You know how in sci-fi films, there’s always some freak accident in a biotech lab, leaving hundreds of people dead and authorities in a state of pandemonium?
Take the highly praised anime short film, Stink Bomb, for example. A flu-ridden lab technician swallows an abandoned pill on his boss’s desk presuming (reasonably, right?) that it could only be flu medicine. Turns out it just so happens to be part of an experimental bioweapons program, causing his body to omit vapours that are lethal to everyone around him.
The enigmatic movie ends with everyone dead. It’s worth the watch actually.
So, turns out that Stink Bomb was actually based on a true story. Say WHAT?
Riverside General Hospital, southern California, on Feb 19, 1994. At 8 am, ambulance drivers rushed 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez into trauma room 1. She presented with shallow and rapid breathing and her heart was beating way too fast, causing her blood pressure to take a nosedive.
After a cocktail of drugs and respiratory assistance, nothing was working. When the hospital staff yanked off her t-shirt to get ready to defib, they observed an oily sheen covering Ramirez’s body coupled with a fruity, garlicky odour. Hmmmm.
They took some blood and that too had an interesting stench for different reasons. Not only that but upon closer inspection of the syringe, Gloria’s blood contained straw-coloured flecks. Okay, that doesn’t seem like it’s a good thing.
Suddenly, the nurse who drew Gloria’s blood started feeling faint and like her face was burning.
The respiratory therapist was unable to control her limbs.
They started dropping like flies.
The medical resident who had eyeballed the syringe started shaking in waves, having repeated apnea episodes. She actually ended up spending 2 weeks in intensive care, suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis, and avascular necrosis, (a condition in which bone tissue is starved of blood and begins to die). Hectic.
More and more staff started falling ill so the boss doctor, Humberto Ochoa, evacuated the emergency room into the parking lot. There, the fallen staff’s clothes were removed and sealed in bags in case they had been contaminated with some kind of poisonous gas.
This is legit sci-fi film material.
Now, while all the sick people were outside naked with burning faces and uncontrolled limbs, a skeleton crew stayed in the trauma room and worked to revive Gloria with multiple defib attempts.
Sadly, she was declared dead at 8:50 and her body was isolated in another room.
What the HELL was going on?
Was it a gas leak?
A mass hysteria event?
Maybe the hospital was the site of a secret meth lab! Hey, meth was big business in Riverside County in the 90s.
But these are all just theories. We need real science-based answers. Time to wheel out the computer-guided combined gas chromatograph spectrometer. (That’s an Adam West Batman episode right there).
Incredibly, even after exhaustive toxicological studies and investigations by serious experts from at least two institutions, they couldn’t find anything that would have stink bombed the emergency department.
So what the heck happened?
Friends, it’s time to get real science nerdy. We’re talking David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson-level nerdy.
Did you know just half a gram of dimethyl sulphate can kill a person in 10 minutes? Don’t ask how science knows that.
Oh, and you know how sci-fi films usually have some crazy person with a whiteboard and red string trying to figure out what’s going on? Yeah, this story has that too (but in the form of a scrapbook).
SOURCES:
Discover Magazine: Analysis of a Toxic Death
A possible chemical explanation for the events associated with the death of Gloria Ramirez at Riverside General Hospital
Patrick M. Grant, Jeffrey S. Haas, Richard E. Whipple, Brian D. Andresen
Forensic Science International 87 (1997) 219–237IFL Science: The Death Of "The Toxic Lady" Remains An Unsolved Medical Case
New York Times: Fumes at hospital baffles officials
Straight Dope: What’s the story on the “toxic lady”?
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gloria_Ramirez
Previous Episode mentioned:
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Rod 00:00
2001
Will 00:01
Yes, great year
Rod 00:01
Great movie, Great everything. Great number. Animage magazine.
Will 00:10
Like for like Dungeons and Dragons people.
Rod 00:12
Oh for for anime movies.
Will 00:15
Okay, anime. Okay,
Rod 00:16
so they ranked the 1995 movie Memories are 68 out of 100 and their greatest anime productions. Okay, that's pretty good.
Will 00:25
It's better than 69
Rod 00:31
What a happy accident
Will 00:32
Nice.
Rod 00:33
So memories was an anthology of three shorter films. Magnetic rows. Yep. Cannon Fodder, and the deliciously titled stink bomb.
Will 00:44
Okay. All right.
Rod 00:46
Let's talk about stinkbug. I know you want to.
Will 00:48
Well, you say an interesting one. Yeah,
Rod 00:50
yeah. Oh, yeah, you're right. There's a lab technician at a buyer research or something similar facility in Japan.
Will 00:57
Cool sci fi like it.
Rod 00:58
His name is Nobuo Tanaka. Yep, he's got the flu. Paul Tanaka. He sees some pills And it seems like they're probably on his boss's desk and he goes, Oh, they'll probably be useful.
Will 01:09
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, you're in a sci fi movie. The instant you're in a biotech lab facility and you go I'm sick so I'll take random pills
Rod 01:19
on my boss's desk, because I'll probably help my flu. So he's in a movie. He's a cartoon character
Will 01:26
I got it's like locking yourself in the gamma radiation facility
Rod 01:29
in case you get sup erpowers. Turns out I'm just dying
Will 01:32
licking the kryptonite,
Rod 01:42
So he takes some pills. And you'd be amazed to hear it turns out they're actually part of an experimental bioweapons programme.
Will 01:48
Again, don't leave the experimental bioweapons programme on your on your desk
Rod 01:51
unmarked around people have flu. So the drug reacts with his system and some sources suggest with the flu shot that he's already had, takes a nap at work. I don't know why. He doesn't realise that his body now emits a vapour slash odour that turns out to be lethal to all other people. Not him. But other people.
Will 02:09
Okay, that's a shitty superpower. shity shity super power.
Rod 02:12
Well, it's a bio weapon. Not really superpower. look at me, I can just make people die by breathing. And I don't know how to make it stop
Will 02:20
the not stopping it would be the problem
Rod 02:22
to a dud. It's definitely a dud. So everyone in his lab dies. He unsurprisingly freaks out. Yep, tells the company headquarters here in Tokyo
Will 02:32
So he doesn't know, they all just died
Rod 02:35
He doesn't know. And they just start dying. So he says HQ, Tokyo. Everyone's dead. And they said bring the drug to us. You must get here. Okay.
Will 02:45
Like as in the drug he took? Do they know he's taking it?
Rod 02:47
Well, I probably said he took the pills.
Will 02:50
Okay, I just say everyone's dead I woke up everyone's dead
Rod 02:52
everyone's dead not me.
