CNN Breaking: Doctors say Yushchenko poisoned by dioxins

[Cooley Hurd]

According to CNN, they say there is "no doubt" he was poisoned.

From the red banner at cnn.com:

Doctors in Austria say Ukraine opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's mysterious ailment was caused by poisoning. Details soon.

Poison on lips of Yushchenko (Herald Sun link)

from correspondents in Vienna
12dec04

DOCTORS in Vienna have received some of the results of medical tests carried out to determine whether Ukrainian Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned.

"The results are partly available ... we are in the process of verifying them," said Dr Nicolai Kopran, who treated a gravely-ill Yushchenko in the Austrian capital in September.

He spoke shortly after Mr Yushchenko said that he was increasingly convinced that he had been poisoned and that forensic tests could be made public soon to set the record straight on the mystery illness plaguing him.

Mr Yushchenko, 50, fell ill on September 6 and, four days later, was admitted to the Rudolfinerhaus private clinic in Vienna, where he remained until September 19.
</snip>

[noclonyofthechimp]

1. They did verify it, huh? They were suspicious of this.

[elehhhhna]

2. What a horrible thing. Supposedly his face will return to Gorgeous,

slowly. This man has a wife (from Chicago!) and 3 kids under the age of 5. How scary and disgusting.

[puddycat]

6. appearance is least of his worries. Let's hope he doesn't get cancer.

People who get over-doses of dioxins are known to end up with cancers. (I'm thinking here of people exposed to dioxins on the job, and it looks like his case is even worse)

[amazona]

10. appearance would not be the least of my worries

People are cruel and we live in a visual society.

I just erased a long post about a personal experience. It just hits too close to home. Suffice it to say that there were times in my experience that I would have been happy to die if there was no hope that I could ever look normal.

I hope the poisoners are caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Disfigurement is meant to terrify, not just to kill.

[puddycat]

44. I doubt if his attackers meant to disfigure--they meant to kill probably

I just read the BBC report of the Austrian doctors, and evidently nobody before this even had any experience with what a massive sudden dose of dioxin would do to the human body. By all accounts he is lucky to be alive, and according to the report the choracne will wear off after 2-3 years. However, the potential future harm to his pancreas, etc. is unknown.

By the way, I know full well how surface-oriented people are in the USA--most of us do, who aren't perfect in appearance, especially women. In the Ukraine, at least, it doesn't seem to be stopping his supporters from supporting him, but I wonder what Americans would do if their favorite politician suddenly became ugly.

[Wabbajack]

50. WILL his face clear up?

or is it permanent?

[Maccagirl]

3. All you had to do was look at the before/after photos

of him to realize something was terribly wrong. He also complained of terrible stomach and back pain. So the MSM is actually not downplaying this? What would their reaction be if it happened here?

[izzie]

4. Maybe he should hired Bush's food tester?

[elehhhhna]

5. maybe he did.

[papau]

11. LOL - Bush would take sides in an OIL dispute - NEVER! :-)

Family values - oh heck - Bush family values

yeah - Bush family values - I agree -Bush helped him with an official taster!

:-)

[Spiffarino]

7. Dioxin easy to administer as a poison

From Reuters: There is no doubt," Dr Michael Zimpfer, president of the Rudolfinerhaus clinic where Yushchenko is undergoing treatment, told a news conference."There were high concentrations of dioxin, most likely orally administered."


It was impossible to determine, he said, how the poisoning had taken place. "We weren't there and we will leave that to the legal authorities to decide."


Zimpfer said dioxin was soluble and would therefore be easy to administer in something like a cream soup.


"We suspect a cause triggered by a third party," he said.

[dummy-du1]

20. Strange story

Zimpfer said dioxin was soluble and would therefore be easy to administer in something like a cream soup.


AFAIK, dioxins are not water soluble. I wouldn't call that easy to administer: obviously a cream soup is necessary because of its high fat content, otherwise the lipophilic dioxins wouldn't dissolve in the soup.

The other point that disturbs me in this story: what took them so long to find that out? If the poison had been hydrophilic, it would have been harder to find traces of the poison if they did not have a chance to get samples of body fluid that were taken shortly after the supposed poisoning. But dioxins have the property to concentrate in body fat tissues for very long times, so it would have been much easier to determine the used poison even months after the poisoning.

I really don't know what to make of this story.

[BrightKnight]

53. They attacked the Orange Revolution with Agent Orange.

Has Rove has been moonlighting for Putin?

[daleo]

37. It is supposed to have a very metallic taste

It is hard to believe he would have willingly eaten a whole bowl of something like that. Furthermore, it is not soluble in water, but is in fat, so any poisoning agent would have to be carefully chosen for that purpose.

I wonder what quantity of pure dioxin would be needed to be administered orally to have this effect. I still want to see independent analysis of the blood chemistry, etc. The Bush administration and their cronies in the media have pulled off worse propaganda coups than this. They have turned me into a perfect skeptic when it comes to political machinations.

Even if he was poisoned, there is still much to know about this story, and I can almost guarantee there will be some suspicious twists.

On edit - Dioxin pollution was quite the concern in the 1980's in Canada. The right wing has been trying to play it down since then. Interesting that it should show up in this context. I guess it is time to start googling about the biochemistry of dioxins.

[emad]

8. From The Guardian: "in the soup"????

Doctors: Yushchenko Poisoned With Dioxin


VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The mysterious illness of Ukrainian opposition leader and presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was caused by dioxin poisoning that was likely intentional, doctors said Saturday.

