Symptoms include vomiting for 8 hours, diarrhea, and numb hands.
Speculation?
It’s probably exposure to a pesticide or strong industrial cleaning chemical.
Here’s a 2015 case of pesticide use at a resort.
The sudden illness certainly sounds like a toxic exposure to some chemical.
I believe that this was the result of some kind of poisoning, as were the mysterious deaths at the resort in the Dominican Republic; whether it be CO, pesticides, etc. will need to be determined by a toxicologist.
It’s probably Lupus.
At least one couple that got sick at the same DR hotel but survived think it was pesticides or organophosphates and I think were treated by a doctor for it. They were younger and survived but still felt terrible effects, I think older people with weaker hearts which I believe the couple and the doctor both had histories of health issues and just couldn’t survive the effects.
Beach apple.
Fine, I’ll do it: It’s NEVER Lupus!
As a WAG they probably ingested a toxin, either a biological or chemical one. However I don’t ‘think’ a biological toxin would make you that sick that fast. So its probably chemical.
I have no idea what one though, or how they got it.
I doubt it was a water borne toxin; I hear such great things about Fiji water.
Since you’re referring to the TV show House, MD, I want to point out that it was based, in part, on the Diagnosis column in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. It’s written by Dr Lisa Sanders, an internist with Yale-New Haven Hospital. In each column, she describes a weird or unusual case, what tests were done and how it was eventually resolved. Not all of the cases are her patients, of course. Many columns relate cases treated by other doctors. It’s a fun read.
I read somewhere else that the likely cause is organophosphate poisoning.
I was also going to guess some neurotoxin. Whether from some weird marine animal or a cleaning compound, I couldn’t guess.
Decades ago I read a book called “medical mysteries” where they talked about organophosphate poisoning. Nasty, and sounds much like the deaths.
But we don’t know if that’s what killed all the victims. For that matter, aren’t organophosphates illegal? If they were routinely used in the Dominican Republic, you would have expected more deaths.
There are many organophosphate pesticides currently licensed for use in the U.S. (36 according to an E.P.A. website, though I’m not sure how current that info is), some of them not legal for home use (such as chlorpyrifos). It wouldn’t surprise me if regulation was less stringent in other countries such as the Dominican Republic.
The symptoms cited by this couple recently vacationing there sound very much like the cholinergic overload symptoms you can get with significant organophosphate exposure, including drooling and abdominal cramping.
If properly used, many of these chemicals don’t cause human health problems. I have rarely used malathion in recent years - it stinks but breaks down quickly and has relatively low toxicity. If one gets careless or uses a product not intended for spraying around human habitation, bad things can happen.
My guess is that someone was using a more potent organophosphate or carbamate pesticide than is commonly used in the US, and probably outside the approved on-label uses. Like say… saturating a mattress to get rid of bed bugs or something similarly insane.
It takes a pretty hefty amount of most of the common ones to actually affect a person like that- they’re aimed at bugs, not people. (the humanicide equivalent would be Tabun (GA), Sarin(GB), Soman(GD), and VX- nerve gases.
Let me hop in my TARDIS first, i’ll go back to the day before they got on the ship and warn them, that oughta’ save 'em….