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When we think of metal poisoning; lead, mercury and aluminium intoxication invariably springs to mind. But the insidious toxic properties of the metal manganese have almost been completely overlooked. Modern health authorities could learn a lesson from the alchemists of the Byzantine era who regarded manganese as the black magic metal; whereby the quantum capacity of manganese to absorb light and sound, can induce a lethal ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ style conversion of this metal from innocuous to toxic form.
Manganese exposure has been associated with the original cause of many neuro-degenerative diseases. As part of my quest to identify the original causes of BSE, I had travelled to Groote Eylandt – a one time enchanted tropical island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, NE Australia, where bush lands and forests of stringy backed eucalyptus, pandanus and cypress pine have supported ideal nomadic hunter /gatherer grounds for several Aboriginal clans.
The history of this remote island has witnessed a bizarre degree of ‘heaven and hells’; Not only do the island’s soils play host to the mother of all manganese concentrations, but its flamboyant rainforest ecosystems have supported some of the most pure bred Aboriginal clans alive in Australia today. But as I was soon to learn, the tropical charms of a Groote Eylandt of ‘pick-your- own’ coconuts and turquoise seas can be deceptive to the uninformed outsider.
I was interested in the emergence of a cluster of mystery progressive, fatal neuro-degenerative diseases (collectively known as Groote Syndrome ) that had erupted in this remote Aboriginal outback of the Northern Australian territories. According to the Elders, the problem first developed in the late 1960s after the mining corporation started open cast mining of manganese on the island in the early 1960s, whereupon a fine black manganese dioxide dust gradually cloaked the precise region of the island where Groote syndrome has now emerged; Angurugu village. But the mining corporation funded experts have, not surprisingly, spun a different story line on the origins of this disease.
After broadcasting of the BBC film “Mad Cows and an Englishman” on ABC Four Corners in Australia, I received a deluge of correspondence from people concerned about manganese contamination on Groote Eylandt. One of the most inspiring communications came from Susannah Churchill of Canberra, who, unlike your average academic, had actually lived with the Aboriginal folk herself whilst researching for her thesis. Her completed manuscript on Groote syndrome makes a refreshingly impartial read. It’s a study that combines a lateral mix of cultural, genetic and geo-medical perspectives. I could also strongly relate to her suggestion that Groote syndrome was yet another satellite extension of the famous South Pacific clusters of “Guam Syndrome” – pockets of high manganese/high aluminium terrain where a variety of Alzheimer’s/Motor Neurone/Parkinson’s – like neuro-degenerative diseases had burst out at an incidence rate that was fifty times higher than the average international rate.
By amazing coincidence, the parents of my only Australian friend, Jo Wooding, turned out to have once lived in the same house in Canberra where Susannah used to live. So when Jo next visited her parents in Canberra, she was able to pick up a copy of the thesis and deliver it directly back to me on her return to London. After reading the document, I found myself compelled to visit Groote Eylandt.
One year later, I received a welcome donation of £500 from a Canadian reader of the Mid Atlantic Bio Dynamic Farming Association’s website ‘BD Now’ who had been promoting my work. This enabled me to raise sufficient money to launch my long awaited eco-detective investigation into the origins of this mystery cluster.
I found myself incarcerated for fifteen hours in the glass terminal building of Dar Es Salam airport at Brunei. It was a greenhouse experience. Unable to leave, I could do little more than use up several abortive hours in the airport’s internet café kiosk. After failing to read my Emails on every single monitor along a row of make-shift computers, I eventually threw up the towel. I was horrified to be asked to foot the bill by the junior attendant. When I protested, he threatened to call the police and abruptly scuttled off, entering into a series of protracted telephone exchanges with his boss which, as I later found out, was to get the final authoritative word to write off my bill.
I spent my remaining hours at Dar Es Salam staring through the glass walls of the terminal. All the while I was aware of the mounting storm clouds of dirty looks drifting across from the staff of the internet kiosk – may be the young lad had lost his commission for the afternoon, I don’t know ?
I craved to be able to escape to the shade on the opposite bank outside; to sprawl myself out beneath that canopy of palms. A mind bending wave of jet lag suddenly overcame me; this time that melatonin ‘crash out’ took me to more pleasant dimensions – the image of the palms in front of me was suddenly metamorphosed into multiple mirages of silvery fronds fanning the humid summer air.
On the final four hour bout of the flight to Darwin, my illusion of the virtual ‘clone-like’ beauty of the ‘Royal Brunei’ hostesses was rapidly shattered when one of them walked up the aisle spraying canisters of pyrethroid insecticide into the intakes of the air circulation system. Within minutes, the whole fuselage was transformed into a gas chamber of toxic insecticide. There was no escape. Despite being assured of the compliance of these chemicals with the World Health Organisation’s safety standards, I had perhaps gleaned an explanation for reasons why travel on long haul flights represents one common predisposing factor for the clinical onset of certain modern diseases such as post viral fatigue (ME), sudden infant death syndrome, etc. I spent the rest of the flight pondering on the possible connection between the aetiology of these diseases and the compulsory subjection to such invasive modes of spray treatment.
At 4 am on that early summer morning, I arrived in the half light at the front gates of the Lalara family home in Darwin; The Lalaras were a half Aboriginal family who used to live and work fulltime on Groote Eylandt. Their son, Daniel, emerged out of their bungalow garden to greet me – the first friendly warmth that I had encountered since leaving my family home in Somerset. Then all I can remember was the whirring of the air conditioning fan as I slept for two days in a pathetic state of semi-comatose, jet lagged haze. The bedroom was blackened out, save a few slits of laser sunlight that projected my first glimpses of Australia across the wall .
Jenny, the Caucasian mother of the Lalara family, was struggling to hold down her teaching job whilst keeping her invalid husband and adolescent family together. Jenny’s persistent stream of Emails had been instrumental in convincing me over the seriousness of the mounting neurological crises on Groote, and, more importantly, the need to understand the root cause of this disease. If you can understand the cause, you are in a better position to deduce a cure, as well as the long term prevention of the disease.
Jenny had enlightened me over that very real and urgent human suffering facets of Groote Syndrome; which served as a kind of trigger to activate the brilliant academic potential tied up in Susannah’s thesis; The combination of perspectives had coerced me into travelling all this way to Australia.
When I first set eyes upon the debilitated body condition of Warren Lalara, I was instantly reassured that my reasons for coming were well grounded. I could see why he had been forced to leave his ancestral island home for the more sophisticated care facilities on the mainland, here at Darwin.
In trying to greet me, Warren was unable to rise from the tiled floor. I could sense that the ‘once upon a time’ fit and healthy mineworker and father of two felt humiliated after my arrival into the room ; his legs were sprawled out, pathetically kicking like a frog on ice. Every muscle and bone in his body were shrunk and wasted back to child size – less than his 17 year old stout son standing right over him .
Warren had been outcast by the medics, bracketed off as one of those suffering from Groote Eylandt syndrome, a supposedly incurable, progressive wasting disease that had officially afflicted those of a single Aboriginal clan who were exclusively residing in the village of Angurugu on Groote. The disease had purportedly first erupted some years after the missionaries had persuaded them to drop their nomadic way of life and settle down to a more ‘civilized’ western lifestyle.
But a growing clique of “expert” geneticists are rapidly laying claim to the full ownership and academic rights over this new disease. They have coined the classy name ‘Machado-Josephs disease’, and run a host of sharp-suited symposiums set in expensive Floridian Hotels thousands of miles adrift from Groote island – the hotbed of the real problem. Meanwhile, a rainforest’s worth of condescending letters and documentation has been sent to the Aboriginal elders and Missionary bodies urging them to join up with the belief system that the Aboriginal “drunken walking” problems are purely to blame on their “seed”. The alleged weak gene was supposedly first introduced by visiting Macassan sailors who had occasionally interbred with Aboriginal women on the shores of Groote about 300 years ago.
But this theory leaves many blatant questions surrounding the origins of the condition unanswered. Why has Groote syndrome only recently emerged since the 1960s when the hypothetical ‘orgies’ of interbreeding took place as long as 300 years ago? Why have some strains of this neuro-degenerative syndrome also ended up affecting white Caucasian residents on Groote too – albeit only two or three to date? Why has the disease largely only affected one village community, yet failed to erupt in the myriad of other global populations where the Macassans have also sailed and interbred?
That evening, I pushed Warren in his wheelchair to the aeroplane bound for Groote. After some comical difficulties manhandling Warren up the steep steps to the plane, the hostess helped me belt him in. Warren was going to take me back to his former island home of Angurugu and introduce me to the surviving members of his clan – those still living out their lives in the ‘hotspot’ cluster region of Groote syndrome.
The aeroplane filled up with a strange incongruous mix of passengers; western mining tycoons, an Anglican priest and a pair of first time Aboriginal parents bringing their newborn babies home after a “hygienic” hospital birth .