Will 02:54
I didn't do anything suspicious is the main thing that I would be saying
Rod 02:57
I didn't do anything suspicious
Will 02:59
all of my phone calls start with that no matter the context
Rod 03:02
So do my emails actually.
Will 03:04
But it's not you know when you have a minor car crash and you got to know you got to ring up to tell your significant other you say I'm alright, but there's been an accident. Exactly. You know, so you don't start with there's been an accident
Rod 03:17
dammit. that's what I did wrong. There's been an accident and I was involved. Stop crying. And and
Will 03:24
I haven't done anything suspicious.
Rod 03:26
Yes. No one super innocent was hurt. So they say delivered to Tokyo and he says cool. So along the way he's Admittances apparently gets stronger. And it starts affecting people for miles around him. miles. The effect expense
Will 03:45
shity shity bio weapon
Rod 03:47
No, very effective if you're not there.
Will 03:50
Weapons are usually useful if you can control them.
Rod 03:52
They might stop it. So I don't know if it dies out. But apparently plants and animals not only don't get affected, it seems maybe they get stronger. That's an aside. So he ends up being responsible for it seems like hundreds of 1000s of deaths on his way to Tokyo.
Will 04:05
This is very Japanese.
Rod 04:06
Yeah. He knocks out a whole prefecture like on the outskirts of town like that's 2 or 300,000 people. And at this stage, he still doesn't seem to realise it's because of him. People are just dying and he's trying to get to Tokyo. Tanaka is a bit of a genius. But officials seem to work out and this is what's going on and they want to stop him because they're not monsters,
Will 04:26
but they can't get close.
Rod 04:27
Not only can they not get close, standard PPE and biohazard stuff doesn't work.
Will 04:31
Of course not. No, I wouldn't have thought that it would.
Rod 04:34
No. So you think I don't think you think zap him from a distance? Yes. But somehow it seems to bugger up some of the military systems so it doesn't go well.
Will 04:42
It affects computers as well or something is very precise condition this guy has
Rod 04:47
it's a hell of a pill. And they never mentioned whether he still had the flu
Will 04:51
farts so bad it stuffs up the computers too.
Rod 04:55
But he can't smell like what everyone's so offended by it. So finally they go Jesus like how we're going to trap him somehow and we'll cover him in liquid nitrogen to freez him, which seems sensible. So they, they managed to block in between a tunnel and an exploded bridge or the other way around. They basically, you know, wedge him in between the objects and like start trying to deliver nitrogen and there's something about fans, so we're trying to blow it over him. Okay, I don't know why. But that's what they're doing.
Will 05:22
I've never used liquid nitrogen as a weapon. Nor should you not
Rod 05:25
Well, no, I haven't. Well, no, I haven't. Not a weapon. What about practical joke that went wrong? Is that a weapon?
Will 05:31
self defence tool? home invasion and you've got the liquid nitrogen out
Rod 05:37
I'm gonna freeze you. He freaks out and disables this gear. Somehow, not with his stink. I think it's deliberate. And he somehow at some point gets into an exosuit and is taken to the headquarters of the company. And it's not clear to me whether they knew he was in the Exosuit or if they just happened to take the Exosuit because they were taking away exosuits as biotech research HQ companies do. So inside the building, he starts wandering through the building, and then he gets to the top and he gets out of the exosuit, of course, kills everyone. And curtain. That's the movie.
Will 06:12
That's the movie. There's no resolution. He just kills a lot of people
Rod 06:15
it is. It's a short enigmatic film.
Will 06:17
Yeah. Okay. I feel it enigmatic sized.
Rod 06:19
Do you feel enigma? I've had an enigma. It's also worth noting that stink bomb was praised for its humour and high quality visuals. Because what's not funny about that? The visuals you can imagine be amazing. And at least one source I tried to find others and not with too much luck. But at least one source claims this story was inspired by a real life event that happened in a canvas size California town in 1994.
Will 06:45
No. Welcome to the wholesome show. The podcast is not afraid to close its eyes and breathe deeply around the hole of science. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. My name is Will Grant.
Rod 07:08
His name is also will grant. I'm Rod Lambert's. We are the two people who talk. Before we kick off, I just want to thank an undergrad student of mine was asking about different topics for stories to do a podcast and this is one of the ones that I went. I never heard of that. So thanks to Odyssey car, and in case they didn't want to be to fully identify, but cheers in case you're listening. Oh, yeah, they didn't. They didn't realise I didn't want to just nick it without saying something. Also, the stories have been covered in a lot of places. But a lot of this ep comes from a very thorough Discover magazine piece like really thorough step through
Rod 07:41
Riverside general hospitals, Southern California, February 19 1994. All right now at 8pm. ambulance drivers burst through the doors of the emergency room. they got a 31 year old woman called Gloria Ramirez and they take her into trauma room one. She was awake, but not doing well. The breathing was shallow and rapid. Heartbeat was way too fast and that meant her blood pressure dies because it's not squeezing the blood around her body because going to get to get filling and emptying and filling and empty. So she's not doing well. When she wasn't too out of breath to talk. She could answer questions, but they're really short responses. And some of the replies were confused, maybe veering into being kind of incomprehensible. The trauma and stuff, but it was weird that she would have these symptoms because she's quite young and usually you'd see this in these kinds of things typically an old folk
Will 08:31
So something must have happened,
Rod 08:33
something must have happened. It also turns out though, she had cervical cervical cancer and wasn't doing well. So she was in a bad state of cervical cancer at this point.
Will 08:41
Okay, that's horrible.
Rod 08:44
Yeah, it's not great. So the emergency staff went alright, what are we going to do? We're going to treat this situation so sedatives to bring down all jittering and so forth valium, versed an Ativan things like this. Also stuff with a heartbeat so lidocaine, Bretylium and strassterfactomene,
Will 09:01
I was gonna ask if it was those ones
Rod 09:03
strassterfactomene is my favourite. Respiratory therapist, Maureen Welsh, starts intubating and puts the thing on her face and start squeezing to get some air into it. But none of this is working. So it's a problem. Yeah, it's not doing well. So they yank off a t shirt to get ready to give a defibrillation. And when they did that they saw she had a quote, oily sheen covering her body and some noticed a fruity garlic odour and they thought it might have been coming from a mouth. You don't like garlic or fruit? Gonna be fine.
Will 09:40
I'm feeling sad for some people here.
Rod 09:46
So it's a bit odd. what are we gonna do next? Get some blood. So nurse, Susan Kane. She goes to start drawing blood. And she goes, it smells sort of wrong? Blood smells wrong.
Will 10:04
Yeah, the blood smells wrong. Yeah. Did you investigate how much smell of blood is a common nursing test. Like is do they have a whiff of the blood?
