The prevailing theory has been either environmental contamination from a chemical spill nearly 40 years ago, or mass halucination. Contamination makes no sense because of the sudden onset of the disease symptoms, plus the fact that only girls have reported getting this. As for mass halucination, while that may sound good to a psychiatrist, no case of mass halucination has ever been documented. So lets leave the fairy tales behind and look at the most likely factors.
Vaccinations that only the girls would have received (HPV) seem the most likely culprit. Vaccines have a long history of being contaminated with nasty things that should not be in them. The other possible factor is the release of some gene specific organism that has never been seen before. One that is targeting only young girls in this area of New York. Okay, I'm sticking with the vaccines for now. Hopefully time will tell, and someone will get these girls some help.
February 5, 2012 – LE ROY, New York (Reuters) – State health officials have added three more names to a growing list of students in this working-class town who are experiencing mysterious tics and twitching, while authorities on Saturday sought to assure parents the community’s high school is safe. Although the symptoms are typically associated with Tourette Syndrome, that has been ruled out in all but one case, causing fear and confusion among many residents of Le Roy, N.Y., about 50 miles east of Buffalo. “The building is safe for the community,” District Superintendent Kim Cox told several hundred residents gathered in the auditorium of Le Roy Junior-Senior High School on Saturday. The Le Roy Central School District scrambled to conduct environmental testing for air quality and mold when an initial 12 students developed tics and impulsive verbal outbursts last fall. But state health investigators ruled out environmental factors, latent side-effects from drugs or vaccines like Gardasil, trauma or genetic factors. Instead, doctors say conversion disorder – once called mass hysteria – is to blame among an expanding list of patients. Three more unconfirmed cases have been added to the original list of students exhibiting the symptoms, and others are being examined. Air quality and mold surveys at the school have all come back negative, according to district officials and representatives of Leader Professional Services Inc., a company hired to conduct environmental testing at the school after the symptoms first surfaced. Senior Industrial Hygienist Mary Ellen Holvey on Saturday said air and water tests turned up nothing, and recommended follow-up testing of air inside the school. –Chicago Tribune
