JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

>>> I'm curious about this story or report you read. Do you have a citation?
>> I'm sure I have a copy of the original report,
>> but it's in a box which although it's about 20
>> feet from me now, it's behind and under a whole
>> bunch of other stuff. Perhaps this summer I'll
>> get to that layer, then again perhaps not. :-)
>>
>> If I recall correctly, the EMT crew did not see
>> a response by the iris to light, and decided the
>> guy was dead based on that.
>
>
> I remember the news stories being pretty spooky, especially since they said
> some people didn't understand that cooking would not destroy the toxins in
> some cases.

I was watching Alton Brown last night and wasn't paying a whole lot of
attention but he discussed the legal requirement of tagged bags of
mussels so if illness was detected they could trace backwards...

The toxin issue is interesting, as of course there are diseases
(Guillain Barre for example) as well as other food toxin poisonings
(i.e.botulism) that manifest into nerve paralysis (causing respiratory
paralysis) but my alarm is wondering how the first responders decided
the guy was already dead on the scene with so little evidence of death
to go on? We have rules about this stuff such as "no one is dead until
they're warm and dead" LOL (which is important for those cold weather or
drowning victims) and pupillary response is hardly anything to go by.
Short of a few unpleasant obvious signs of death those folks aren't
always in the best place to determine that the guy was already a goner,
y'know?