The 'curse' of Montchavin, the town where 1 in 12 inhabitants falls ill with ALS: 'It's all the fault of a mushroom considered a local delicacy'

It seemed like a piece of paradise, a quiet Alpine village nestled in the French mountains. But Montchavin, 200 souls in the heart of Savoy, was hiding a terrible secret, a silent 'curse' that sowed death and anguish for almost thirty years. Between 1991 and 2019, as many as 16 residents — almost a tenth of the population — received an unfortunate diagnosis: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or motor neuron disease (MND), a fatal neurodegener…