A defender of the new Brunswickers who suffer from inexplicable neurological symptoms says that a letter obtained by CBC News suggests that the Minister of Health, Dr. John Dornan, was not sincere about his role in the elimination of a Moncton neurologist from his position in the clinic treating many of the patients.
The letter dated July 4, 2022 shows that it was Dornan, then CEO of the Horizon Health Network, who informed Dr. Alier Marrero his participation in the Interdisciplinary Neurodegenerative Diseases Clinic of Moncton, would soon cease.
“Despite our repeated attempts to inform you about our expectations and deficiencies in its performance, it has not demonstrated a sustained capacity to meet our expectations,” Dornan wrote.
Dornan is now supervising the pre -election promise of the Premier Susan Holt as opposition leader to launch a transparent scientific research on the “mysterious disease” that Marrero says he is doing more than 500 people in New Brunswick and six other sick provinces.
The letter of mandate that Dornan received when he became a minister includes “a scientific review of mysterious brain disease.”
Patient defenders allege misinformation and conflict of interest among New Brunswick health officials looking for mysterious diseases.
The lawyer Stacie Quigley Cormier of Dalhousie Juncion says she asked Dornan during a meeting last month if she had “any participation” in Marrero’s extraction of the Mental Clinic at the Moncton hospital.
“He said unequivocally, ‘no’, and repeated it about three times,” he said.
Knowing now that Dornan was behind Marrero’s elimination “he raises many concerns” about whether he can lead an objective investigation, Quigley Cormier said.
“We are asking Prier Holt to intervene and announce that the Canada Public Health Agency will take scientific leadership in this because there is a conflict of interest with the members around the table that we cannot be satisfied with an investigation directed by them,” he said, referring to Dornan and the medical director of Dr. Yves Léger.
Holt, Dornan and Léger did not respond to interview requests. Nor Marrero.
The first case goes back 10 years
It was at the beginning of 2021 when the public learned that public health was monitoring more than 40 Brunswick patients with symptoms similar to those of Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s disease, a rare and fatal brain disease. The first case dates back to 2015, according to an internal memorandum.
Marrero, who rang the alarm on a possible mysterious disease, said at that time that it was not considered genetic, depending on preliminary data, and could be hired with water, food or air.
“Most likely to be a new disease,” Dr. Jennifer Russell, Health’s main medical officer, told reporters.
The former Higgs government launched an investigation into the group of 48 patients, from 18 to 85 years, located mainly in the Acadeian Peninsula and in the Moncton region. Quigley Cormier’s stepdaughter, Gabrielle Cormier, 23, was one of the youngest.
The province consulted experts from both levels of government, but within three months he placed meetings with federal experts and more than $ 5 million of Canadian Institutes for Health Research on Hold. Instead, he created his own supervision committee.
In February 2022, that committee concluded the cases, showing symptoms that range from painful muscle spasms and hallucinations to memory loss and behavioral changes, they did not have a common cause.
The committee found “potential alternative diagnoses” for 41 of the patients, including Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy’s body dementia, the syndrome after conversion and cancer, Russell said.
Paper demands
Marrero was marginalized from that investigation. His subsequent removal of the mental clinic caused questions about his skills and polluted his reputation, said Quigley Cormier.
It also meant that patients like their stepdaughter had to leave the clinic and their interdisciplinary care if they wanted to keep Marrero and see it at the Dr. Georges-L Hospital.-Dumont de Vitalité in Moncton, he said.
No details are provided about why Marrero was eliminated in Dornan’s letter, but health officials have said that the neurologist “struggled to fulfill their legally required notification duties.”
According to the Public Health Law, medical professionals must report notified diseases, including certain “unusual diseases” to the department when completing the paperwork.
Marrero requested help with the forms of notification of diseases and events of a page of a page, but alleges that he was threatened with disciplinary measures. Subsequently, the Health Department created improved surveillance forms, which require additional information.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle’s health, “as the health of other patients, continues to decrease,” said Quigley Cormier. She said Gabrielle has rare antibodies that affect her vision, balance and central nervous system.