As the plane began its descent to the island, Warren croaked at me – since he could no longer talk properly. He was frantically stubbing at the window with the butt of his clawed back hand and managed to get out some protracted pronunciation of a word that sounded like “u-usheerr”. I guessed that he was referring to ‘the crusher’ since we were passing over some industrial looking bright lights which must have been those of the mine’s crusher where Warren and his neighbours had worked since the early 1960s.
A slight shiver numbed my enthusiasm for the approaching investigation, as I remembered Jenny’s stories about the dramatic changes to Aboriginal life since western culture had imposed its stranglehold of controls – one such legacy involved an upsurge in extreme violence and deviant behavioural psychoses. This seems to have run in tandem with the emergence of Groote Eylandt syndrome
For instance, news had travelled from Groote to the mainland last week, reporting how Angurugu residents had awoken to witness two ‘pay back’ killings where young lads had macheted two people to pieces.
I had also been warned that the mining corporation might get funny about my arrival on the island and start harassing me for my permit – a weapon that they all too commonly employ to get potential ‘troublemakers’ extradited off the island ! But Warren had already acted as my proposer to the Aboriginal Land council and I was in possession of the necessary permit to visit Groote Aboriginal territory. So any potential agitators had no choice but to accept my rightful presence on the island?
Brian and Kathy Massey had come to the airport to meet us. I was shortly to discover that the Masseys, along with their small group of Anglican missionaries, represented the only non-Aboriginal body of people who really cared about the ill fated demise of the Angurugu community. They had kindly invited us to stay at their day care centre, and after seeing the gigantic size of the centre in relation to the small size of the village, I asked Brian whether the incidence rate of Groote syndrome was increasing. As I suspected, he said that there were a record 30 people who were currently suspected of suffering from Groote syndrome, and explained why issues such as lack of space in their temporary hospital were of pressing importance for the future . The figure of 30 sufferers out of a community of 900 people suggested that 1 out of 30 people were going down with Groote Syndrome.
I write this alone, as I prepare to go to sleep in the so called ‘dying house’. Outside in the mordant blackness of the night, I sense the restless ghosts of a community at breaking point. I can hear a crocodile down by the creek, a gunshot from an Aboriginal ghetto across the track, and the fidgeting of the fruit bats in the pandanus trees. I think of Warren’s inescapable isolation. His helpless vacant stare, his ego and life force totally ‘shot’ out of him.
I drew some comfort from an invite to go “yamming” in the rainforest sometime with Warren’s only surviving sister, Gayangwa, who, fortunately, has not contracted the disease to date.
I awoke to the sound of the Missionary woman’s keys opening up the health centre for another new day. I stepped out of my room to find the wooden veranda of the mission building virtually carpeted in mattresses; some of which were already occupied by the frail skeletal figures of those in advanced stages of some ageing condition – probably some variant of Groote syndrome.
I remember bumping into an angelic looking young baby in a dilapidated pushchair, who, according to her carer, was suffering from some ‘undefined’ neurological disorder. She was apparently born with the condition. Despite her predicament, she gave me one of those broad Aboriginal smiles as I photographed her.
When I rounded the corner to enter the day room, my sudden appearance surprised one of the girls, just nineteen years old, who skulked off with an ataxic wobble, shock tremors breaking out in waves along her limbs. I later heard about the case of a pair of twins, famously known as the Bird Girls, who had been born with this same type of neuro-degenerative ataxic wasting syndrome.
Despite the peaceful presence of the morning sunlight fluttering across the cycad fronds around the Mission building, there was an atmosphere of panic. Their worst case victim , Ernie Lalara, had taken a turn for the worst and was shortly to be rushed off to the next aeroplane bound for Darwin. He needed emergency hospitalisation, since his muscle spasms were becoming so permanent that he could no longer keep his head forwards or draw breath. All night, he had been crying out like a wild animal in acute agony.
My anger surged to the extent that I could hardly eat breakfast. These formerly healthy Aboriginal communities had suddenly found themselves blighted with a grotesque new disease which first emerged after they had been persuaded by the early missionaries to abandon their ‘savage’ nomadic lifestyle and take up permanent residence in the village of Angurugu . And all the while I was preoccupied with the intransigent conclusions of the corporation controlled “experts” who were making certain that the cause of this whole syndrome was conveniently misappropriated onto Aboriginal genetics.
But what was the real cause of Groote Syndrome? For a short period, the missionaries had housed the Aboriginal community at the Emerald River mission site. But the construction of a secret RAF refuelling base in that part of the rainforest during world war two had caused the mission to move a few miles north in 1942 to what was to become the present day Angurugu village. The missionaries had feared that the airmen would mess around with ‘their’ Aboriginal girls.
It is interesting that Angurugu was constructed directly on the pure manganese dioxide bedrock – a phenomena that was unique to this area of the island. The mission set about clearing and cultivating a fifty acre field in order to make the village self sufficient in vegetables. So the new Aboriginal residents found themselves permanently dependent upon a food chain and water supply which was later analysed and found to contain some of the highest levels of manganese in the world. Furthermore, after the mining company set up their open cast mines next to Angurugu in 1962 – where the Aborigines were recruited to work – the surrounding atmospheres of the village were regularly clouded up in a fine black manganese oxide dust. With the trees felled and heaps of crushed manganese ore piling up near the village, the resulting dust storms frequently blew up to storm force, coating up the inside of their open houses with the fine black manganese dioxide dust.
It was obvious that all of the people who were paraded here in wheel chairs or sprawled out on the mattresses in front of the Mission were all suffering from some form of manganese intoxication. They closely resembled the patient photos in a raft of neurological publications which I was carrying in my files. So I slapped these papers down on the mission table, showing the Aboriginal nursing staff the photos of the sick and debilitated manganese mine workers from India, Chile, China Morocco, Guam. Since the Aborigines had unquestionably accepted the wisdom of the so called ‘superior’ medical experts – that this disease was due to their “seed” – they were amazed to see the words of manganese intoxication enshrined beneath these photos – photos which overtly displayed the same mystery condition of the patients they were nursing.
I was also concerned that these Aboriginal victims were suffering from a form of prion disease – better known as CJD – in conjunction with a more generalised motor neurone/ataxic degeneration. But I kept telling myself that such a suggestion might merely be a product of my own wishful thinking, since I had come to Groote with the mission to explore the further associations between manganese and prion diseases. But in all honesty, the victims of Groote syndrome did appear to closely resemble the cases of variant CJD that have blighted young teenagers in the UK – their shrunken, stick insect-like bodies, clawed back hands, bizarre psychiatric symptoms and howling animal cries all combined to remind me of the grotesque vCJD condition.
In this respect, it is perhaps no surprise to learn that the Groote Eylandt manganese mines – who supply 25% of the total global manganese demand – supplied a highly concentrated manganese oxide to the livestock and human mineral feed supplement market in Europe. I needed to find out if there had been any significant alterations in the source of manganese supplied to the UK cattle feed market from the early 1980s onwards – immediately prior to the emergence of BSE in the Uk. It seems that they had indeed changed from using a manganese sulphate additive to a three fold more concentrated manganese oxide additive.
Considering my findings of high levels of manganese in the ecosystems of all clusters of prion disease analysed to date, plus the fact that David Brown’s trials at Cambridge University have produced the abnormal spongiform prion after addition of manganese to nerve cell cultures, then one is forced to consider the possibility that the use of a high concentration manganese oxide compound in calf milk substitute/mineral licks in UK cattle (and later Europe wide) was responsible for BSE.
I had also seen the specialist’s report of some slide sections of brain taken at the post mortem of Warren’s brother – who had also died of Groote syndrome. Two of the slides had demonstrated the presence of fibrillary features – fibrils being unique to the brain pathology of all who have died of spongiform disease. I had wanted to get hold of the actual slides of these brain sections and view them through the electron microscopy to determine if the fibrils are composed of prions. Despite assurances that these slides could be made available to Warren’s family, they never actually arrive after we had requested .
I met with the Aboriginal elder and Warren Lalara’s surviving sister, Gayangwa, at the table outside , and I began the task of running through my questionaires with them to work out the dietary habits, chemical/ radiation exposures, occupational histories, etc, of every case of Groote syndrome alive on the island today. Unfortunately, I was unable to apply the questionaire to the deceased victims, since Aboriginal spiritual beliefs debar discussion of dead people.
Some common denominators started to emerge from my interviews. All victims had originated from Angurugu and had therefore endured virtual lifetime exposure to excessive levels of manganese. Most victims had also worked in the mines, and this correlation squared up with findings published in the Lancet on May 30th 1987, where two out of three brothers from Angurugu had developed Groote Syndrome and both of the affected brothers had worked, without masks, in the manganese sampling mill of the mine, whereas the disease-free brother had never worked in the mine.
All victims had been exposed to the sonic shock waves radiating from the explosive blasting at the mines.
