Investigation into Canada’s New Brunswick brain syndrome is being blocked by the province, whose claims that the syndrome is various existing diseases have been debunked by federal experts, who suggest that the provincial government controlled by its forestry industry is blocking the investigation to retain tourism and industry.

141 points
*

[A patient] found himself afraid to disturb the stranger who had sat down in his living room, only to realize hours later that the stranger was his wife.

Thankfully, the patient was Canadian so the wife survived the encounter.

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-106 points
Removed by mod
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45 points

Nah I’m American and we should be embarrassed

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-40 points

Whether we should be embarrassed is besides the point. The article is about the Canadian government doing some sketchy shit. Absolutely no reason to shit on America in the comments.

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34 points

I don’t see USA mentioned anywhere in that comment. I assumed it was a joke about the “overly polite Canadian” stereotype.

YOU assumed it was about the states cause you know the average American is batshit crazy

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-20 points

You and one other poster dont realize that it’s a jab at a America. Everyone else sees the obvious.

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14 points

Mindless? Surely they had to put some thought into it to connect that America is really the only country where people are being shot for pulling into the wrong suburban driveways? A bit of research at the very least.

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-27 points

Surely they had to put some thought into it

Holy shit, mindless doesn’t mean “no thought.” lmao

A bit of research at the very least

Irony. You know what is the least amount of research one can do? Look up a word in the dictionary.

But that being said, why even attempt to pedantically defend attacking America when we aren’t even discussing America at all?

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11 points

Lemmings are called lemmings for a reason. We laugh at our hivemind dumb jokes and try to find the funny. Dark humor is the way some people cope with tragedy.

(Not to mention I thought this was about the welcoming and polite Commonwealth stereotype in the first place.)

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-11 points

This seems to agree with my point that it’s mindless. I absolutely understand and agree that lemmings mindless parrot the same stuff over and over again, it can be quite an echo chamber.

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9 points

That may or may not be entirely true, but you have to admit that was a damn good burn. Someone had to say it, it was too perfect a setup not to.

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8 points

Unless the assumption that it’s America despite them not explicitly saying so is just extending the joke? Apologies if so, nice one.

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7 points

Why simp for American healthcare?

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-7 points

Who is simping for any healthcare? I’m so confused by this post.

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6 points

Actually it’s to raise awareness and start a conversation

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-14 points

Why would anyone think to “raise awareness” about America’s gun problem in the comments section about the Canadian government possibly covering up an illness on behalf of a major Canadian industry? I don’t buy that for a second, but even if it is the case, they are distracting from what doesn’t get much attention.

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4 points

Nobody mentioned America, who’s obsessed about America here?

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3 points
*

Just chiming in with a serious response. Even if this comment was talking about America (which it isn’t), it would be a prescient to consider the consequences of having an armed person who is psychologically prepared to kill an intruder on sight, suffering from rapid mental decline that causes them to misidentify their own family members as intruders.

So even if this were a jab at America (and again, it wasn’t), we’d probably have it coming.

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3 points

I mean my first thought was that we really are America jr and growing up fast

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2 points

some mindless attack on America or Americans. It’s amazing how obsessed some people are.

With guns? Yeah. That’s the problem. I’m glad we can laugh about the gun-clutchers, as they have enough problems of their own.

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-2 points

I’m all for laughing at obsessed gun nuts when it makes sense. But if you are bringing up obsessive gun nuts when the topic is about the Canadian government covering up a major industry for poisoning it’s own people…well, you have serious obsession problem.

I love how often when I bring up this obsession, people can’t grasp the fact that I’m not defending America or Americans.

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92 points

I’m really glad this is getting proper media attention. This has been going on for a while and I haven’t seen much outside of small blips in Canadian media until now.

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11 points

Investigative journalists need to look into this. Oh wait, there aren’t any left because evil corporations own 90% of the media outlets now.

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8 points

Canadaland has been covering this. They are independent journalists and it’s important to support this type of reporting.

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2 points

Good to hear they exist, thanks for letting me know!

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6 points

this is investigative journalism

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1 point
*

Investigate Journalists still exist, they are just bloggers who tell us to do our own research.

It sucks. I’d much rather the nameless investigative journalist have the reputation of an established (and importantly, trusted) press agency standing behind them.

Investigative journalism, nowadays, is useless unless it comes from a highly trusted individual, or with the backing of a trusted entity. And that’s not what we have these days. We have borderline propaganda produced by idiots who have no concept of context and barely any real understanding of the topic they are trying to convey in the first place.

Oh, and Opinion columns presented as fact. We have those too.

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61 points

A well loved coworker died of Crutzfeld Jakob disease this year. That shit is terrifying.

