I just watched “Luftslottet”, from series one, in which people are murdered using, presumably, pharmaceutical-grade botulinum toxin (“Botox” is the word used, natch) in food. Now, any time someone is poisoned in a cop- or mystery drama, my bullshit alarms start going off, but the assertion that a cosmetic surgeon had access to an “unlimited” supply of toxin really encouraged me to look into the thing.
The numbers floored me. Not the fact that BoNT is crazy poisonous—I knew that already—but the sheer impossibility of what was depicted. It has me wondering if there isn’t something wrong with my reasoning and/or information sources.
Allergan claims a specific activity of approximately 20 units/ng of neurotoxin complex for BOTOX Cosmetic. According to this study, 100 units of Botox contains about 0.73 ng of BoNT/A.
According to the Louisiana Department of Health, an esitimated lethal oral dose of BoNT/A for a 70-kg person is 70 mcg.
By my reckoning, that means that that 70-kg person would have to swallow the contents of somewhere between 14,000 and 95,890 100-unit vials of Botox to ensure a lethal dose.
BOTOX Cosmetic is apparently the least concentrated BoNT product on the market, but even the strongest contain just a few nanograms per vial. As in hundreds, or more likely thousands, of vials to get a lethal oral dose.
Does that sound right to y’all?
(Oh, yeah, and a couple of dogs were killed too, which seems even less likely.)
So you’re saying something on TV wouldn’t really work they way they said? :dubious:
Could the killer have had some other source of the toxin besides commercial vials of prepared medicine?
I image a live culture could produce an unlimited amount. More or less like brewing beer. The world’s most deadly beer.
It gives an air of exclusivity, but it seems it would be easier for your cosmetic surgeon to be a carpenter who has unlimited access to tupperware and raw meat.
I don’t really care that a TV cop show got something wrong. Really, this should probably have been a GQ topic, but since anything remotely TV-related seems to be getting moved…
Anyhow, I was pretty sure one vial wouldn’t do the job but, jeez, 100,000? I didn’t expect that.
You said the cosmetic version is the least-concentrated product. Are there other products with plausible amounts of poison?
Because those little cosmetic vials aren’t cheap, even in bulk.
I don’t think so. The disparity between a lethal oral dose and an injected one would appear to be so large that I doubt any such product could be considered even remotely safe.
It really does look as though leaving mayonnaise out in the sun would be far more practical.
Nitpick: Pure mayonnaise isn’t all that dangerous, since it doesn’t have enough water for bacteria to grow in it. The problem comes with things like macaroni salad, where you have both mayo and a source of moisture.
But not for botulism. What makes botulism special is that it’s anaerobic. Oxygen kills it, which is why it was/is found in improperly pasteurized canned and jarred goods. It’s also destroyed by acid, so things like preserves typically were safe (from botulism, that is. Other bacteria or fungi might still infect them.)
Your best bet to make some would be to get some meat, put it in a jar with a little bit of raw honey (raw honey typically contains botulism spores, but is so hydroscopic they can’t reproduce and produce botulism toxin,) and then seal that sucker up, preferably with one of those foodsaver jar thingies that can pump out all the air (and therefore oxygen) inside.
I once heard an interview with a consultant to a medical T.V. show, who said that if it’s something that could save a life, they try to make it as accurate as possible, but if it’s something that could kill someone, they try to make it inaccurate enough that it won’t work if anyone tries it. Maybe they’re just hoping that the next idiot who tries to poison someone orally using Botox will mistakenly give them only a tiny, nonlethal dose.