Rod 10:14
It wasn't the test. It's just as she's doing it, she's like that don't smell right.
Will 10:17
I've thought of taste of blood. Yeah, sort of metallic. He is lots of iron. You'd feel like you're eating iron filings sort of delicious. smell of blood?
Rod 10:25
Blood hasn't metallic smell. Normally.
Will 10:27
I don't smell it a lot.
Rod 10:29
Well, I think it's more that's true, but they don't smell it a lot. But this did
Will 10:33
look I can imagine in trauma conditions where there's there's there's a lot of blood around. You will get used to the smell and so you'd notice hang on don't write weird smell and blood
Rod 10:42
and or I don't normally smell it but this time I can.
Will 10:44
Oh my goodness. That is so weird.
Rod 10:46
She hands Kane the nurse hands over to Welsh that woman who's intubating Yep, hands a syringe and says, take this. I'm gonna lean in close and see if there's a smell coming from Gloria Ramirez herself. So Welsh at the time grabbed a syringe and smells and says it's kind of like ammonia and blood smells like ammonia.
Will 11:02
Ammonia. like cleaning products.
Rod 11:05
Yeah. But she goes on to say she was quoted. This was not the normal putrid smell you might expect from the blood of someone who was on chemo.
Will 11:11
So your blood smells weird when you're on chemo?
Rod 11:14
putrid according to this medical professional. Wow. I know chemo does horrendous things to you, but I didn't even think of that.
Will 11:22
I get I get it's not a thing that you put on the warning, you know, hair falling out, you will complete loss of appetite. Stinky blood not being the thing that you warn people about
Rod 11:33
but also I don't care about that part.
Will 11:35
No. Like if I'm reading a list of symptoms, you know, for medicine, it's like, you know, loss of diarrhoea, loss of diet. I know leakage is impending sense of doom, and stinky blood. Not so worried about the stinky blood
Rod 11:49
No, that's the way it should be last last in the list. That's when the TLDR and you just get on with it. So um, the smell was weird. It's gross. It's horrible. So that was a second opinion kind of time to get a third and also a fourth one. So this time they bring in the medical resident Julie Gorchynski.
Will 12:05
I thought you're gonna say like a Somalia or something like that. Imagine we need an expert
Rod 12:10
This blood is not quite right because it has come from the south side of the mountain and near a little river that has maybe too much camel poo. They also bringing the boss doctor of the at the time of the emergency room whatever. Humberto. Don't worry, these names will come back and I will help you. Alright, so they both had a look at the syringe and went that's not cool, but also there's these little straw coloured flecks in it
Will 12:31
in the blood. Okay
Rod 12:35
cool, right? Smells like ammonia. It's got little flecks in it. She's covered in oily sheen with a fruity garlic smell. So suddenly the nurse came look like she was gonna faint. someone caught her just before she had the deck and apparently have face felt like it was burning. And they put her on a trolley and took her out.
Will 12:54
Okay, okay, so Kane is the one that had a sniff first
Rod 12:58
took the blood out and when they don't right hand handed to Wilson, then Dr. Kaczynski so the resident started to feel queasy and lightheaded.
Will 13:06
Oh my god.
Rod 13:07
So she went sit down for a bit. Someone went to check on her and said How you going and she hit the deck and they took her off on a trolley as well. She was apparently periodically shaking and repeatedly stopped breathing briefly so she had apnea, but not the sleep kind. She had awake apnea, which isn't great. You don't want that. You don't seem happy?
Will 13:27
No, no,
Rod 13:28
it's a nice way to end your week. So then the respiratory therapist who bagged Gloria, she took a dive thud
Will 13:36
What time are we talking for like a couple of minutes like that took the blood
Rod 13:41
It's brief. I'll give you a time a timestamp and just one tick. so she she remembers waking up and unable to control her limbs. so she's not doing well. So back in the room with Ramirez with Gloria more staff started getting ill so the boss Dockacoa evacuated the emergency room everyone in the parking lot. get out
Will 14:00
go We've gotta get out of here something's going on yeah sorry patients
Rod 14:03
but a skeleton crew hung back, which I will tell you about them. so outside in the parking lot first the Fallen staff Their clothes were removed and they put in bags in case there was some kind of contamination gas whatever
Will 14:15
Sure. nude up. Like first first precaution it could be the clothes. get rid of it all
Rod 14:20
you don't seem well, get nude. that's what I do as I've got a sniffle
Will 14:24
you know when someone's fainting. I'm not an emergency nurse trauma doctor or anything like that I have no I have no skills in this but I it's a big jump to go from okay you're fainting, it's gotta be the clothes. that's where I'm going first
Rod 14:37
well they're not saying only they're just saying this same because it was so quick and it seems like it's spread suddenly they're going there must be something in the air. What if it's on the clothes?
Will 14:43
contamination on you. you've got still got it in your pockets.
Rod 14:49
So called Gorchynski the doctor kept flailing in app nearing. And Kane the nurse also flailed and still had her face felt like it was burning. so meanwhile, as you asked the skeleton crew stayed to try and work on Gloria. So they had cocktails of drugs and multiple defibrillation attempts, which I think in itself is probably horrendous. zapping, zapping, zapping. Absolutely horrible. No success. So she was declared dead at 8:50. Her body was isolated in another room as you would expect. Then a nurse called Sally Balderas, who helped move her body started. retching felt a burning sensation on his skin. Soon she too was on a trolley and get out. So Gloria had been brought in at about 8:15, by 8:50 she was dead all this had happened in like 40 minutes.
Will 15:37
Wow. And and so what do we got like four nurses and doctors now passing out from this thing?
Rod 15:43
least so by the end of it 23 of the 37 Emergency Room members had some kind of symptom. So the aftermath, five of them were hospitalised for the whole night. Balderas the one who didn't move the body, dhe had ongoing bouts of apnea during her 10 Day stint in hospital. Wow. Kaczynski gaucin scheme might be go Gorchynski, the resident doctor, she was the worst she spent two weeks in intensive care where she had not only apnea, she also got this awesome hepatitis, pancreatitis and my fave, avascularnecrosis, which of course I know, you know, but others might not
Will 16:21
give the others a definition so I can hear it as well.
Rod 16:23
So you can correct me if I get it wrong, a condition in which bone tissue is starved of blood and begins to die.
Will 16:28
I get I got the necrosis bit.
Rod 16:30
Yeah, so bone tissues, just dying bone tissue in particular, that attacked her knees.
Will 16:34
Oh, my God, your knees are dying from the inside?
Rod 16:39
So she was on crutches for months after this because their knees
Will 16:42
so they came back to life though.