He was in his 50s and went from normal, to nonverbal, easily startled, and not recognizing close family, to dead in a span of like 4 months.

Absolutely terrifying.

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32 points

Yeah, prion diseases are truly the stuff of nightmares. No cure, can exist indefinitely in the soil, and they basically turn you into a zombie before you die a horribly painful death as your brain literally falls apart.

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12 points

And there’s often no way to get a conclusive diagnosis until you’re dead. So you keep getting things thrown at the wall, keep hoping, and keep getting it dashed. It gets to the point where it’s obvious that’s what it is, but you’re generally quite advanced by then.

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55 points

Hmm, they shut down the 48 patients suffering from odd neurodegerative diseases in 2021…

Marrero told me that since the province concluded its investigation, things had gotten worse. The number of undiagnosable patients currently under his care has risen to more than 430, 111 of whom are under age 45. Thirty-nine have died. By Marrero’s accounting, New Brunswick is now the center of one of the most prolific young-onset dementia clusters in the world. “Nobody who was involved in this can pretend they didn’t know,” he said.

What the fuckkk. :/

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6 points

Well that’s not terrifying.

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55 points
*

In a tragic experiment of nature, a group of drug users in California accidentally injected themselves with a bad batch of designer heroin and began suffering from symptoms closely resembling those of Parkinson’s disease. Investigators traced the batch to a back-alley chemist who had synthesized the drugs and found that he had mistakenly created a neurotoxin precursor known as MPTP as part of the concoction.

As it turned out, MPTP also resembled aspects of the chemical makeup of paraquat, a common herbicide, opening the door to the notion that perhaps chronic exposure to synthetic toxins was triggering Parkinson’s in aging patients the same way that the bad batch of heroin had in the users. Since then, advancements in molecular and genetic testing have continued to reinforce the idea.

Recent studies have linked brain disorders with chronic exposure to cyanobacterial blooms, pesticides, air pollution and numerous other toxicants. Some researchers have gone so far as to describe Parkinson’s disease in particular as “man-made.”

Well shit. Not what I was expecting to read in this article. ALS, Parkinsons, and Alzheimers are the three diseases that most terrify me. Something that hollows out who you are, leaving you semi conscious in a waking prison built of your own body. You can lose limbs and still be you. You can’t lose your brain and still be you. It’s a disease that destroys the ephemeral “you,” leaving only a husk of your former self. To think that we could be the ones causing it, with our massive over-use of herbicides, is equally terrifying. Because just like with PFAS exacerbating all cancers, there are rich, influential firms with powerful lobbying groups actively fighting against the very regulation that could save us.

This was actively covered up through the strong-arming of the person in charge of the autopsies.

Dr. Gerard Jansen, the neuropathologist in charge of autopsies for the eight cluster patients, had published a shocking conclusion: All eight patients died not from a mysterious illness but from known diseases, including cancer, Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

In December 2022, Marrero found a toxicology lab in Quebec that was willing to test patients for four different types of pesticides, including glyphosate, a herbicide that is regularly used as part of the forestry industry in New Brunswick. He had noticed a pattern of new referrals peaking in the late summer and early fall, when pesticide use is at its highest, and wondered if there could be a connection. When the lab accepted a sample from one patient, Marrero quickly sent over a hundred more. The results were astonishing. Ninety percent of Marrero’s patients came back with elevated amounts of glyphosate in their blood, in one case as high as 15,000 times the test’s lowest detectable concentration.

Part of the reason Marrero was able to get the tests done in Quebec was that in 2021 the province officially recognized the link between glyphosate and an increased risk for Parkinson’s disease. Recent studies have shown that glyphosate crosses the blood-brain barrier and that chronic exposure can lead to neurological inflammation that can trigger Alzheimer’s disease.

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14 points
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I completely agree with everything you’re saying, but I want to point out one thing that I absolutely hate about your citation:

in one case as high as 15,000 times the test’s lowest detectable concentration

This gives 0 context at all. I know scientific literacy is terrible in America, but this means nothing.

What is the lowest detectable concentration? Is it 1 PPT? 15000 PPT is what, 15 PPM? Is that bad? I don’t know.

This type of wording is used intentionally to make things sound worse than they are, and it works.

I’m not saying they aren’t, I’m saying I don’t know if they are or not. This quote did nothing to inform me of how bad it is, just a fact that is entirely meaningless on its own, without context or education. If anything, it enraged me without knowing the facts, and that’s (potentially) very dangerous writing.

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2 points

As if I needed another reason to feel good about not putting herbicides and pesticides on my yard. Who knows what prolonged exposure to that junk is doing to people that we don’t even begin to understand yet.

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