All victims had been exposed to synthetic pesticides for controlling cockroaches, mosquitoes and flies in their homes. It seems that these pesticides were applied in quite a cavalier manner without adhering to recommended application methods. But having come face to face with some of the giant cockroaches that scanned you with antenna several inches long, I had some sympathy with their pest control policies!
All victims had also consumed large quantities of salt in their diet. They had also all eaten locally grown wild foods such as yams, cycads and pandanus as well as the bats and Wallabies which feed off the cycads. 75% of their total dietary intake was estimated.
From my studies of previous mineral analyses projects carried out on the soils , foods and water in this village, I had gleaned another abnormal feature of the mineral profile in this region which involved very low magnesium and calcium levels. I was therefore particularly interested in this Aboriginal food fad for spreading excessive amounts of salt over their food, particularly as I had personally watched them spreading blankets of white salt granules over every meal; sodium is well known to block the uptake of dietary magnesium across the gut membranes, thereby severely depleting serum magnesium levels.
It is well known that manganese can compete for crucial enzyme activation sites with magnesium. So if magnesium is in short supply, manganese can substitute for magnesium at the active site; subsequently causing a failure to catalyse the activation of various crucial enzymes required for healthy metabolism.
Such is the case for glutamine synthetase, where a delicate balance of magnesium and manganese is required for activating this vital enzyme’s function along the pathway which breaks down glutamate into glutamine in the brain. If the enzyme fails due to a high loading of manganese and depletion of magnesium in the tissues, then highly neuro-toxic levels of glutamate will accumulate in the brain leading to a progressive neuro-degeneration. A pathogenic acceleration of the ageing process ensues; a which lies at the heart of so many neuro-degenerative conditions such as Motor Neurone disease, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, CJD. – where individual genetic susceptibility factors dictate the class of neuro-degenerative disease which you get at the end of the day.
Interestingly, Susannah Churchill’s thesis pointed out that this exact same High Mn/lowMg mineral profile has been found to hallmark the ecosystems supporting the three main neuro-degenerative cluster zones in the South Pacific- Guam, West New Guinea and the Kii peninsular in Japan – where self sufficient populations had been succumbing to all of these neuro-degenerative diseases at a 50 fold higher incidence rate than average global rates. It seems that Groote Eylandt should be added to this list of cluster regions.
It is also well recognised that high levels of manganese in combination with low levels of Magnesium will lead to mutations of genetic material in cells due to the influence of manganese on enzymes that preside over the structure and metabolism of DNA – where an abnormal manganese substitution of magnesium could disrupt the binding of messenger RNA to the ribosome; causing an array of subtle disturbances along the genetic pathways, such as the expansion of the DNA amino acid chain which could result from a manganese induced inactivation of ribosomal enzymes – enzymes that normally require a specific magnesium co partner to function properly.
The mechanism of a manganese induced mutation in the absence of magnesium probably explains one of the key causal factors which characterises Groote syndrome apart from other similar neuro-degenerative diseases . But the corporation funded experts have overlooked the very real possibility of a straightforward environmental induced mutation as the cause of ‘their’ disease. They have run with the half truth of this causal story, by conveniently misappropriating blame for the mutation onto ‘inherited’ origins – a faulty gene that has supposedly been handed down through the generations of this specific Aboriginal clan. Despite their theory gaining virtual universal acceptance, their hypothesis totally fails to explain the distribution and timing of this disease.
That night I wheeled Warren Lalara back to his room, manoeuvring him inch by inch into his bed for the night. I hesitated for a moment, having considered the raft of potential injuries that my untrained manhandling could bring about. But after taking lead from Warren’s seemingly happy disposition towards my ‘ad lib’ mode of handling, I quickly gained confidence and grew accustomed to my new role as a care worker for the next week or so.
When I went to bed a few hours later, the nightly rioting of youngsters in the village had just begun. At one time, I could hear the Aboriginal kids surrounding the hut house I was staying in, even clambering underneath the raised floor. This went on all night – a common occurrence I was later told – with violent fighting breaking out spontaneously like volcanic eruptions blowing off pressure – much like the sudden unexplained cascades of spasms which break out in the muscles of the Groote syndrome victims themselves.
The Missionaries and Miners had told me horror stories of hatchets being driven through the skulls of “pay back victims”, spear fights, child torture and women being stripped naked and disembowelled alive with machetes. The village doctor confirmed these stories to me, since she was the one who was called upon to deal with the cases of slashed up woman with extruding entrails. She was forever having to stitch up the guts of Aboriginal woman who had been lucky enough to survive these types of aggressive onslaught. Whilst Aborigines are renowned for their violence – particularly when it is alcohol induced – it is well recognised that this class of insane, psycho behaviour is unique to the Aborigines of Angurugu – a style of violence that was largely unheard of during former nomadic days.
According to the records of the social service, arrests and imprisonments amongst the Aboriginal population at Angurugu are the highest recorded per head of population for anywhere in Australia.
I recalled a recent report by Canadian toxicologist John Donaldson who had personally visited Angurugu during 2001. He referred to an incident in the medical clinic where one individual who got frustrated by the length of the queue had thrown a spear at the nurse. Donaldson also cited the observations of explorer Captain Mathew Flinders who had sailed around Australia’s coastline in 1803. Whilst his crew had been generally well received by all of the Aboriginal communities who they had met around the Australian coastline , it was a different story when Flinders sailed into the unusual blue coloured waters of Mud Cod Bay off Groote Eylandt. The deep blue colour reflected the particularly rich bedrock deposits of manganese which extend out as a platform beneath the shallow Mud Cod Bay at this point on the Groote coastline. Flinders recorded the behaviour of the local Aborigines in the ship’s log as follows; “They come at us very strangely…sending off their children and women and approaching with spears held in a threatening fashion”
As I continued to lie awake, I also remembered the mineral analysis study that was carried out on the brains of those impulsive mass murderers who had been electrocuted to death on death row in the USA. Their brains showed a hundred fold higher level of manganese than levels found in the brains of those who had died of natural causes.
And then there are the studies being conducted in California prisons by Professor of Psychiatry, Dr Louis Gottschalk, of the University of California. He has found elevated levels of manganese in the hair of criminals convicted for murder, rape and violent crimes. Gottschalk states that “manganese is a marker for violence”.
The screaming and abuse reverberated on until about four in the morning. At one time I was convinced that some poor young girl was being murdered. I felt compelled to intervene, but instinct told me to keep out of it ; I am a father of eight children back in the UK, I kept telling myself .
Each time I attempted to get to sleep, images of Hieronymous Bosch paintings bubbled out of my subconscious. The illusion of my newly discovered tropical island retreat where I could sit back and get on with some ‘good time’ research had been abruptly shattered. That long dark night had eclipsed Angurugu, transfiguring the shanty village from an innocuous block of Aboriginal homesteads into a true ‘hell on earth’.
The next morning the veranda was packing up tight with the usual bustle of ataxic victims, care workers and a gang of Aboriginal kiddies homing into the centre, since it seemed to serve as the popular place to gather at that time of day.
A monster of a pick up truck pulled up in front of the Mission, and out stepped Dennis, a Goliath-like, “Apocalypse-now” type of character who introduced himself as one of the chiefs of the local mineworker’s Union. He was the sort of guy you’d expect to see bouncing at a LA night club rather than cruising around in this sort of rustic outback terrain. But Dennis, had come to take me on a tour of the mines and surrounding area so I could collect more of an extensive range of soil and vegetation samples, etc, in areas other than just Angurugu. His interests lay with the fact that these neuro-degenerative problems could no longer be seen as exclusive to his Aboriginal colleagues; since one or two of his white mining colleagues had also died from similar style neuro-degenerative wasting diseases, whilst others were just beginning to show the first psychiatric symptoms of what was suspected to be manganese intoxication.
Dennis himself was off work due to problems with gout and cardiac arrythmias. Gout is caused by a build up of urates in the system which can commonly result from a breakdown in the enzymic regulation of the urea cycle and nitrogen metabolism. Interestingly, chronic manganese intoxication interferes with the enzyme arginase which plays a crucial role in this cycle. Since arginase is an enzyme that is normally activated by the manganese 2+ form, overall inactivation of the enzyme will occur in circumstances of both manganese deficiency and manganese intoxication – but only when manganese 2+ has been transformed into its 3+ form, since the manganese 3+ valency will fail to activate arginase into its fully fledged operational state. This can occur when those who are sufficiently ‘tanked up’ with manganese are simultaneously exposed to devices that emit low frequencies of radiation – these frequencies being absorbed by the manganese which consequently oxidizes the metal into its 3+ reactive form. Dennis not only lived adjoining a low frequency radio emitting facility, but he also sat alongside a low frequency radio phone system hooked up in his work cab.
Dennis was no time waster, and I was quickly shuttled off in his pick up truck into the remote out backs of the rainforest. After a detour where we inspected some Aboriginal handprint rock art cast across the face of sandstone outcrops in the middle of the forest, we arrived at the site of the former Emerald river mission .
