UKRAINE UPDATE:
VIENNA, Austria (AP) – Dioxin poisoning caused the mysterious illness of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, a doctor said Saturday, adding that the poison could have been put in his soup.
“There is no doubt about the fact that Mr. Yushchenko’s disease has been caused by a case of poisoning by dioxin,” said Dr. Michael Zimpfer, director of Vienna’s private Rudolfinerhaus clinic.
Zimpfer said Yushchenko’s blood and tissue registered concentrations of dioxin – one of the most toxic chemicals – that were 1,000 times above normal levels.
“It would be quite easy to administer this amount in a soup,” Zimpfer said, adding that tests showed the dioxin was taken orally. “There is suspicion of third party involvement.”
Tests run over the past 24 hours provided conclusive evidence of the poisoning, Zimpfer said.
Curiouser and curiouser. Something of an embarrassment for those who prematurely endorsed the “bad sushi” line, I would think.
UPDATE: Lots more Ukraine news, mostly in a similar vein, at Postmodern Clog. And here’s an Orange Revolution timeline from the Kyiv Post. (Via TulipGirl).
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:
If someone wanted him dead, they picked a very poor poison to do it. Dioxin is not fatal – in spite of all the eco-terrorist mutterings, there has never been a recorded death from dioxin.
I work for Dow Chemical (please don’t use my name or I might lose my job, since we can’t comment on these types of issues without going through Public Relations), so I know a bit of what I speak. Dioxin is tremendously overhyped. In fact, there are more dioxins created every day from people burning firewood in their fireplaces, charcoal in their barbeque grills, and household trash in their rural backyards than there is generated in a year by the chemical industry. But that isn’t what the ecoterrorists of Greenpeace and ELF and company want to hear, and the media assumes that big industry is greedy, corrupt, evil, and guilty even when proven otherwise.
No, if someone had wanted Yushchenko dead, they would have used something with more efficacy. Probably lead, and high velocity. Dioxin is meant to inconvenience and terrorize, not kill. The only known, proven long-term effects are chloracne, which means he’ll have the facial and body acne off and on for the rest of his life. He won’t glow in the dark, and his kids won’t be born with 2 heads. Just cosmetically disfiguring, physically uncomfortable and somewhat painful, and a constant reminder of his vulnerability. Probably what was intended all along.
Maybe. Though it’s left Putin looking worse — heavyhanded, but inept. And I think he’ll be reminded of that for a long time, too.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A physician-reader emails:
I agree with the person from Dow Chemical up to a point: that description applies to people who got relatively light doses (a chemical plant explosion) or those who got low-dose, long-term exposure, ie decades.
To my knowledge, there haven’t been cases of a deliberate and [presumably] massive overdose until this one. I don’t see any basis to assume this was intended as a toxic warning. Many of Yushenko’s symptoms I haven’t seen in my books.
I don’t know, but people do seem to think that this was deliberate, and it’s hard to see how it could be accidental.