It’s at this point, the close range scans indicate not just some “organic gases” but trillions of organisms , all of them alien, and worst of all, possessing a chirality opposite to your own.
Your immune system and their pathogens, and your pathogens, are wholly incompatible. You touch anything, you get sick and die, and they get sick and die.
Organisms on earth use right handed chirality without issue. Even humans manipulate some. Eating an alien would probably go poorly, but interacting with one (all you mass effect fans out there can lose the burgeoning boners, creeps, I mean in something as light as a ‘handshake scenario’) wouldn’t be some terrible biological curse. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10851380/ I’m trying to scratch my head to remember because it’s been a while, but I think there are archaebacteria that use the D forms even more than the normal incorporation into peptidoglycan. It’s not a death sentence.
You know, wild, insane conspiracy theory, but maybe the mental breakdown is more than just aftereffects from the stroke.
What if some republican patsy at a three letter agency has some serious blackmail on him? He’s a public figure, his actions easily scrutinized. As a senator his time, statements, and votes are public, and the government itself is doing the blackmail, so he can’t turn to anyone. If he resigns they release the blackmail. The only way to not have the blackmail released is to fake these issues. Or maybe the pressure is actually breaking him, who knows.