The old RAF runway was barely visible – a mere straight track of crumbling concrete that was becoming increasingly encroached by the stringy back tee tree boughs.
I allowed my imagination to reflect on some of the tense wartime dramas that must have occupied this space during those bygone times; but it was too far gone now – the last ghosts of dogfights fought with the Japanese over the New Guinea jungle were long suffocated beneath the dense barricades of cycad and prickly pandanus that had so rapidly retrieved their native terrain.
I stuck my sampling trowel into the former gardens of the Emerald mission – now a patch of rejuvenated forest. I was pleasantly relieved that this ground was not so tough as the ground I had been sampling back at the Angurugu Mission gardens; where I had experienced great difficulty getting the trowel to penetrate the sharp topsoil that was intensively concentrated in manganese pesolites (pebbles). I also noticed that these samples were considerably more lightweight than the soil which I had drawn back at Angurugu; possibly indicating the lower concentration of manganese metal in these soils than back at Angurugu. If the soil analyses turns out to confirm my suspicions of this manganese differential, then this would explain why the neurological problems first began after the Aboriginal clans had moved from the Emerald River Mission into permanent residence at Angurugu – the most intensive manganese hotspot on Groote.
We set off again, next stop was Mud Cod Bay – the area of seacoast where Captain Flinders had commented on the unusual hostility of the local Aboriginal clan there. The flamboyant foliage of the rainforest was blurring past the cab. As soon as Dennis got relaxed back at the wheel again, he soon began to open up over his interests in my whole investigation. He talked about the abrupt psychiatric and neurological demise of some of his co workers in the mine. A guy called “Monkey” had started to experience sudden, unprovoked fits of rage and aggression , as well as insomnia, tremors, depression, fatigue, cramps and unmotivated crying fits – the text book symptoms of manganese intoxication.
Monkey had been invited to meet me at a party in the mining town of Alyangula that night. He had some interesting analytical data collected from the sampling of his blood, where manganese levels were above the excess limit and magnesium was in the low range. I later came across many more white mine workers who had discovered the exact same abnormal mineral profile in their blood .
A huge lorry “train” of manganese passed us on the dirt road. Dennis broke off to tell me that there was “one hundred and fifty tons of manganese shit in there”. He then rattled on into the realms of yet another strange story about a past ‘blast’ worker at the mine called Walter – a German character who went around in Bavarian Lederhosen shorts all day. Walter would suddenly fall asleep whilst drilling holes for the explosive charges, or, much to the annoyance of his employers, whilst driving the 150 ton train of manganese.
Other tales that I heard later from the local storybook of Alyangula – the miners’ village – reported how Walter used to fall asleep whilst peddling his three wheeled push bike. Not long before he reluctantly had to quit bicycling altogether, there had been constant sightings of Walter peddling up hills only to observe him a few seconds later descending backwards after he had fallen asleep!
It seems that Walter had also developed other psychiatric traits of manganese intoxication, such as paranoid delusions, whilst he was working in the mine. He had apparently fortified his caravan dwelling house in Alyangula, putting up surveillance cameras, etc. He felt convinced that everyone was about to launch an attack on him. In readiness for such a siege, Walter had rigged up an illegal high tech radio mast to guarantee a totally independent means of contacting his relatives back in Germany should the great day come. The radio was so high tech that he got into serious trouble one day after accidentally intercepting and screwing up air traffic control at Darwin international airport 500 miles away.
When the full force of neurological symptoms kicked in , Walter left the mines. The last reports from the poor guy had trickled back from his death bed in some hospital down in Southern Australia. Dennis had tried hard to acquire Walter’s medical records from the local Groote health clinic, but they had apparently gone mysteriously missing.
Interestingly, most of the miners who had become neurologically crippled were not only occupationally exposed to the high levels of manganese ore itself, but were also involved with the drilling and detonation of explosives. Perhaps the well known association between the physical impact of explosive shock waves and its traumatic impact on the blood brain barrier had disrupted the body’s homeostatic regulation; thereby enabling an excessive uptake of manganese and other metals into the brain ?
Furthermore, Manganese is a metal that is well recognised to absorb and form stable bonds with phonons – the units of sound energy. The intensity of sound energy that emanates from explosions is probably sufficient to initiate an actual metamorphosis of the atomic structure of manganese, causing a change in the magnetic capacity of the metal in such a way that the atoms become permanently magnetised (ferromagnetic) after exposure to external magnetic fields. Normally manganese can only be temporarily magnetised (paramagnetic); e.g. it will loose its magnetic charge after it has been removed from the magnetic field.
So once we get contaminated by this freaky, ferromagnetic strain of manganese, our brains could become like a solar charged battery on continuous charge; where the incoming flow of environmental electromagnetic energy, like ultra violet radiation, accumulates to explosive levels in the manganese instead of being conducted along the body’s electro pathways for our own vital, balanced metabolic needs.
Maybe this additional ‘quantum’ factor of combined exposure to both phonon energy and manganese explains a further facet of the causal jigsaw of Groote syndrome?
Furthermore, my questionnaire had demonstrated that all of victims in the Aboriginal stronghold of Angurugu – whether they worked in the mine or not – had also been exposed to the full force of explosive blasting. For the mine had been operating as close as half a kilometre from the village boundary in the past. One notable ‘explosive’ event entailed an accidental over blast by the mine’s former explosive technician, George Baker. He had plugged too much nitro-glycerine into a bore shaft in order to deal with an extra hard vein of manganese. The resulting detonation blew Jesus Christ off the crucifix in the Angurugu Mission church ! The few upmarket Angurugu householders who had glass windows in their houses had got fed up with replacing them.
We eventually reached Mud Cod Bay; a silvery seascape where a platform of manganese bedrock stretches some way out beneath the shallow seas. I drew some samples from the manganese tainted mud; a curious salinated, sandy matrix where centuries of rising and falling tides have oxidized and reduced the manganese ores backwards and forwards, distilling all down to a seabed of pleasant pearl blue. I was sampling here, because it was this stretch of coastline where the Angurugu Aboriginal folk habitually visit to spear their crabs and turtles for food. My eyes were straining and hard to keep open at times, since the strong noon sunlight was glaring back up at us, reflecting from the fine crystalline quartz and silica sand. Every few feet the sun highlighted some attractive chunks of coral and conch shells that lay along the top end of the littoral line.
As we drove off, Dennis enthusiastically introduced me to every detail of this unique ecology of rush grasses , orchids and rhododendron which spanned this last stand of land between the forest and sea. We crossed a few crocodile tracks too, but unfortunately did not see any of the mean beasts hulking their way across the sand spits to reach the swamps along the forest edge.
Although slightly confused over Dennis’s true interests at first, It had become rapidly clear that Dennis was channelling the ‘Bouncer’ like macho energies which he projected into some extremely positive perspectives in life. He was more preoccupied with a genuine desire to preserve the natural environment than the great majority of supposed ardent environmentalists that you meet. He knew every bird in the rainforest, every fish in the bay, the location of every geological vein on the island. His deep rooted concern for the health of his co-workers was also highly admirable.
That evening I attended the miner’s party where anyone and everyone who had been connected to neurological disease and manganese exposure on Groote had been rustled up to meet me. I met face to face with Kandy, who had been one of the first people to Email me after my BBC film had been broadcast on Australia’s ABC Four Corners one year ago. She had alerted me to the health problems on Groote, specifically informing me of the case of a white girl, called Maxine, who had worked for several years in the lab at the mine where she was employed to analyse the metal profile of the fine samples of black manganese dioxide dust. She had died in her thirties due to a conveniently ‘undefined’ inherited neuro-degenerative wasting disease, which everyone – except the research scientists – had sworn was identical to the Aboriginal Groote syndrome.
That evening I also got to hear about the abortive attempt of an ABC film news crew to film a piece that was centred around manganese toxicity on Groote . The Miner’s Union had contacted ABC over an issue of ‘employers abuse of safety standards’ at work, only to find that the aircraft which was bringing the film crew over had been prevented from landing at the airport. The Mining Corporation, which owned virtually every facility and service on the island, had debarred them from landing at ‘their’ airport – the only airport on the island. The Union hit the roof.
I had failed to sleep again during the night. The heavenly silence of sunset last evening had transformed into a hellfire night. The mob violence had escalated, reaching its characteristic crescendo by dawn. A father had been charging around wielding a machete at anybody or anything that got in his way. The problem had all fired up from a petty feud with his son in law; resulting in the police discovering an unconscious Aboriginal youngster half dead in the dust that morning. The lad had been repeatedly cracked over the head with a shovel, according to bystanders’ reports.
As is the case with all of these riots, the police usually feel that it is unwise to turn up until the next day, often arriving long after the incident has abated. Wise policy, given that there are only twelve police officers stationed on this island to potentially fend off a maximum of 900 aggressors on any one occasion ! Back in the days when the police were showing up for every incident, the riot simply inflamed. The officers would end up being subjected to a totally uninhibited full frontal assault – involving a diverse armoury of spears , machetes, gunfire and hatchets !