Rod 16:43
Apparently, there's not a lot of follow up on her that I could find.
Will 16:49
Then she moved further down to wheelchair or she's better.
Rod 16:53
Yeah, because she had hepatitis and pancreatitis to worry about as well as the apnoea. Back to the magical night. This is what happen to these people in the aftermath. But let's go back to the magical night when it all was going on. So about 11pm. So we're talking what, couple of hours three hours after, sorry, two hours after Gloria Ramirez is declared dead, hazmat team arrives. And then of course, okay, there's gonna be some a grade badass toxin here. Something horrible is going on. We've got some culprits in mind. So they said, look, it could be hydrogen sulphide like a sewer gas.
Will 17:25
Yeah. Coming out in the room sort of thing through a pipe?
Rod 17:28
Yes. Okay. That's, that's just a coincidence. Yeah, it's in the room. Her being sick didn't matter. And they say like, it smells like rotten gas. High concentrations means only a couple of belts of it will kill you. Sure. Okay. So that's great. We also might be they suspected phosgene. Which is a shit awful gas, tears open lung capillaries and drowns people in their own blood. So that's cool. And if you're thinking, Why the hell would they suspect it would be there? It's because it also has a lot of industrial uses so it's possible it could have been around
Will 17:58
drown in your own blood.
Rod 18:00
It's not just a gas that you used to kill.
Will 18:02
I had a lot of bleeding, but it was internal. That's where the bloods meant to be. Oh, my God,
Rod 18:06
and then drowning on your own blood. Like? I mean, I've thought of a lot of horrible deaths and that would be that'd be the top 10
Will 18:13
Maybe you don't notice it?
Rod 18:14
No you notice. I mean, you know, when you get a bad cough notice, imagine the cough is increasingly coming from within and soon you can't breathe.
Will 18:23
Oh, God, stop.
Rod 18:23
you started it.
Will 18:26
keep going. Keep going.
Rod 18:27
But there's no sign of either of those. Which is really great news, but also shit news, because now they're going we don't know what it is. And now we got to do an autopsy on Gloria Ramirez. And she could be a huge human gunge bomb of revolting terribleness.
Will 18:41
Oh, wow.
Rod 18:42
Because fuck knows what's going on with Gloria
Will 18:43
so they really went it's got to be something Gloriaish. Like Like,
Rod 18:47
we reckon Gloria is the source Victor
Will 18:51
so she was put in another room while she was dead. Isolated.
Rod 18:55
in a body bag and aluminium casket box thing.
Will 18:59
My favourite stories are always when we got to bury people weird.
Rod 19:03
Like set them in 9 metres of concrete.
Will 19:05
You sir, you're going in the concrete and the lead. You're in steel so you can't drill your way out
Rod 19:11
because we respect you.
Will 19:15
nothing says things are going great then we gotta bury this body hardcore. Like you gotta make sure you stay down there.
Rod 19:21
Did I mentioned we're not going to tell anybody where your remains because and nine metres is standard, right? We're gonna take you out to the geological centre of Australia and put you in a non moveable
Will 19:33
we're gonna we're gonna do the Genghis Khan as well. We're going to all of your burial crew, they bury you and then we kill them and then we kill the people that killed them so that no one knows where you're buried.
Rod 19:42
And so what about the people that killed the people that killed them,
Will 19:43
kill them too
Rod 19:45
So everyone dies all the way back to Adam and Eve. kill all knowledge. We're gonna keep everyone safe.
Will 19:53
that might have been Genghis Khan's strategy. He wasn't he wasn't big on civilization.
Rod 19:55
He was dead by then he didn't care. So As I said, Gloria's in the bag. She's in a body bag inside aluminium crate inside a sealed room. So the coroner is put on airtight bio suits with self contained air supplies. They got blood and tissue samples as well as samples of the air from the body bag and the crate, which makes sense, right? This is science that's sciency. And at this stage, of course, they're starting to be already some media interest and that continued over the next while but the coroner's ain't talking to nobody. So they did their investigations and they found nothing.
Will 20:32
You can't do that to me. Give me a result
Rod 20:34
I can do whatever I want. I'm in charge. Well we both have a microphone. So let's step it up a notch, which is also nice, middle European and steppinupenotch. Forensic Science Centre at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. So stepped it up.
Will 20:54
Okay. We got to the top the people that know what they're doing about this stuff
Rod 20:57
And that lab had all kinds of deep science interested in nuclear war times and stuff. They got credentials.
Will 21:01
I've heard of them before.
Rod 21:02
They've changed into a big part of what they have is this Forensic Science Centre in the federal facility to help people who have forensic problems.
Will 21:10
X Filey problems.
Rod 21:11
Yes, I have forensic issues, I need help. So the coroner and them had some chats, and finally on March 25, so this all started in early February, March 25. The centre officially requested samples for analysis, please send us some bits.
Will 21:26
Seems interesting, will deign to take this case on its wild enough
Rod 21:29
sounding board enough. Centre Director Brian Anderson, he he was very interested in case he was personally interested in let's find out. So they had a plan. They're going to analyse the compounds, the inorganic and the organic, in the blood, the bile, all the different tissues, heart, liver, lungs, pull out all the delicious pie ingredients and
Will 21:47
Yeah, put them put them boil them down, have a good sniff, analyse this.
Rod 21:52
So yeah, they're looking for inorganic and organic stuff in all this business, but also they're checking gases that might have vented off and particularly in the headspace. So the space between the goo and the cork in all the vials
Will 22:03
what, okay, okay, yeah, so
Rod 22:06
you get a vial of bile, the gas, not only the gas that's between the goo and the lid. And he had particularly high hopes for the one that contain the bile, so the secreting juices that the gallbladder holds
Will 22:18
who doesn't have particularly high hopes for the bile?
Rod 22:21
that's where poisons often concentrate. let's check the bile gas. so they got the gas and they warmed it up to body temperature because that's important to find stuff out. Yeah, and they found nothing.
Will 22:35
Oh my God, give me a result. Is body temperature like a setting on your on your oven? Make it like like human.
Rod 22:45
I want my soup body temperature
Will 22:47
I want it like blood. gross. I wanna feel it going
Rod 22:51
Oh, do the next restaurant on it. Can I have the gravy body temperature?
Will 22:57
you know food will taste better. I'll bet there's a there's a French tradition. It's like yeah the body temperatures
Rod 23:04
do you know this is the temperature of my anus.
Will 23:07
It's beautiful.
Rod 23:08
So here's what you're thinking. I know what you think you're thinking. It's time to wheel out the computer guided combined gas chromatograph spectrometer. you're thinking that right? you're thinking I know what's coming next computer guided combine gas chromatograph mass spectrometer
Will 23:22
what is computer guided in that sense mean?
