Activists Erin Brockovich and Lois Gibbs say New York officials might have prematurely ruled out environmental reasons for teens having neurological symptoms.
Brockovich, whose California water-contamination case became a motion picture starring Julia Roberts, and Lois Gibbs, who led the homeowners at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., have been talking to parents of some of the 15 teens who have developed involuntary twitches and verbal outbursts, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle reported.
Fifteen LeRoy Junior-Senior High School students exhibit degrees of involuntary twitches and verbal outbursts not unlike Tourette's syndrome. Some reported fainting and seizures and, until recently, all were girls, but a male has now made the same complaints, the Chronicle said.
Neurologists in Buffalo, N.Y., examined some of the teens this month and concluded the teens suffer from a psychological disorder causing physical symptoms that spread unconsciously through the student body at the school.
Jeffrey Hammond of the New York state department of health said state officials looked into the cluster, but were not speculating about the cause. Hammond confirmed most of the girls did not get the Human Papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil and said Buffalo physicians ruled out infections in the patients they saw.