The miners had told me that if you intervene – much as I had felt compelled to do that previous evening – you get attacked yourself; not only by the aggressors but by those victims you are trying to rescue.
A couple of well travelled Caucasian health workers called Stew and Linda, courageously live in a house in the middle of Angurugu . I found it unbelievable that they could carry on living there, forced to incarcerate the delicacies of their family life behind a dense fortification of six tier barbed wire interwoven through chain link ; the perimeter being manned by skulking Dobermans 24 hours a day . Stew told me that Aboriginal communities are reputedly aggressive, but that Angurugu is exclusively excessively aggressive. The village demonstrates by far the most violent community in the whole of Australia; per violent incident per head of population. And furthermore, the type of violence here could be classed as a form of psychopathic insanity, particularly when it is exacerbated by alcoholic consumption.
“Its explosive” said Stew, only just twenty but built like a tank. “Your country got into all that namby-pamby, politically-correct judgemental criticism of the Duke of Edinburgh associating spears with Aborigines, etc, but he was bloody right. I get a spear tossed at me once a week. You pommies haven’t got a clue. Its frontier stuff out here, buddy ”
I feel that the unique exposure of this village population to an environment that probably carries the highest levels of manganese in the world (150,000 ppm in the manganese bedrock top soils) has a major part to play in the psychotic behaviour patterns of this community.
Post mortems of the brains of miners who have died of chronic manganese induced neuro-degenerative disorders have revealed widespread loss of serotonin receptors. Lack of serotonin has been well connected to the cause of outbursts of impulsive, criminally insane, aggressive behaviour – an archetypal symptom of the manganese madness syndrome seen in miners the world over. Alcoholic consumption is also well known to trigger off unprovoked aggression/rage in those who are genetically predisposed to low serotonin turnover, thereby illustrating the devastating synergistic scenario once chronic manganese and alcoholic exposure are simultaneously unleashed. Since serotonin levels are under circadian regulation via the daylight/darkness regulation of melatonin output in pineal gland , the characteristic drop in serotonin levels during night time in relation to day, could explain the somewhat unique cycle of night times violence and daytime peace in this village.
These eco-toxicological problems are further exacerbated by the sheer multi complexity of a multitude of subjective, political and vested interest pressures operating in the heartbeat of this community. These influences are so sensitively interwoven, that the overall position ( or lack of position ) that pans out at the end of the day, is acutely insensitive to the health and well being of the Angurugu people. Whenever a possible solution to this problem has loomed up on the horizon, one or other of the conflicting interests has invariably stepped in the way – stalemating any potential progress. The psycho-neuro problems of Angurugu are consequently escalating to crisis proportions. If no responsible, independent authority steps in to break this deadlock, the village could literally suicide itself in the end. The stalwart presence of the Massey family and the Anglicare mission is the only oasis of hope and light.
In this respect, it is imperative that an objective third party steps in to take the reins from the autocracy of the mining corporation. Aboriginal communities have always operated on the extreme of ego less, Buddhist-like, laid back lines, leaving them totally vulnerable to take over by any type of invading aggressor. In this respect, the mining corporation’s power base has unwittingly found itself replacing the vacuum of endemic Aboriginal anarchy that has long over ruled this island. Whilst many of the corporation’s efforts to integrate with the Aboriginal community have been highly commendable and unique as far as mining company track records go – e.g. employing Aboriginal folk to enact an immediate reforestation of mined land with indigenous saplings – they are not equipped or indeed suitably skilled to deal with the escalating health problems, whether they accepted any culpability or not.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the Corporation would ever be prepared to accept any level of responsibility for the health effects resulting from excessive airborne manganese, which, at the very least, has been exacerbated by their mining activities – e.g.; manganese dust storms across Angurugu during the cyclone season; when the winds whip across the storage heaps of crushed manganese and tailings waste ? Or the impact of sonic shock waves from the blasting of explosives on the blood brain barriers of Angurugu residents ?
But there is an increasing reluctance amidst the Aboriginal community – as well as the miners – to publicly admit to the escalating levels of psychotic violence in this community. Furthermore there is an outright denial of any association between the violence and the hefty levels of manganese that have been repeatedly recorded in the soil and atmospheres. The denial also extends to any association between Groote syndrome and manganese exposure; although this is not the case with the poor victims themselves, who seem intuitively connected to the true cause of their disease.
The problem lies with the fact that the one and only economic pillar of this village is cemented by the massive royalties that the Aboriginal community are reaping from the mining corporation for the mining of their land. In this respect, it has becoming increasingly convenient for both the mining communities and the Aboriginal authorities to sadly scapegoat blame for the uncomfortable psycho-neuro problems of their community onto the vagaries of some genetic-cum-alcoholic abuse causal theory. Some Aborigines have put it down to Karmic curses on the particular families affected – sadly ironic, given that the particular line of the Lalaras embroiled in Groote syndrome are perhaps the most highly regarded for their passive qualities within the clan.
All studies funded by the Mining corporation into the health problems at Angurugu have adopted a judicious selection of the prerequisites operating in the aetiological interplay. Instead of considering the overall multi-factorial causal jigsaw, their conclusions have invariably misattributed the blame onto the ‘half truths’ of the whole story – e.g.; prerequisites such as individual genetic susceptibility and alcoholic abuse have been greatly overstated; convenient scapegoats considering the commercial interests of the mining corporation.
Dennis’s pick up truck pulled up in front of the Mission. Many of the Groote victims were already parked up in their wheel chairs on the veranda. Some clearly recognised Dennis from their former days of employment at the mine and were still just about managing to pull a smile in recognition of the man as he walked onto the platform.
We had planned to go for another sampling spree. This time to the local salt marsh lagoons; vast expanses of shallows that indent inland from the coastline, now and again penetrating into the depths of the rainforest. This region still lay over the same vein of manganese bedrock, and it is these marshes which have provided the Angurugu Aborigines with a steady supply of giant mud crabs and mussels over the years.
We followed what seemed to be like a tank track through the forest – a well rutted legacy of far too many pick up trucks traversing during the rainy season, I guessed. But it was well sun baked by now and the truck gripped well. Wisps of stringy back and vines caught across the windscreen, and I saw the brilliant green flashes of parrots in fright – the flamboyant meteorites of the forest.
We eventually pulled out at the borders of the forest and the broad expanse of salt marsh opened into full view. I was able to scan in the full experience of this curious ecology. The salt crust left by some rather exceptional high tides had cloaked over all botanical forms of life. This event was presumably responsible for annihilating the last stand of bush vegetation along the frontline of the forest, which had left a rather impressive array of sculptured skeletal structures – the branch work of dead mangrove bushes – that had clearly bore the full force of seasonal cyclonic rhythms over the years, along with the abrasive surf forming actions of the sand and salt storms.
As we dug the samples, our conversation began to question the mining corporation’s perspective on Groote syndrome and how they were misappropriating this whole health problem onto genetics. Whilst it is true that it is largely only the Lalara family who have been experiencing the neurological problems of Groote syndrome, neither of us could see how this observation alone was sufficient to nail down a genetic-only cause. Dennis made reference to a map of Groote which demarcated the borders of the original territories of the different Aboriginal clans. This map clearly indicated that the original territory of the Lalara clan precisely encompasses the manganese enriched eastern area of Groote Eylandt. So even during nomadic times, the Lalara clan would have been hunting – gathering foodstuffs that were almost exclusively grown off the high manganese soils and sea bed. Even the crabs and turtles which they consumed, had derived their nourishment from a food chain that was directly dependent upon the cracks and crevices of the manganese laterite seashore platform.
I was dropped back at the Mission with my samples, to hear the sad news that Ernie Lalara had just died of Groote syndrome in Darwin Hospital. I had sadly never met the man, since he had left the Mission the morning that I arrived.
The place was being rapidly evacuated because Aboriginal people do not believe in occupying the living quarters of a person who has just died.
They have to smoke the spirit out before they can return. This is conducted as a ceremony where the deceased’s home is surrounded by a ring of dead vegetation, and then set alight to smoulder.
I had to rush to get Warren and wheel him off the Mission premises fast. I needed to take him to his surviving sister Gayangwa’s house, so he could join in the family mourning. Warren looked mortified. His eyes were lifeless, fixed in a glazed, vacant stare. I did not know how to console the poor guy over the death of his uncle. I felt sure that Warren was also reflecting on how he would be the next one to go; victim to this slowly encroaching grotesque condition.
I left him at the front gate of Gayangwa’s house. She had come outside with an unusual air of silence about her, to take Warren over from me, to wheel him the last little stretch to the front door. Aboriginal mourning sessions can reach bizarre extremes; well, when you compare them with the inhibited practises of western funeral rites. The women can smash themselves with stones, often drawing blood .