Rod 23:24
my computer tells it where to go.
Will 23:25
Where to go what? Like it's it's a gas measuring device. Like it's not like a little piloting thing. It's a gas measure with a computer.
Rod 23:36
Yes.
Will 23:37
I think most science instruments these days if they call them computer guided you'd go yes. Mind you, I was in this facility today. And you know, it's like it's sending beams of particles around it like five to 10% of the speed of light and stuff like that. And my god the dials that they had to guide it like they weren't they were old school 1950s So that you know, like it wasn't wooden but it was old school and it was like don't you want a bit more precision? He's like, Nah, now. It's a lot of dials and all the dials together that's how you get your precision
Rod 24:19
No you don't, you just crank it up to 10% of the speed of light from none. Anyway, this can be particularly useful this instrument is useful because you can find non organic or non medical compounds because often medical folks when they say it's sterile, they mean no biologicals, not other chemicals. Oh, yeah, so they went let's see what else is in there. Yep. And they found a bunch of unexpected and expected compounds. So the expected ones residual drug stuff
Will 24:47
I don't need to know I was expecting them. It's fine. You don't need to tell me that. everyone was expecting the expected
Rod 24:52
boring the shit out of people right now and I apologise. So a couple of unusual ones. First. And I do defied aimine so derivative of ammonia so the aiming they say that they reckon that was probably caused because one of the anti nausea drugs he was on breaks down and amine's are a byproduct so you'd expect okay all right okay that was weird
Will 25:12
so put it back in the expected category
Rod 25:14
leave it back. got shuffled out of way yeah
Will 25:16
so it's so unusual than a normal blood but you know
Rod 25:19
in this, to be expected. second nicotinamide or nicotinamide
Will 25:25
on the durries
Rod 25:25
so it's one of the vitamin B's and we all need nicotinamide. it's a vitamin D compound. nicotinamide, not just straight nicotine like smoking a durry doesn't enhance your your vitamin B
Will 25:36
so if you add two chemical names together it's a different chemical
Rod 25:39
it's like if you add one molecule another molecule and they love each other very much they turn into something else
Will 25:44
this is ridiculous
Rod 25:45
I know science podcast. so we need vitamin B and nicotinamide is a way to get it. I in fact take a nicotinamide supplement because apparently helps longevity
Will 25:53
do I? should I?
Rod 25:55
Yes?
Will 25:56
Do you don't seem like a legit doctor in this scenario.
Rod 25:59
No, but I got it from a legit doctors spin off company that sells supplements
Will 26:07
helps with longevity. Oh my god.
Rod 26:11
Here's the proof. Am I dead right now? Am I alive? Yes, it works. It works. so second one the nicotinamide so as I say it's a vitamin B we do actually need it. It's good for us, etc. But it's unusual for really sick people like Gloria on the chemo and whatever else he was on to be taking it. Sure. Yeah.
Will 26:31
Well she wants a bit of longevity she's got cervical cancer she's like give me some longevity with my vitamin.
Rod 26:37
Nicotinamide. Maybe it has strong effect. It's also can be used to pad out meth. Because it's cheap, easy to do. And if you have a lot of it apparently can be a little bit brain wobbling, so you can pad out meth with it. That's number two unusual. So that one they identified.
Will 26:58
So number three just meth
Rod 26:59
So the first one was identify the amine but then as I make sense, the second one. It's the thing we're aware of, but it seems strange. Third one was called dimethyl sulfone dimethyl sulfone,
Will 27:14
that's the one with the sulphur and the thing.
Rod 27:19
So it's used as an industrial solvent, called dimethyl sulfone also can be produced naturally in the body a little bit. But liver breaks down really fast. Like it's got a very short half life three days and it's very rarely detected in normal functioning bodies. Okay, so it's like, That's odd. Not impossible, but odd.
Will 27:39
Why does body produce an industrial solvent?
Rod 27:42
Well, that's not how it works the body produces it also turns out to be useful as an industrial solvent. But they don't milk it out of people. They milk it out of I don't know, rabbits.
Will 27:50
There should be more milking industrial cleaning products out of people.
Rod 27:53
There really should
Will 27:53
I mean, I don't know how much there is. It's probably somewhere between a lot and fuck all
Rod 27:53
Absolutely zero.
Will 27:53
Would you buy a cleaning product
Rod 28:07
milked out of actual humans. We squeezed a bunch of people from Amazonian rainforest
Will 28:12
I don't want them to die. But you know, if you've milked a few humans to get your cleaning product.
Rod 28:17
As soon as you say milk in person you're like hmmm
Will 28:21
that is the classic thing that does come out of some persons
Rod 28:26
but if for example milk out of gentleman you go I don't want it.
Will 28:30
what if it's an awesome cleaning product?
Rod 28:32
Fuck me.
Will 28:36
Well, you need to clean very specific things. Oh, look, you told me many, many, many moons ago. And this is delving back into the dark ages of this podcast. But you told me about those sperms that they added little robot suits of armour to go in and
Rod 28:56
guide them magnetically.
Will 28:57
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Rod 28:59
For cancerous womens issues
Will 29:01
or for cleaning things obviously. cleaning very specific little bits.
Rod 29:09
So anyway, Gloria's concentration of dimethyl sulfone was noteworthyly high strange
Will 29:16
noteworthyly, just point of order. you're very good at resisting the jargon but only a science dickhead would say the word notewortherly? Maybe a lawyer
Rod 29:27
No, no, this is makes me a literature expert. sciences don't know notewortherley. Andriessen suspicion was the Gloria had taken a lot of codeine and paracetamol and high dose of those fuck your liver. So maybe the dimethyl sulfone wasn't breaking down properly. This makes sense because it livers maybe under duress. So it's staying in her system. It's not breaking down. And this was the weirdest thing so far because also in part why is it so much there anyway? Like I mean, yes, we produce a little bit of it, but there was a notable amount like you've got the crystals and shit in the blood or the flex.
Will 29:59
Is that what the flex were?
Rod 30:00
possibly. Regardless. dimethyl sulfone on its own would not have killed her better yet trashed a roomful of people.
Will 30:08
Damn. Okay.
Rod 30:10
So the lab was going, we're stuck. We don't know. The coroner went. We don't know either. We're stumped. So they held a press conference on April 29,
Will 30:19
and crowdsourcing some ideas.
Rod 30:22
Here's what we got. Let me just read at list.
