New Brunswick’s not-so-mysterious illness

It’s amazing how media and science mix so poorly when one subordinates itself to the other. One single study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, after having examined fewer than five per cent of the cases, found no basis for what has been called “the mystery disease” in New Brunswick and Ontario. This was enough for the media to jump to conclusions. “It’s not real,” says the National Post. There is “no evidence of a mystery brain disease,” according to the CBC. However, there is a serious epistemological leap between not identifying the characteristic features of a condition and dismissing its existence.

The headlines are cold comfort to those living near production sites where allegedly toxic chemicals are sprayed. Nathalie Lebreton and her son Mathieu Duguay live in Haut-Sheila and are affected by this “mystery disease,” but say no one is listening to them. Officially, they are Case Number 350 and Case Number 48 among more than 500 patients in New Brunswick who have reported suffering from this illness. Some have already died.

They say they are suffering on multiple levels.

First, the physical suffering: chronic fatigue, dizziness, intracranial pressure, perspiration, numbness, stiffness, acute pain, the list goes on. Life is becoming a nightmare.

They also suffer from being kept in the dark about their condition. Contrary to the claims of the study, they say that no clear diagnosis, involving any known medical condition, has officially been given to them. They have been shunted back and forth, from one hospital to another, from one doctor to another, from one field of medicine to another, from one diagnosis to another. They get the impression that each doctor makes a different assessment, then leaves them to their own devices. (It reminds one of Nani Moretti’s film Caro diario. Everyday, the main character must swallow a cocktail of pills after receiving a diagnosis that his problem is psychosomatic, a last resort of the medical profession to conceal their impotence.) Most painful is having to return home without receiving any care. They only speak well of Dr. Alier Marrero of Moncton. By his authority, the various cases across the province were brought together under the hypothesis that they represented one shared, real, condition.

Thirdly, they suffer from a powerful sense of being abandoned. In February of 2022, the Higgs government terminated any consideration of a common condition for all the cases. He even refused $5 million in financial support from the federal government to look into things more closely. Over the years, no one has considered the distress of the victims. They continue to feel alone and forsaken.

They suffer humiliation each time they propose their own hypotheses about their condition, none of which are taken seriously, with the excuse that they are not scientifically valid, or not backed by any expert authority in any field. The humiliation relegates them to their class position, as if it were not an aspect of democratic citizenship to think, suggest, and weigh a variety of ideas, a capacity that is common to all people. Each time, the response is crushing in its emptiness. Fifty years ago, Michel Foucault discussed how medicine had become a form of “power,” one that intimidates those who cannot master its technical jargon (“The Crisis of Medicine of the Crisis of Antimedicine?”, 1976).

Finally, they suffer because they know something about the situation stinks. It seems to be in the interest of some very powerful people that the veil not be lifted on this mystery. In the pages of L’Acadie Nouvelle of November 25, 2024, an editorial summarized the issue: “The Higgs government was afraid of discovering that some business or specific economic sector was behind the problem.”

Conspiracy theory?

It would be wrong and condescending to reduce the grievances of these victims to conspiracist ranting with no value and no basis in reality. Yet this is what they constantly face.

Certainly, no one is so deluded as to say that blueberry farms and forestry operations are deliberately spraying glyphosate to make people sick. To speak of this as some kind of planned act would indeed be the rant of a conspiracy theorist. But for those patients coldly designated as Case Numbers 350 and 48, there is little doubt that the chemicals sprayed by private corporations, which they do in New Brunswick more than elsewhere, contribute to killing nature; and we, as human beings, are a part of nature.

Here, some grammar is needed, since thought is intrinsically related to language. We must keep in mind whether a qualifying term is essential or contingent. If I write solid steel, I associate solid and steel such that solidity is a fundamental property of steel. Steel can only be solid. However, if I write the rotten apple, I mean an apple which, on this particular day, under these particular circumstances, happens to be rotten. Being rotten is not an essential property of apples.

Now if I write in a New Brunswick newspaper, “a mysterious disease,” do I mean that this disease currently presents a mystery, or am I trying to describe an essential property? There is a game of equivocation being played here; we are being led to believe that the disease is essentially a mystery, as if it was inherent to the condition.

The precautionary principle

Taking these patients seriously would mean observing the precautionary principle; for example, by banning glyphosate spraying.

The Chief Medical Officer of New Brunswick has announced his intention to review 222 files concerning this issue. But for those most concerned, the damage is done. Everyone has been discredited.

We must not lose sight of the strong whiff of partisanship, and perhaps of powerful lobbyists, that accompany the Liberals’ previous dithering on this issue. Over five years ago, New Brunswick’s Green MLAs proposed an amendment to a bill which would have banned the use of glyphosate on Crown lands and under power lines. Glyphosate’s carcinogenic effects have been verified by the World Health Organization.

Liberal and Conservatives voted in unison against the proposed amendment, showing great solidarity in their submission to the will of big business. Local officials, partisans of the cause of blueberry farming, drowned the debate in theological rhetoric, calling on people not to “demonize” poor little corporations like Oxford Frozen Foods.

The Liberals’ rhetoric involved casting doubt on the validity of numerous scientific papers alerting the public to the issue. Their 2024 electoral platform provided only a string of contradictory estimates, which I have previously discussed.

We must now ask ourselves, what if the chemicals we spray in such abundance really do cause disease? How long will we accept being exposed to such risks? Are we waiting for the powerful people who use them to judge for themselves if there is sufficient “evidence” of their toxicity?

Alain Deneault is a professor of philosophy at Université de Moncton, Shippagan Campus. The original French version of this article first appeared in Acadie Nouvelle on May 9, 2025.