Back at the Mission building there was a strange silence – no longer the patter of kiddies feet across the veranda boarding. No longer the bouts of screaming and crying wafting over from the village.
With renewed purpose, I spent the rest of the day alone in the forest picking / digging samples of the indigenous fruit such as yam, pandanus and cycad which the Angurugu people had been consuming for years.
I wrenched and tugged out samples of brittle grasses – slightly restless and agitated – drawing blood now and again on some well concealed thorn barbs.
I felt the tension of the people, their anxiety over yet another mysterious death from Groote syndrome; where one further member of their finest tribesmen had been unexplainably taken before their time.
Cycads are rather pretty, symmetrical, squat palm trees – often referred to as ‘false palms’ in fact. Or Burrawang by the Aborigines. The fruit was just forming in a neat circle, the brown spherical nuts nestling like eggs ; directly attached onto a crown like structure that is centrally perched on top of the stunted trunk. The fronds of these trees were silvering themselves in the late afternoon sun.
The cycads were virtually growing out of pockets of soil that was deeply etched down into crevices amidst the pure manganese bedrock. After suddenly sensing the similarities between this place and the grykes in the limestone pavements thousands of miles back home in the Burren peninsula (Western Eire), I felt a deep pulse of homesickness surge into my solar plexus.
My questionnaire of the Groote victims had shown that every person who had contracted this disease had eaten cycad at some stage of their lives. It was customary of Groote Aborigines to cleanse the cycad nuts of a natural poison by caging them into a fast flowing stream for one week or so. After detoxification, the nuts were later ground down to a flour for kneading into a kind of dough bread, which was actually baked in make shift ovens made of local soil – further manganese contamination!
Interestingly, the unusual custom of cycad consumption had been implicated as part of the cause of the Guam, Kii peninsular, West New Guinea clusters of neuro-degenerative diseases in the South Pacific. The native people of these regions had also eaten cycad as part of their staple diet.
The finger was initially pointed at a naturally occurring excitatory amino acid in cycads as the causal agent. But after exhaustive tests, this theory was dropped ; although feeding of the cycads to misfortunate laboratory animals DID produce neuro-degenerative disease. A secondary theory later developed which implicated the fact that the indigenous people of these regions had also been eating bats which had been feeding off the cycad fruit – in this way, the people were indirectly eating the toxic ingredient which the bats had failed to filter out for themselves; since bats have apparently adapted their metabolism to handle this poison. Interestingly, the results of my questionnaire had also indicated that the victims of Groote syndrome had all consumed bats and wallabies which also consumed the ‘uncleansed’ cycad nuts.
Considering that the Guam cluster areas also share the same high manganese, high aluminium, low magnesium/calcium with Groote Eylandt, I was beginning to wonder whether cycads simply serve as highly efficient bio concentrators of these metals, and it was the metal constitution of this fruit that represented the toxic problem all along – a problem which the early researchers had overlooked. So many avenues needed exploration.
After labelling up my samples, I went to bed.
A manganese dusted moon hung over the rainforest; If only for a moment, I felt the multiple moons of a lifetime merge, the timeless eternity to which Ernie Lalara had returned.
That morning, Kandy came to pick me up from the Mission – a fair haired, determined lady who had previously served as the health and safety representative for the miners’ union, and had been emailing me for ages since my BBC film was shown on ABC Four Corners. Kandy had lived on Groote with her husband for twenty years, having done the hippy trail around the world back in the 1970s. Both of them were employed in the mines, and she had become concerned over health issues, particularly since her own blood tests had shown the classic high manganese and low magnesium ratio.
We drove off in Kandy’s most extraordinary antiquated car which resembled something of a cross between a car owned by a Coloradoan cowboy taxi company and that of a semi successful Brooklyn scrap dealer – squishy leather upholstered seating and an acutely hypersensitive suspension system which generated a kind of comical volley of vibrational bounces – reverberating like a shockwave for several seconds – every time the car passed over one of the many potholes on Groote’s un-metalled roads.
We arrived to meet a group of concerned white woman in the local hall of the mining village at Alyangula, many of whom had young children and were connected to the mine in some way.
This seemed a good opportunity for suggesting the potential importance of magnesium supplementation as a prevention against some forms of manganese intoxication – particularly appropriate for the healthy embryo genesis of any foetus conceived on this island. For when magnesium is low and manganese is high, manganese can substitute itself at the vacant magnesium sites on a raft of crucial enzymes with disastrous repercussions. Total inactivation of those enzymes will result.
One of the most disturbing consequences of the high manganese/low magnesium ratio in the growing embryo, lies with the fact that manganese can induce mutations in genetic material by substituting the magnesium activated ribosomal enzymes; thereby producing the genetic mutation underpinning Groote syndrome that is so widely seen in the Aboriginal community only ten miles away at Angurugu. Whilst Aboriginals are undoubtedly more susceptible to this specific mutation due to their genetic and local dietary customs (consumption of manganese rich yams, pandanus, crabs, etc), the offspring of the white sector of the mining community might also start to develop these types of mutation in the years to come. Remember how many years it took for some of the radioactive induced mutations to manifest as clinical conditions in the exposed communities?
Amazingly, the potential of high manganese exposure to induce mutations is ironically being exploited for positive uses in pharmacology; e.g. in the fight to suppress the AIDS syndrome, where manganese inactivates the magnesium activated enzyme, reverse transcriptase, once the manganese to magnesium ratio becomes too elevated in cells. This deprives the HIV agent of its ability to make multiple copies of itself; thereby severely suppressing the development of the AIDS disease process.
Kandy then took me up to the headquarters of the mine, where I had been scheduled for a tour of the operations followed by a meeting with the manager of the mine itself. One of the Union bosses then drove me around the different mine locations to view the techniques of open cast mining – felling the forest, blasting, stripping off the upper crust of laterites, mining the black manganese dioxide ore bed, backfilling, then replanting.
I must say that I was highly impressed with the results of the replanted rainforest after the mining operations had been completed. Indigenous saplings were being propagated, planted and maintained by Aboriginal labour until it was certain that the trees had taken root. Apart from the difference in the height of the trees, I was honestly unable to distinguish between the original blocks of rainforest and the blocks that had been replanted after extraction of the ore bed. It was overtly apparent that this mining corporation was not operating like some of the more sinister operators at work in South America and New Guinea.
In the worker’s canteen I met up with one of the miners who had been eager to meet with me. He had been bereaved and left with two young children a few years earlier after his wife had died of a motor neurone type disease apparently identical to the Aboriginal Groote syndrome. Maxine had worked in the laboratory at the mine where I was taken to next. I met the chief chemist in the lab who showed me the fine powdery samples of jet black manganese dioxide dust. As these lab workers spent all day analysing the stuff, it was easy to see how Maxine must have endured her fair share of exposure during her time in these labs. Furthermore, the most efficient route of manganese uptake into the brain, is via the inhaleatory route; whereby airborne manganese can be efficiently absorbed directly up the nasal-olfactory route into the brain .
Whilst it was reasonably apparent that the mining company had been doing an impressive job regarding the preservation of the environment and safeguarding some of the socio-economic interests of the Aboriginal community, I did however feel that there was an insidious problem brewing with the issue of airborne manganese dust being kicked up by various factors. Although the corporation had been attempting to dampen down the dust from time to time by spraying water, there were storage heaps and tailings heaps of manganese very close to the village of Angurugu (just a few hundred metres from some houses) and storage heaps around the jetty very close to the mining village of Alyangula. All residents had been complaining of black dust settling inside their houses – even the houses that had air conditioning.
It seems that the problems of this community were fundamentally based upon the naturally high concentration of manganese in the bedrock which was so close to the surface – with all local water and home grown food supplies being contaminated. But the dust that was being generated by the mining operation had considerably exacerbated the problem. It should be remembered that once manganese is inhaled – like aluminium and silver, etc – it does not need to travel to the lungs and cross into the blood, etc; it can be absorbed directly into the brain via the nasal-olfactory tract.
I was ushered into the manager’s office. After cracking a friendly joke about the naturally high concentrations of manganese in the cup of tea he was about to give me, the manager seemed more interested in tape recording every word of what I was up to – over an interview lasting one hour – whilst failing to divulge anything that they were up to. I even failed to extract a map of the main manganese outcrops on Groote from them! Nonetheless, he seemed a nice, straight forward guy who was fresh to the job and genuinely interested in environmental issues surrounding metals – well, whenever his company hat was off.
The manager was also continually referring me to the studies at the Menzies School of Health Research and Royal Darwin Hospital in Darwin which had been funded by the Mining Corporation itself. These concluded that Groote Syndrome was solely a disease linked to the genetics of a specific Aboriginal clan which had interbred with the Macassan sailors who used to visit Groote for trepang three hundred years ago.
So if these factors were true, why didn’t the disease strike many years ago, and, furthermore, why didn’t the disease affect all of those other races around the world where the Macassans had also interbred?