Will 30:24
have a sniff of the body. See what you reckon
Rod 30:26
now sniff the blood. So basically said, look, she died of cardiac dysrhythmia triggered by kidney failure stemming from her cervical cancer. But what about the other people?
Will 30:37
Yeah, I'm far more interested in them. I understand that she's going into some sort of shock. and she's causing problems. So there's clearly something Well, if your story is implying she is
Rod 30:49
what about this implies?
Will 30:50
Well, the fact that you started with the stink bomb story.
Rod 30:58
So all the coroner would say about other people was they did exhaustive toxicological studies, and they didn't find anything that would have killed her better yet messed up others. So what the fuck happened? So with exhaustive investigations by serious experts from at least two institutions. No plausible biological explanation for what happened to everyone who wasn't Gloria. But this isn't good enough. We need to go further. We need to find out right? You want it? You want an answer?
Will 31:24
Well I know our listener does because I do
Rod 31:27
you already know. I mean, you know. So it's time to call in top scientists from the California Department of Health and Human Services. 34 of the 37 emergency room staff who are around, they interviewed. So that's a lot. That's a shitload of the people. Three missing. The similarities between people who passed out had breathing difficulties and muscle spasms existed and the similarities with things like more women than men were affected. And also people who had empty stomach so they didn't have any food. Yeah, the people who skipped they din dins.
Will 31:57
sucking down the air harder.
Rod 31:58
Exactly. That's what you do when you're hungry, you breathe harder to try and get nutrient. Also, people who worked really closely or near within a few feet of glory had been a particularly high risk. It's like, okay, there's some paterns. There's some paterns. Yeah. And then you add to this, an independent engineering firm could not identify any potential sources that may have contributed to the event. So they had a sniffer and a look around. So they couldn't see any external shit, no toxics, whatever. They studied the hospital ventilation, the plumbing and draining, available medications and cleaning supplies, no visible culprits. Also, the fact that the two paramedics who brought her in were not affected.
Will 32:35
So that is weird.
Rod 32:36
Yeah, it is weird.
Will 32:37
Remind me again, did they cut her open?
Rod 32:40
No they didn't. They just brought her in.
Will 32:43
They're doing difibs, they took blood and
Rod 32:47
They didn't cut her open or anything like nothing invasive like that. So the official report conclusion had to be this is the obvious result of all this stuff from the folk from the California Department of Health and Human Services. Mass socio genic illness, perhaps triggered by an odour?
Will 33:08
Oh, so we're saying it's a mass hysteria event and like, we're all diluted.
Rod 33:12
That's what they suggested.
Will 33:14
Calm down. I know that they happen.
Rod 33:16
well, we've talked about those. the dancing hysteria of
Will 33:19
many, many moons ago. Yes, indeed. They Well, look that was 15th 16th century. So just saying our documentation on that is not perfect. And, you know, there is a story of the high school girls in New York State who had an outbreak of Tourette's. There are multiple stories and so it's a plausible explanation for something here. It's a bit weird to go that far though.
Rod 33:42
Yeah. Well, they also said, Look, we're not 100% ruling out the possibility that was a toxin. Anyway, sociagenic bla bla bla, so Let's cue the media frenzy and angry angry victims. When this came out. The media obviously went holy shit, we want to know crazy, crazy crazy.
Will 34:00
There is a stinky woman that is causing people to convulse
Rod 34:03
to think they're unwell.
Will 34:04
well, either way, she's stinky enough that people become unwell.
Rod 34:09
You smell so bad, I feel sick. I'm going to intensive care. I've smelled some bad stuff before but never gave me hepatitis. So Gotschinsky, remember the the resident doctor who got really smashed got the dead anything etc. So she was really fucked up because she had a damages lawsuit running 6 million bucks worth against the Riverdale General Hospital
Will 34:36
6 million bucks aside for dead kneecaps?
Rod 34:39
and other stuff.
Will 34:41
Yeah, well
Rod 34:42
hepatitis, pancreatitis intensive care. Recovery from the knee thing is like, anyway, she was suing
Will 34:49
okay. I just I just don't know the cost of things.
Rod 34:52
She was also part of this suit was the coroner's office, etc. And there was she was basically the lawyers and she said the official report saying and I'm paraphrasing it's all in her head might not have been that helpful. So she was pissed. It also seemed kind of like bullshit that experienced hospital staff would freak out about a normal trauma event
Will 35:11
it would be weird it was
Rod 35:13
this woman is really unwell, we had to help her and she died.
Will 35:15
We all had a mass psychosis I get I get a mass psychosis probably need some sort of triggering event that is quite different from normal and this at the moment is just a patient came in slightly stinky blood. But other than that,
Rod 35:29
very unwell. We tried, she died. So that was a bit like, come on. Come on, guys. So Welsh, the respiratory tech person who was shitty, who done the bagging of Gloria Yep. She was also fucked off because she's like, No, this is bullshit. That's not what happened. And this is not in our heads. She'd also been collecting documents, snippets of info, news reports, etc, about the whole thing. So she had a little scrapbook.
Will 35:52
Who doesn't keep a scrapbook
Rod 35:54
me. Do you have one?
Will 35:55
No.
Rod 35:56
So both of us.
Will 35:57
I mean, if she was happening, you'd be like, I might just scrapbook that.
Rod 36:04
I have regularly intended
Will 36:08
The path to hell is paved with regular intentions.
Rod 36:12
I know. I'm on the way. So she said this isn't great. So she sent it to the head of the Livermore Labs, the forensic guy
Will 36:22
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That is not the way to productive conversations. Like if you've if you've done a scrapbook documentation of whatever incident and you then send that into the government.
Rod 36:35
Yes, I'm not crazy.
Will 36:36
You got to put a big PS all over it. I am not a crackpot. Here's my whiteboard with my string.
Rod 36:47
I've got this red string, I call it twine.
Will 36:50
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You can't
Rod 36:53
so she sends it to Andreessen and he goes oh, hang on a minute, it's worth having a little look. So he goes to his deputy director whose name is Grant. So suss. So he says to his deputy have a dig through her stuff and all the original analysis stuff
Will 37:08
make sense of the crazy lady. I'm not saying she's crazy, I'm just saying a scrapbook is not the way that we do things in science normally,
Rod 37:18
so Grant said you're cool, but I'm a nuclear chemist. And he quote, my organic chemistry knowledge is to be honest, miniscule. But anyway, he has a look, it checks into it. So he looks at the spectrometry, you know, computer guided etc, results. And he looks at he goes, what was actually the dimethyl sulfone, the stuff we talked about before
Will 37:36
that was the unusual stuff, the unusual industrial solvent
Rod 37:39
which would normally be broken down by healthy liver, etc. But still, he mistook it for dimethyl sulfoxide. This becomes important it's normally known as DMSO. He's gone, hang on, the sulfide, he thought it was the Sulfoxide so the only difference between the two is DMSO, the one he thought it was, has one oxygen atom dimethyl sulfone has two
Will 38:03
Oh my god. Of course,
Rod 38:04
other than that they're the same.
