Posted on 05/29/2009 9:40:11 PM PDT by PghBaldy
A pathologist hired by the family of one of two women whose mysterious deaths in Thailand drew worldwide attention says her "lungs were 100 percent congested," Jill St. Onge's fiancee and brother said.
Jill St. Onge died while vacationing with her fiance at a Thailand resort.
"He said her lung tissue was gone," said her brother, Robert St. Onge.
The pathologist has not determined what caused her lungs to fail, he said, and a final report on her May 2 death may still be weeks away.
But members of St. Onge's family said they feel the pathologist's findings, though preliminary, are enough to contradict public statements made by Thai investigators that St. Onge was the victim of food poisoning.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Bad case of swine flu?
if true, more like a test of an airborne agent.
Who knows? People die all the time. However, not everyone gets an autopsy in some parts of the world. We live in defective vessels and there are no guarantees, yet it seems that some folks expect there to be.
Sounds like mustard gas or phosgene.
Or “Airbola”
Perhaps the tourist's death was not due to a virus, or release of an airborne agent, but to the smoking of illegal substances...
I’m wondering if a food allergy, rather than food poisoning, could have caused this? It might explain the respiratory distress, though I have no idea if the lungs tissue would have congested that way (I’m not a doctor or nurse).
Either way, what a *horrible* way to go. Shoot me, stab me, blow me up with fuel oil and fertilizer, but for the sake of all that’s holy, don’t let me slowly smother in my own lung fluid.
Leave it to CNN to muddy the topic. I was wondering what the heck ‘gone’ meant. Was her lung tissue missing upon return of her body? It is Thailand after all. :P
Why can’t CNN just state the facts instead of trying to use the brother’s vernacular?
It very well could have been a pulmonary embolism via DVT due to her trip. And, as others alluded to, being American doesn’t guarantee you anything when you’re outside the country, including medical and/or post-mortem ‘care’.
They weren’t, by any chance, eating fugu, were they? After reading the article, I couldn’t see that St. Onge had all the symptoms, but she was eating some sort of sea food. Fugu, improperly prepared, would do a person harm.
Exactly what I was wondering. But I couldn't remember the symptoms.
Poisonous Puffer Fish Sold as Salmon Kill 15 in Thailand Thursday
August 23, 2007
Well, it is a neurotoxin, so there should have been disorientation and loss of other muscular responses. However, asphyxia is part of it as you don’t have the muscle response to breath. Then, I imagine, if you cannot respirate, wouldn’t your lungs fill up with fluid? I’m not a medical person so I’m not clear on this.
But the fiance seems certain respiratory paralysis killed the victim. The other symptoms could have been present also.
In severe cases, ataxia (the inability to coordinate the movements of muscles), muscle weakness, hypotension (low blood pressure) and cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heartbeat) may develop, followed by muscle twitching and respiratory paralysis, and death can occur. In several cases, people died within 17 minutes after eating pufferfish.
A Norwegian in the next roo died mysteriously too.
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