But I kept on reminding myself of Gayangwa Lalara’s words of local wisdom surrounding the first cases of Groote Syndrome. She categorically says that there were no cases of Groote syndrome around when she was a child. The first case struck her father, which happened after they had settled full time at Angurugu and after the initial mining explorations had just began. The Aboriginal Elder of Angurugu, Murrabuda, Wurramarrba, also confirmed this to me. In fact, the only people who have stated otherwise were the ‘expert’ authors of a spate of publications on studies at the Menzies School of Health research that had been funded by the mining corporation itself. They had alleged that the Aboriginal authorities had informed that Groote syndrome was around as long ago as the 18th century. Whose observations would you trust?
I returned back to Angurugu little the wiser. Much of the manganese dioxide was going from this mine for incorporation into products that were being manufactured all over the world – bricks, steel, aluminium/uranium alloys, dyes, batteries, paint pigments, animal feed minerals and fertilisers – other industries whose workforces have been associated with a raft of clusters of these same types of neuro-degenerative disease.
In the afternoon, we went out yamming in the rain forest. The traditional Aboriginal custom of yamming can almost be likened to a religious ceremony. It entails parties of woman working the woodlands to track down the particular species of vine that nourishes the edible yam. I felt honoured to be able to push Roseanne out to the woods in her wheelchair – a skeletal 33 year old victim with a stunningly beautiful face. Like all Aboriginal people, she just accepts her fate. No self pity, just a Buddhist way of tolerating and living with her condition. I secretly wanted to steal her back to the UK and somehow get her right again ! I could feel her pain; a few faded traces of red nail varnish still smudged across her nails, as though she had just about given up her final hopes of getting married and living some semblance of a normal Aboriginal lifestyle. The other women brought the crowbars, hatchets, and spades for digging and extracting the yams; whilst Gayangwa’s 9 year old grandson was scuttling around, monkeying through the mangroves with his machete, pairing back spearheads from the saplings in order to give a poor tree snake hell – the one I had just seen coiled up a tree.
It was a kind of spiritual experience working with these people. The younger girls silently scouting around the forest floor with pickaxes, whilst Gayangwa was striding around forever staring upwards, surveying the tree canopy in order to pinpoint any tell tale signs of the edible yam. I began to wonder how she was not hypnotised by the arcs of sunlight strobe-scoping their way down the stringy backs to the forest floor. Where were those withered vines that bore the crisp, heart shaped leaves of the edible yam? The breeze caught the leaves, their flipsides flutter-valving out a kind of mantra of the forest floor. There were many false alarms. Our harvest was proving hard to find. Every so often Gayangwa had to break off her concentration to scold her grandson who was tarzaning across our tracks clinging onto an entanglement of extra tough vines.
After about half an hour, one of the girls called across in Aboriginal language. I soon got the gist that she had found one; a scorched up vine which trailed downwards, going earthbound beside the roots of a mangrove trunk. After alternate digging with the crowbar and then scratching the soil out with our bare hands, we eventually uncovered the first sightings of the yam itself – laid out right across the backbone of the manganese bedrock. As we dug around the rest of it, I got embarrassed by my ineptitude, since I had sliced the spade straight through the middle of the tuber – its sap already exuding from the bruising!
I was interested in yams, because all of the victims who I had questionned had consumed them in high quantities. And analytical tests already conducted had revealed manganese at excessive levels of 1000 ppm in the yam roots. The women were telling me that the yams would make you itch all over if you ate them uncooked. This made me wonder what other toxic substances could be lurking in their tissues – some allergic photosensitising agent perhaps? My enthusiasm and desire to investigate these issues further immediately reminded me of my total lack of funding resources and inability to take this whole research any further forwards – until I had some firm offer of funding. This was very frustrating.
As we left the forest, I could see the poor helpless Roseanne waiting back at the trackside for us in her wheelchair – in desperate need for some line of hope. God, at her age, she deserves it, surely?. My anger surged again, as I remembered the absurd, irrational and totally unscientific reasoning behind the British Ministry of Agriculture’s rejection of my proposal for a three year grant funding project – which their minister had invited me to submit in the very public forum of a BBC film. This project could have advanced some major discoveries/developments into the causes and prevention of these diseases – for a minute percentage of the two million pound grant award that our government had advanced to the various ‘tame’ professors for re-assessing their quesstimates of the future incidence dynamics of the vCJD epidemic – an epidemic which never really came! What useful purpose did that research study serve?
One of the reviewers of my proposal had misread the number of samples that I had proposed for each cluster location – by twenty fold less – and accused me of proposing too few samples per cluster location, thereby rejecting my application as scientifically invalid. If this had been true, you could merely increase the number of samples to be taken, surely? The Ministry’s intransigence was beginning to betray an agenda.
But despite my pointing this major error of the reviewer out to the Ministry, they blindly ignored my protest and continued to highlight this guy’s review as the key criticism – later inviting that particular reviewer onto their expert TSE surveillance panel. Their review got worse still; splitting hairs over the fact that I had used the term “slice” of soil when referring to the section of soil that is dug out with my sampling trowel! One of the reviewers actually asked what the word “slice” meant, despite widespread use of this term in the ‘gospel’ of soil sampling guidelines decreed in the Natural Resources Management Ltd instruction book . NRM are the most reputable sampling lab in the UK! Having been falsely accused of not including soil pH, redox potential in my analyses, the Ministry also disapproved of my intention to use small cardboard boxes for holding the soil samples – the very boxes supplied by the NRM!
Well, I suppose I should have learnt my lesson by now that the big brotherhood of Ministries and multinational corporations like to hide their mega manganese interests behind farcical disputes over the suitability of cardboard boxes or petty terminological confusions surrounding soil slices. But how do they have the heart to place these fastidious nit-pickings in front of the welfare of this crippled young girl? Don’t they have children themselves?
As my anger eventually drained itself out in the heat of that tropical afternoon, I stopped myself short of getting into imaginary spear and machete attacks on the Ministry of Agriculture’s offices back in London! Were the high concentrations of manganese beginning to get to my very own serotonin receptors by now, I wondered?
I got up at 5am to be sure of collecting all of Warren’s and my own baggage and getting us to the aeroplane on time. In the half light, I found Warren trying to crawl helplessly across the veranda of the Lalara’s family home to reach to his wheelchair. His silhouette reminded me more of an injured stick insect than that of a crawling human. Warren obviously felt deeply humiliated by my arrival at such an embarrassing moment; so I had just laughed to put him at ease, pretending that I had not really noticed his predicament, then got on with assisting him to his legs.
The final hour on the island had come. We were returning back to Darwin. Despite some indirect encounters with the extreme violence of this community, I was still feeling saddened at having to leave some of my new friends .
The airport terminal was just an open sided hut of a building and I was pleased to discover that security wasn’t quite as tight and time consuming as I had encountered at Washington Dulles post Sept 11th – otherwise we would have missed the plane!
Some of the Missionaries and the Aboriginal folk were already gathering around to say goodbye. I was hoping that they were not building up too many false hopes in relation to possible outcomes stemming from my visit – cures, etc. After all, I had not, as yet, been able to secure access to post mortem brain material from any victim who had died of Groote syndrome. The ball is in the court of the Aboriginal community here, for it is imperative that they waiver some of their beliefs over the sanctity of the body after death in order to permit the release of some brain sections – tissues which urgently need to be analysed for levels and valencies of metals, antioxidant enzyme activities, ataxin 3/prion protein status in order to advance this research programme forwards.
If you can obtain evidence of cause, then you can devise controls, prevention and cures for this horrendous disease. But up until present day, all post mortem tissues have been under the reductionist control of the genetic-only brigade (funded by the mine corporation!) who are only really interested in viewing the brain material in respect of confirming a diagnosis of the exotic “Machado-Josephs” mutation, and no further. Its more about academic prestige than getting to the root of the problem and sorting out solutions.
One of the main stumbling blocks of modern day specialist research programmes- regardless of the disease under investigation – is that they invariably home into a single metabolic fault as the sole causal candidate. They are failing to examine the overall holistic picture surrounding the aetiology of a given disease. Research should consider the multi-factorial possibility that several cell lines, enzymes, proteins or metabolic pathways might need to be simultaneously disrupted in order to bring about a specific disease condition.
For example, the dysfunction of the prion protein has been heralded as the ‘be all and end all’ of the CJD disease process. And then the dysfunction of the beta amyloid and tau proteins are considered to lie at the heart of Alzheimer’s disease. Now we are being told that the dysfunction of another protein, called ataxin 3 , lies at the heart of Groote syndrome. Whilst it is true that the disruption of these specific proteins may well represent some key hallmark of a specific disease process – thereby acting as a useful diagnostic marker for that disease – it is counter productive to disregard all of the other metabolic disturbances associated with a given disease as irrelevant, on grounds that they cannot be concisely explained by the ‘flavour of the month’ hypothesis. Such a blinkered approach can only hinder the healthy evolution of our scientific understanding of that disease
Given the diverse range of symptoms and pathological damage involved in Groote syndrome, it seems unscientific to attempt to relate all of these complications back to a single mutation in one brain protein – ataxin 3. In this respect, I feel that a multi-factorial causal hypothesis which jointly implicates manganese intoxication/magnesium deficiency can account for all of the metabolic disturbances, symptoms and pathology expressed in Groote syndrome victims – inclusive of the all important ataxin 3 mutation.