Will 38:05
Well, ones hiding behind the other. Like if you look it's true. The sneaky oxygen the other oxygen atom is sort of behind. How could you recognise that?
Rod 38:12
So it's not his fault. So that's the only difference so Anderssen, his boss says, no, that's not DMSO it's the other one. but I get why you made the mistake one oxygen or two. So it's just an oopsie. He's like, fuck, let's move on. He just made a little oopsie so we'll get on with it. Or should we?
Will 38:28
Yes, no
Rod 38:31
So it turns out DMSO can react with oxygen to become dimethyl sulfone
Will 38:35
Oh actually yes, yes. one knows this one.
Rod 38:43
Yes, exactly. So it's kinda like ah, it could have been DMSO on her it reacted with oxygen that's what we saw in her blood that's why the other one the way we actually found was in there. So this is fine but the mistaken identity obviously this could be useful. this could be useful
Will 39:00
you were wrong and dumb but you put us on a path to rightness
Rod 39:05
useful dumb. Yeah, yeah.
Will 39:08
that's all anyone can aspire to really. You could be usefully dumb and nothing more than that
Rod 39:15
for decades. Secret of my career. So you kind of got that's great DMSO, this substance she may have been in touch with that. But like Who fucking cares? Because how would she have been in touch with this thing? Turns out it's sold as a gel in hardware stores. The DMSO, the thing he thought it was but it wasn't
Will 39:35
A hardware gel
Rod 39:36
hardware stores sell it as a heavy duty degreaser. so there's a gel based on this stuff he thought it was but it wasn't what do
Will 39:43
degreasing engines and shit. Or on her chest. oily residue.
Rod 39:48
That's what was actually in her body
Will 39:50
She was rubbing it on her boobs?
Rod 39:51
Exactly. Grease these these bad boys.
Will 39:54
That's what was going on. I figured it out.
Rod 39:57
You've done it. Why bother with the rest. We're done.
Will 40:01
I need some hardware decreasing. No, I don't think that's the solution. I have not figured it
Rod 40:08
so I haven't figured. So the degreaser that they sell in hardware stores though is 99% Pure. Oh, and that has what's called side effects.
Will 40:19
Side effects to me says medicine has positive benefit. And and some some other things, you know, the, the diarrhoea and the impending sense of doom. I feel I feel like dissolving your organs from the inside if that's what a chemical does, that's the effect and side effects that you've you bliss out for a bit while it does
Rod 40:38
but if its purpose is to decrease your engine and because you use that venue or organs dissolve that's a side effect.
Will 40:44
Okay, if you did it over there. Yeah, but if you take it, that's effect.
Rod 40:48
Noone said she took it. Yeah, basically the tests have been going on since the 60s that said look with this level of purity 99% can fuck with your eyesight. It's bad it's bad. That level it's bad.
Will 40:58
Okay, don't hoff it.
Rod 40:59
Don't hoff it. Don't lick it, don't do any of that shit. But Gloria wasn't a professional degreaserist. So why in the fuck would she have come into contact with DMSO? Why?
Will 41:08
was she an amateur? hobbyist. When I see an engine, I just got a degreese. You know, I'm just I'm just not sure what bit of this that Gloria is doing here.
Rod 41:20
Pull my gel out. And not it turns out it also has an off label or folk remedy use
Will 41:26
Oh, no.
Rod 41:28
For sore joints and muscles. And grant your ancestor he knew this because he used to be a bit of an athlete in his past. And so it was very common and apparently in the 70s watered down versions of it were used athletic departments around high schools and colleges all the time.
Will 41:44
Decrease your knees.
Rod 41:45
Yeah, but but watered down and so you rub it on? And apparently people believed or maybe it did take away pain and stuff. It was a pain reducer or inflammation reducer at least in
Will 41:54
How did they apply it?
Rod 41:56
Rubbed on. anointment? External topical, if you will.
Will 42:01
There might have been some rubbing on
Rod 42:03
so and something people missed earlier, at least in the reports was the link between the oily shein and garlicky pong on her. That's exactly what DMSO if you'd rub it on yourself would be like. it'd be a bit oily you'd smell a bit garlicky and ick
Will 42:16
There you go, Oh,
Rod 42:17
But Grant only remembered this after reviewing the scrapbook. Why the hell would Gloria have had a bunch of it in or on or around her? Well, the bottom line was she would have been in a lot of pain, probably from cancer and stuff. So she might have turned to that remedy. Then when she collapsed from cancer related kidney failure, the ambulance guys came in, put an oxygen mask on her face which oxygenated her system and turned the DMSO into the sulphone, the one that actually found
Will 42:44
Wow,
Rod 42:45
that's the theory. So basically took a one oxygen molecule out of an extra one turned it into the dimethylsulphide. so there's a chemical reaction.
Will 42:51
So hang on, so she is applying this externally.
Rod 42:53
That's what they're theorising.
Will 42:53
Yeah, yeah. So applying it externally, but then enough is getting into her system and then that put the oxygen directly
Rod 43:05
extra oxygen on causes a transformation of the chemical or the compound. So it could have been explained the dimethyl sulfone, the original thing they found her blood could be explained because she'd been rubbing DMSO on herself to get rid of pain. Yay Science. But there's more. You thought it was over? It's never over. So far as we know Gloria has a bunch of this stuff in her system that dimethyl sulfone that could have been plausibly explained by her using DMSO for pain relief. But why would that fuck with the people around her? so like maybe it fucked with her. But why would it fuck with the people around her? So science nerd time and I'll do my best. I've worked hard to make this Get ready.
Rod 43:50
I'll be straight about this.