Find the challenge of the medical director
Lori Ann Roness, a patient defender in Sackville, wrote an open letter “called Action” A Holt and Dornan last month, signed by more than 70 patients and family.
She asked the province to immediately request that the Canada Public Health Agency leads the research “to guarantee independent scientific integrity and credibility”, and to ensure the money offered by Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
He also asked him to retire from the investigation for what he called a “failure to act in the best interest of public health.” Roness did not explain the letter, but usually refers to a “bias” against Marrero and the lack of resources.
In a tracking letter last week, obtained by CBC News, Roness detailed the concerns about the “precision of the statements” that Léger made in a letter of February 25 to the heads of the first nations about the “neurodegenerative disease of unknown origin.”
Roness, who works with the first nations but does not speak in his name, wrote that Léger implies “the idea of possible environmental causes lies exclusively with Dr. Marrero.”
“Actually, Dr. Marrero has been advocating for an independent scientific investigation that considers all the possibilities, including, among others, environmental factors,” Roness wrote, who realized copper after his father, 80 years old, developed an inexplicable tremor in 2023 and tested high for Arsenic.
Marrero has warned that the blood analysis of some patients showed high levels for the compounds found in herbicides, such as as glyphosatewhich is used in agriculture and industrial forest operations, and said that more tests must be done to rule out environmental toxins, such as BMAA, which is produced by green blue algae.
But Roness argues that the Canadian Public Health Agency, not Marrero, was the first time to suggest considering environmental factors.
“Focusing only on Dr. Marrero makes this problem about him, when it really is patients. And what is more important about the province in general and what is happening here.”
He pointed out that the blood and urine samples of Marrero’s patients are tested by independent laboratories in Ontario, Quebec and the Mayo Clinic in the United States, among others.
Total patient uploaded to 507, deaths reach 50
Roness also disagrees with Léger’s statement that public health does not have enough information to evaluate statements about the possible environmental exposure.
According to her, Marrero has presented 381 forms of notification of diseases and notifiable events, and 227 improved surveillance forms, from its March 6.
“Those are just people [Marrero] He knows about, “said Roness in an interview. There could be others, including people who do not have a doctor to send them to specialists.
Marrero wrote a letter on February 24 to Dornan, Léger, Federal Minister of Health Mark Holland and the Director of Public Health of Canada, Dr. Theresa Tam, in which she said that the number of patients suffering from inexplicable neurological symptoms have increased to 507, in seven provinces. These include New Brunswick, New Scotland, Pei, Newfoundland, Ontario, Quebec and Alberta.
Around 127 of them are still under investigation, he wrote. Three more patients have died since Dornan wrote on January 30, raising the number of deaths to 50.
Marrero said that his office has provided “more than broad evidence” that an “urgent, thorough and multidisciplinary” research is needed, “however, he continues to face significant paperwork and has not received updates on the investigation.
‘How many others have to die?’
Roness questions why the forms that Marrero has presented to date is not enough to start the probe now, and if the possibility that chemicals, pesticides and herbicides are a factor has created a “reluctance to investigate more thoroughly.”
“How many others have to die? Are they waiting for a judicial case?” She asked.
She wants politicians and high -level bureaucrats to recognize that something is wrong.
“Something is suspicious in the province of New Brunswick, and I would like decision makers to get in touch with their humanity and wonder, if their loved one or they themselves had an arsenic reading in the thousands when it should be under 60 years, what would they do?”
The federals say that NB is main
The spokeswoman of the Canada Public Health Agency, Tammy Jarbeau, said that completing the provincial notification process and the collection of related data is the next necessary step to inform any review.
“Until the data collection and complete analysis are completed, any comment made in the absence of this remains speculative,” he said in an email.
But New Brunswick is the main jurisdiction, said Jarbeau.
“Phac continues to maintain an open dialogue with New Brunswick … and is still ready to provide additional support.”
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, on the other hand, “remains ready to provide research support in case the research leads the research in New Brunswick,” said spokesman David Coucombe.