I had managed to persuade two of the foremost metal and protein analytical labs in the world to look at brain material from deceased Groote victims; thereby opening up further possibilities of unravelling the causal riddle of this mystery disease. In order to pinpoint the precise metal imbalance burdening the brains of Groote syndrome sufferers, then access to this brain material was an absolute necessity. Once the evidence has been established for cause, then it is possible to work out preventions, controls, and, more importantly, cures.
Given that another victim of Groote syndrome had just died, it is imperative that the Aboriginal community authorise release of this material in order to accelerate the prospects of a solution to their escalating health crises. The researchers who I had contacted were perfectly willing and happy to return all tissues after microscopic surveillance/analyses has been carried out.
Despite the indirect monopoly of the mining corporation over all current research programmes investigating the origins of Groote disease, zero progress has been made in respect of the victims’ interest. Groote syndrome is increasing at an unprecedented rate. After an initial consultation at the health centre, victims are just sent home to endure a humiliating, slow, protracted death. They are told that there is no cure. They are abandoned, full stop. If it wasn’t for the excellent physical and spiritual care offered by the Anglicare Mission in Angurugu, the Aboriginal community would be left with no one other than themselves to care for their victims’ interests.
One way of resolving the whole problem is to abandon the entire village of Angurugu, and resettle the residents a few miles away in a new village sited away from the mining activities and the manganese rich bedrock. This advice was published in the 1980s but totally ignored.
The other approach is to start treating the victims for manganese intoxication. In collaboration with Warren’s wife, I had made several abortive attempts to coerce GPs in Darwin to treat Warren with a course of manganese chelators. Whilst it is unlikely that any chelating treatment could actually reverse Warren’s symptoms at such a late stage in the course of the disease, at the very least it is possible that chelators might arrest the disease process. Furthermore, I had provided evidence in the form of published studies of successful chelation therapy with manganese intoxicated miners. So why is no one prepared to treat Warren?
However, despite the cynical comments from one or two nurses at the medical centre, we managed to get Warren onto daily supplements of magnesium citrate tablets. After three weeks of taking the tablets, Jenny reported that his intensely painful muscle spasms had ceased. This improvement was a godsend to Warren, and had enabled him to start sleeping again through the night, as well as improving the functioning of his digestive tract, etc. So, at the very least, these improvements following magnesium supplementation had indicated that magnesium deficiency could account for some facets of the clinical/biochemical profile of Groote Syndrome.
After the farewells and the usual hilarious problems of manhandling Warren up the steps into the plane, we took off from the island. As we flew over the mine, I could see the Goliath shaped ore crusher amidst the black oceans of the manganese ore bed – scarred right back to the frontline of the rainforest.
The dozers had been rapidly advancing to meet the recent spate of increased orders for manganese dioxide from the western world. At the same time I thought of the rising incidence rate of neuro-degenerative diseases around manganese processing industries in the West, as well as the ever increasing rates of mad cow disease in European cattle who were being fed exceptionally high concentrations of this mineral at an early age. Did the fruits of this island sow the seeds of madness in our cats and cows, our deer and elk, our mink and goats, and, more importantly, in our death row murderers or our innocent teenagers who contracted vCJD, etc? I do not think that anyone can answer that question just yet.
At Darwin I handed Warren back to his partner Jenny, said my goodbyes wondering whether I would ever get to see them again, and took my return flight to the UK. At the x-ray barriers, I cracked a few jokes about my metallic samples of manganese rock tripping off the alarms. The security officers were not too impressed with my humour, since manganese oxide is a component of some explosives! If I had been in the US, their security officers would have equated a crime of concealing manganese in your pockets as being equal to a crime of having manganese in your brain, and the officers would have thrown me onto ‘death row’
Considering the more laid back approach of the Aussie officials, I took the opportunity of asking the officers at the customs point if they would confirm or refute several reports that had come my way nearly two years back. These reports had stemmed from UK farmers and vets visiting Australasia up to six months prior to the official announcement of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK. They had all reported how they had been exclusively subjected to a thorough disinfecting/cleansing treatment when visiting Australasia at that time. Some had questioned officers over the reasons for the cleansing , and one farmer was told how UK livestock farming was sitting on a time bomb which Australia wanted to avoid. But no more clues were given.
To my surprise, the customs lady answered me openly saying that they had known full well about the foot and mouth disease problem brewing in the UK, well in advance of the date of the official announcement in the Uk. She could clearly remember the UK’s briefing sheets to them during the autumn of 2000. “The pommy government has always been really good over informing us about impending infectious disease crises in good time. It is the Chinese lot who never bother!”.
As I walked onto the plane, I wondered why the British government had not told their own livestock farmers before anybody else! This would have enabled us all to work cooperatively to prevent the spread of the disease five months sooner than we actually did. I wondered whether this revelation from my Aussie customs informant betrayed the fact that our pommy government had no real intention of halting the spread of the foot and mouth disease. Their negligent inaction confirms this suspicion! Furthermore, their deliberate failure to address the true cause of BSE – since Cambridge University studies in 2000 showed that manganese can cause the prion protein to transform into its BSE causing form – is equally negligent.
But I suppose the deviant and delinquent behaviour of the UK government towards their own people’s interests is all part and parcel of the global and European (agenda 2000, etc) totalitarian diktat to reduce livestock numbers at whatever cost – to make way for the increased consumption of multinational controlled GM soya sources of protein?
On the aeroplane, I got out the realms of bulky research papers that I had collected during my field trip, and set about formulating my own conclusions during the long haul flight home.
I read the papers from both sides of the controversy. The excellent pioneering manganese studies on Groote by Mark Florence and John Cawte during the 1970s/1980s. And then the later studies at the Menzies School of Health Research during the 1990s, which launched the theory of an inherited ‘ataxin’ mutation as the exclusive cause of the disease – which they had termed ‘Machado-Josephs’ disease. In one sense, I felt that both parties were partly right, and, in an ideal world, should have merged together to thrash out an overall multi-factorial conclusion on the cause of this disease.
In this respect, my own conclusion was beginning to gel. It encompassed both sides of the aetiological fence; that a combination of manganese intoxication/magnesium deficiency had caused the mutation as well as the host of other metabolic complications that were evident in Groote Syndrome. And furthermore, the Aborigines were particularly susceptible to this disease due to some, as yet, unrecognised genetic weakness factor, along with the fact that they had thrived off a food chain (yams, crabs, fish, etc) in an environment that demonstrates excessive levels of manganese and deficiencies of magnesium. Furthermore, Aboriginal people use exorbitant quantities of salt on their food, which further impairs the uptake of magnesium across their gut wall.
On top of this, the Aboriginal folk who live in Angurugu are chronically exposed to the airborne manganese dust that continually blows across their village as a result of the operations of the adjoining mine.
A few weeks after arriving back in the Uk, the results of my soil/vegetation and water analyses on Groote came back from labs. This data completely substantiated the earlier work carried out by Mark Florence and John Cawte – that manganese was excessively high and magnesium very low in both the soils and the traditional bush foods of the Aboriginal people of Angurugu.
In the batch of soil results, manganese had panned out at an astronomical minimum of 84,196 ppm and maximum of 216,943 ppm in the soils of the mission gardens at Angurugu – where the Aboriginal people used to cultivate their food.
Whereas the manganese levels in the soils back at the Emerald River Mission gardens – where the Aborigines lived before Groote syndrome had emerged – had averaged out at 2,081 ppm. Magnesium was very low in the soil of all areas tested on Groote, averaging out at .14.
The analytical data that covered the analyses of the vegetation and foodstuffs was equally compelling. Yams dug from the Groote syndrome area at Angurugu yielded excessive manganese levels at 1351 mg/kg, whilst Yams dug from the disease free area of Bickerton island yielded just 29 mg/kg.
Iron and aluminium were also high in the Angurugu Yams at 1332 ppm and 629 ppm respectively, whilst their levels only yielded 100 ppm and 49 ppm in the disease-free Bickerton Island Yams.
The Pandanus and cycad did not demonstrate particularly high levels of any toxic metal, except a slightly elevated level of lead and zinc in the Angurugu cycads at 7.2 mg/kg and 93 mg/kg respectively, whilst levels were less at 6.3 and 39 mg/kg in the cycads drawn from disease free regions.
Magnesium was depleted in all bush foods, averaging out at 0.2 % w/w in all types of vegetation tested.
Mark Purdey – November 2002
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