Rod 43:51
So dimethylsulfone, the thing they found. If it gets two more oxygens added to it, just a couple more, you get dimethyl sulphate and apparently dimethyl sulphate is a fucking monster. It's a horrible, horrible compound. It can cause convulsions, delirium, paralysis, coma, damage to kidneys, liver and heart and also apparently at least one experiment 10 minute exposure to half a gramme of it in a cubic metre of air can kill a person
Will 44:16
10 minutes kill you. and they did that in an experiment? you said experiment
Rod 44:21
I know
Will 44:22
What? this sounds like you're missing the story here. Oh by the way ethics by the way we put people in a cube to see how much would kill a person
Rod 44:32
Turns out half a gram. That might have been referring back to a recent episode maybe they tried it on rats and decided this is the same thing
Will 44:41
Oh okay. Okay
Rod 44:44
but the symptom list of things exposing to this monster one the sulphate was really great match for what all the people were experiencing. Right? So going Oh, hang on a minute, so maybe the extra oxygen bla bla bla bla bla with this thing she already had in her system because she rubbed goo on herself, transmogrified because of the oxygen to keep her alive into this monster, this fucking monster. So, the question then is, was it possible that Gloria's body could have caused this transformation? Like to cause the sulphone they found to strap on two extra oxygens and make this monster at all? Was it possible at all better yet to knock out all these people? A couldn't have happened, B could it have expanded to that extent. So the science if people are interested, just just for fun, if you really want to read about it, there's a 1997 Forensic Science International Paper possible chemical explanation for the events associated with the death of Gloria Ramirez at Riverside General Hospital. So who knows what it's about?
Will 45:39
It's not a strong, like, like if you're a scientist just going up possible. Yeah, I get you, you're hedging your bets. But you're really not standing in a claim saying this is what happened.
Rod 45:50
They're not. one of the subheadings is toxicology and semi quantitative speculation.
Will 45:56
I feel like you know, you could put you could put under every scientific journal article is a pendant with maybe, well you know, just go, maybe
Rod 46:04
as far as we're aware. I do like your toxicology and semi quantitative speculation. You're going to speculate make it semi quantitative. So the TLDR version is temperature or electricity. defib may have helped this conversion.
Will 46:24
Wow.
Rod 46:25
And like I said, this article, I actually trolled through this article. There's a lot of chemistry going on, but the synapses are quite good. So basically, in theory, the sulphone, the thing they found in her could have broken into sub elements, like little bits, they just wander around in the body. And then some of them reformed into the monster, the sulphate, yep. But then her warm blood kept it from staying stable, so broke apart. So formed, but she was warm blooded, because she's a human, and it just fell apart again. So that means the paramedics didn't get enough of it to get sick. There was a bit of it in there, but not enough. Then when the nurse came drew the blood, it was colder in the room, and these rooms tend to be colder, and the speculation is the cooler conditions meant it's stayed bonded. And she got affected by the monster dimethyl sulphate. She got a waft of the pure shit and down she went, then either broke apart or vaporised in the blood. So disappeared. So they couldn't trace it. They couldn't see it in the samples. Yep. So again, semi quantitative speculation. This is all hypotheses. So the coroner's office went fucking sweet. We've got an explanation. That'll do. We're gonna release it. This is probably what happened. Other scientists said bullshit. No, there's no way body temperature would have been high enough to cause it to break down. Because when it's used industrially, it could be as high as 300 Fahrenheit, 8 million Celsius. Others said, look, the symptom match wasn't that good because it the monster sulphate acts like tear gas, I immediately get streaming eyes and shin and the fainting symbols would usually take hours. And one guy who did original research in the 60s on this stuff said, look, it's bullshit. And his quote was, it's like that silliness with cold fusion. So it's absolute crap, except that has the potential to hurt people. So that's tricky. So the forensics guy, the director, Anderson, who he came back and said, Look, we didn't expect the coroner's office to release this report, we said, this is actually in strict confidence. It's a preliminary draft that needs more peer review. So hold your horses just have a little look see. But because these guys were looking for something to say they went boom, and they went public, which is a problem. So what actually happened there was one other theory that I like. 1996 piece from The Straight Dope said the hospital may have been the site of a secret meth lab.
Will 48:51
Okay, okay.
Rod 48:52
Remember the nicotinaimide? Yeah, and the quote is math chemicals, in inverted commas, like, may have been smuggled out of the hospital in IV bags and one was inadvertently hooked up to Ramirez
Will 49:05
oh my god,
Rod 49:07
which tripped off the round of nausea, headaches and other symptoms that put six ER workers in hospital. Because apparently the smells and symptoms are classic to meth fume exposure
Will 49:17
Oh Jesus.
Rod 49:18
According to an unnamed forensic chemist who analyses drug lab materials. Also, and this is my favourite bit. Meth manufacturing is said to have been big business in Riverside County where the Hospital is located. Authorities have shut down more than 1000 meth labs since 1988. So as of 2022, we do not know what happened that was the last thing I could find. But now that I've dived bomb into the history I'm like, so is the inspiration for stink bomb, but obviously they that movie got quite elaborate. But my favourite bit is the whole rabbit hole, this whole idea of what it might have been that looks like x when it's actually y and they actually started to investigate that as the best thing they could come up with so far. So we're left with a classic maximum, as always, without screw up science would be garbage. That is the takeaway.
Will 50:07
Nice. Well, well, without your meth lab theory, I was like, Okay, we get to go on a little nice rant about complementary and alternative medicines. Yeah. And but but I actually wasn't going to because I thought people all over the world, of course, use other things to assist in their medical journey. The thing about that is we don't know a lot about what might be going on there. And it's like, Ah, so what risks are we adding? What complications are we adding, but you know, we also don't know a lot about where the medicines that are approved and prescribed can go wrong. They clearly can go wrong. They can intermingle with other things, other things can go wrong. So I don't think any doctor is going to recommend rubbing the DMSO
Rod 50:57
watered down industrial degreaser on your body
Will 51:00
watered down or not on to the special bits.
Rod 51:04
Any bits really.
Will 51:05
Yeah, don't. hats off to you chemists.
Rod 51:12
I mean, look, I think the investigative stuff like the little chain of logic is quite amusing. But they don't know.
Will 51:18
What's your gut?
Rod 51:19
DMSO for sure. I'm assuming it is something close to that. I don't believe these people were psycho generally. I don't believe it's physcosomatic. It's hard to get hepatitis psychosomatically
Will 51:29
I believe in psychogenic moments, they absolutely do happen.
Rod 51:33
But not for hepatitis and actual measurable problems with joints.
Will 51:38
Yeah. And the meth lab?
Rod 51:40
Garbage. hilarious. I just love the idea that oh, because there was a meth equivalent in part of the chain of provenance for what happened. So meth?
Will 51:49
so something wrong with Gloria's body. And and probably due to,
Rod 51:50
it seems like the most plausible from what I read that she may have rubbed this gunk on and you can't blame her. She was probably having a horrible time. She had been suffering wildly in pain and all kinds of ways where you and I can't imagine. And if this was common, so this was in the 90s. Apparently that DMSO use that degreaser use was very popular, particularly in the 70s. But it hadn't disappeared. And it was available. It hasn't been disproven and no better theory that I could see has come up that's the best guess.
Will 52:25
God man
Rod 52:26
Fucked up
