calls before fiber came along).
I asked if I could see her box for a second and pointed it at the sun: the needle pegged instantly and she was most surprised, so I explained that what she is measuring is real, but so faint that the chances of any kind of interaction with her body are most likely delusional.
Here the conversation abruptly ended...
As for TFA: prions, the agents responsible for CJD are remarkably resilient and annoying and can make it through the foodchain across the digestive barrier and into the brain and even a single one of them can cause CJD.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/creutzfeldt-jakob-disease-cjd/
[+] [-] jrapdx3|1 month ago|reply
I appreciate your comment pointing to the importance of carefully evaluating individuals manifesting new onset delusional ideation or other "mental" disturbance. It might be associated with an obscure condition, but likely enough it's the result of common maladies. The worst error is thinking one knows what's going on before (or not at all) thoroughly investigating the possibilities.
[+] [-] XorNot|1 month ago|reply
Except what's more likely is that it's just psychological - which doesn't mean it doesn't have physiological treatments, it's just going to be for the psyche issue though.
Put it another way: it's well recognized eating disorders exist. But they're psychological disorders: they respond to psychological interventions and treatments, and are curable, but can also "spread" in viral like ways - i.e. an eating disorder can be induced by environmental (peer group) factors.
We don't generally posit that a virus spreads eating disorders, nor has any evidence of one been identified. And so in the same way, there's no reason to think Morgellons should have any underlying pathological cause that's any different, since none has been identified but we are aware of a number of psychological self-harm disorders (which can be amplified or spread sociologically but also just be unusual presentations of other conditions).
[+] [-] jjmarr|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] ggm|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] gametorch|1 month ago|reply
My theory is that this hypothesis is shut down by the fishing industry.
[+] [-] OutOfHere|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xbadcafebee|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] alephnerd|1 month ago|reply
Sadly, the Irvings have extremely close ties with both the Liberals [1] and Conservatives [2][3] and are essentially untouchable due to Canada's parliamentary nature.
The NYT has been doing an on-the-ground report on this issue for a couple years now [4][5]
It reminds me of similar stories I heard while growing up from family friends of mine who ran a construction business on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland about how cheap it was to "lobby" and get a personal meeting and photograph with Martin and Harper, and this was after Railgate.
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/03/canada...
[1] - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-minister-le...
[2] - https://nsadvocate.org/2020/09/15/big-win-for-the-irvings-in...
[3] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/pcs-criticized-...
[4] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/magazine/canada-brain-dis...
[5] - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/world/canada/irving-famil...
[+] [-] culi|1 month ago|reply
> He also warned that some patients' blood work showed elevated levels for compounds found in herbicides such as glyphosate, and said more testing should be done to rule out environmental toxins, including the neurotoxin BMAA, which is produced by blue-green algae.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-n...
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] krautburglar|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] matsemann|1 month ago|reply
* are all the patients really sick or as sick as the symptoms he documents, or is it some kind of Munchausen induced or lied about by the doctor?
* Or are they all sick, they're just not getting the help they need because he wants to have a mystery disease?
* If they're all sick, is it then a higher prevalence than expected, so even if there is no mystery disease there is still something environmental or similar that should've been explored? Aka, is there a cluster, it's just a known disease?
[+] [-] unsupp0rted|1 month ago|reply
Wait… what?
> But the government had decided against examining any of the patients in person
Wait… what?
[+] [-] zug_zug|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] zoeysmithe|1 month ago|reply
The article ends in a heart breaking way. The one woman is applying for MAID. I wonder if she had better care if she could have been properly diagnosed and treated. Instead, she is going to try to end her life.
I think there's a real indictment here about how liberal Canada's MAID program is which the article glosses over.