MLAs question health officials on handling of neurological disorder investigation
Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton and her colleagues on the New Brunswick legislature’s Public Accounts committee had a chance to pepper deputy Health minister Eric Beaulieu with questions on Tuesday.
The department of health was before the committee to discuss their 2021-22 annual report, and MLAs took the opportunity to ask questions about a number of health issues, including the past and ongoing handling of cases of neurological degenerative symptoms of unknown origin in the province.
While MLA and former Health Minister Dorothy Shephard wondered why the investigation into the mysterious symptoms hadn’t been put to bed, Mitton’s line of questioning tended towards asking for more public disclosure of decision making processes.
Mitton asked Beaulieu about new involvement from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), who are sending two epidemiologists to the province to help Dr. Alier Marrero complete reporting on between 100 and 200 neurological cases that the neurologist has flagged as having no known cause. Beaulieu said the two epidemiologists would be arriving in late September, and he told Mitton that everything that can be made public about their work, will be made public.
Mitton later asked Beaulieu to explain in detail why communications between federal and provincial scientists were abruptly shut down in May of 2021, and referred to results of Right to Information (RTI) requests made by media and the advocacy group Bloodwatch.… Continue
Looking further into NB’s mystery brain disease
A Mount Allison researcher is going to help contribute some clarity to the confusion over New Brunswick’s mystery neurological disease. Math and computer science professor Matthew Betti wants to survey and study the cluster of cases being investigated as related to a possible new neurological disorder.
In a recent episode of CHMA Talks, Matt Betti explained the motivation for his study, and how it would differ from the publicly available work done to date by New Brunswick Public Health. Later in the episode, we spoke with journalist Matthew Halliday about his coverage of New Brunswick’s possible new mystery disease. Hear that episode here:
Matt Betti specializes in infectious disease modelling and has worked for Health Canada throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Betti says the matter of a potential new neurological disorder needs independent study. “As we’ve seen over the last few years, something as simple as a communicable disease can be highly politicized very easily,” says Betti. “I think it’s important to to make sure that the science is done right, without undue influence of politics, or outside interests.”
“That’s part of the reason why we have this infrastructure that is academia,” says Betti, “to do ideally unbiased, independent research, from which you will not see negative consequences from your employer, from government, etc.”
Betti says he’s interested in further exploring the data about the possible new disease, and that the surveying done to date, as published in a report by New Brunswick Public Health, has been preliminary, not extensive enough to draw conclusions about the existence or not of a new disease.… Continue