The head of a Canadian province has asked to investigate a mysterious brain disease.

The Premier of the Canadian province of New Brunswick, Susan Holt, said she wants the Public Health Agency of Canada to help investigate a mysterious brain disease that has already affected an overwhelming number of patients.
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In early June, The Guardian reported that one of Canada’s leading scientists, Michael Coulthart, said he had been banned from researching a mysterious brain disease in New Brunswick. Later, another federal scientist joined his words, saying that 350 people had suffered from the disease. Coulthart wrote that he believes environmental exposures, or a combination of exposures, may trigger and accelerate various neurodegenerative syndromes in people susceptible to various protein misfolding diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

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Coulthart argues that the phenomenon does not easily fit into the “shallow paradigms” of diagnostic pathology, and the complexity of the problem has given policymakers a “loophole” to close off scientists’ ability to study the disease.

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“We need to do a thorough investigation of why people get sick. <…> Not only do we not know how to identify, diagnose and treat it, we don’t know what causes it,” Holt told the National Post.

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According to her, the number of cases of the disease is going through the roof.