Bizarre mass poisoning case flummoxes experts

[mynah]

13 found dead with nosebleeds

 

Doesn't sound like any form of poisoning known to me - and, it would appear, not to the police either. One wouldn't expect a plant concoction to kill so many people so quickly that no one attempted to seek help. There are not all that many clues, but does this ring a bell for anyone?

[Ganoderma]

what seems weird to me is they say they have this drink, but not test samples....whats up with that? for such a horrible event, sure seems rather slack.....what about testing the bodies....may be difficult but gives far for information than "nosebleeds" :)

[mynah]

First new information since the poisoning reached the paper is that physical examination of the bodies showed no injuries (I take it the police mean externally inflicted injuries - can't imagine autopsies on 13 dead people would yield no physical abnormalities apart from nosebleeds). Samples taken from the scene are currently being analysed at a laboratory.

 

(Okay, not supposed to speculate, but if I were the police I'd have a few questions to ask the survivors - especially the one interviewed after the tragedy.)

[mynah]

The report has been released at last. The family died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

[lemit]

Carbon monoxide poisoning can be so bizarre that most people attribute the symptoms to something else.

 

In the mid-nineties, a co-worker told me that friends of hers whom I'd met were possessed by Satan. At home, they were cursing and making inappropriate sexual comments both to strangers and to members of their fundamentalist church.

 

I'd read, in "The New Yorker," that the described behavior was a symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning. When I suggested that to the friends of my co-worker, they couldn't imagine what I was talking about.

 

A couple of weeks later, they came to the office and thanked me for saving their lives (and their reputations). They had a gasoline-powered space heater in the garage. When they stopped using the heater, they suddenly became the sweet and devout couple in their seventies and stopped spouting the "Exorcist" obscenities that had fooled their congregation (and had caused their ostracization).

 

That's a simple and unextraordinary example of how people can be damaged by misdiagnosis and superstiition.

 

If people understood the complicated processes of diseases and conditions, they might save their own and many other lives. I don't know exactly how to get that message out, but I suspect forums (or fora) like this might be the way.

 

Please help me find that way.

 

Thanks.

 

--lemit

[mynah]

Strange stuff. I recall reading a medical case report where the sighting of a "ghost" was found to be a hallucination caused by CO poisoning.