``There is no doubt about the fact that Mr. Yushchenko's disease has been caused by a case of poisoning by dioxin,'' said Dr. Michael Zimpfer, director of Vienna's private Rudolfinerhaus clinic.

Zimpfer said Yushchenko's blood and tissue registered concentrations of dioxin 1,000 times above normal levels.

``It would be quite easy to administer this amount in a soup,'' Zimpfer said, adding that tests showed the dioxin was taken orally. ``The criminal investigation does not fit within our purview but ... there is suspicion of third-party involvement.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4667107,00.html

[leQ]

17. didn't newsweek uncover a dinner with security chief the nite before?

can't find the link right now, but it seems i read that yushchenko had dinner with the country's security chief the nite before he fell ill.

[Willy Lee]

9. Totally out of control.

I hope he has a speedy recovery,

[Bono71]

12. What I want to know is, why the other side isn't condemning it...

Hmmm, wonder why?

[wordout]

13. maybe they had nothing to do with it.

neocons would never "pull" the towers and blame somebody else.

[makhno]

21. The investigation is ongoing

Doctors don't know if the apparent poisoning was criminal or accidental.

[underpants]

14. Lok at the before an after and you tell me

Yushcenko was a good looking guy



This composite photo depicts Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader and top presidential candidate, before and after his mysterious illness. On the left, Yushchenko is seen after he submitted his candidacy papers in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on July 4, 2004. On the right, Yushchenko, with his face disfigured by illness, is seen at the presidential Mariinsky palace in Kiev, Monday, Dec. 6, 2004. The cause of the illness that has left Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's face pockmarked is still not known, the director of the hospital that treated him said Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004. rejecting a report that the presidential candidate was poisoned.(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

[IndianaGreen]

15. And MSNBC is reporting Arafat may have been poisoned as well

Looks like assassins have been working with new poisons that escape traditional detection methods.

Re:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6698050/

[emad]

16. Pinochet next, maybe Thatcher after, even Poppy himself in line?

??

[geek tragedy]

28. Nothing but idle speculation and conspiracy mongering.

This is political propaganda from a member of Arafat's Tunisian mafia, not credible medical analysis.

[flordehinojos]

18. this must be why bush travels with a food taster. i wondr how much they

pay the guy who is willing to die for such a scum bag!

[arikara]

24. I've heard this food taster mentioned before...

does _bush really have a human food taster? For one thing, it would only be effective on fast acting toxins. And for another, who would be stupid enough to take on a job like that?

[flordehinojos]

29. this quote is from Sheila Samples' article "I Know Who I am, and Who I May

Be, if I Chose." Notice the mention of a food taster. The quote from the article refers to Bush's trip to London last November.

"Bush arrived with a protection squad of nearly 700 to bolster the 5,000 British boots on the ground, 100 journalists, a personal chef, a food taster, four cooks, medics and a 15-strong sniffer dog team. Special agents and snipers were ordered to "shoot to kill" protesters who got out of line. The giant windmills in London whirled so threateningly that Bush and his journalists were in virtual lockdown at Buckingham, which is probably why there were no "public interest" articles written about this fiasco. When the Blackhawks finally whisked them away, the Queen's prized, century-old rose garden was stomped and shredded beyond repair."

The article is showcased in today's DU's homepage under the title "Mr. President" of la Mancha.

[LiberalAndProud]

19. Ukrainian candidate poisoned with dioxin, doctor says

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=54&u_sid=1282679

Zimpfer said Yushchenko's blood and tissue registered concentrations of dioxin _ one of the most toxic chemicals _ that were 1,000 times above normal levels.

"It would be quite easy to administer this amount in a soup," Zimpfer said.

Tests run over the past 24 hours provided conclusive evidence of the poisoning, Zimpfer said.

When first seen by the Austrian doctors, Yushchenko was in a "critical stage" but was "not on the verge of dying," Zimpfer said.

"If this dose had been higher, it may have caused death," Zimpfer said.

[goforit]

22. Probably straigt from *'s helpers.

[depakid]

23. Dioxin Poisoning

This is deadly stuff, folks- and talk about 'normal levels' is just foolish.

The LD 50 in dogs is: 30-300 µg/kg, oral (that's micrograms).

Characteristic effects:

Humans/mammals: 2,3,7,8-TCDD is the compound with the most severe toxic effect of all PCDD/F. Acute poisoning mainly affects the skin and the liver as well as the peripheral and central nervous system. Additionally, psychic disorientation and effects on the immune system (in animal experiments) have been observed.

Chloracne is a typical and long-lasting symptom of acute poisoning by TCDD. The affected skin may also show overpigmentation. Liver damage results in an increased level of transaminase and fat content in the blood. Intestinal disturbances with diarrhoea have been observed as well as damage to the coronary vessels and the urinary tracts.

The effects on the nervous system manifest themselves in excitability, nervousness, headaches, temporary insomnia and decrease of the visual and aural capacity. As yet, carcinogenic effects have only been established in animal experiments; teratogenic effects have not yet been proven.

[daleo]

42. I read this LD50 dose to be 30 to 300 parts per million

According to this article in the British Medical Journal, a normal background concentration would be about 2 parts per trillion (if we assume that people in Viet Nam are generally near normal, which may not be the case due to Agent Orange). Yushchenko was supposed to have had 1000 times background, which would be about 2 parts per billion. Expressed in parts per billion, you LD50 in dogs is about .03 to .3 parts per billion. So, his level of dioxin was high, but still only about 1% to 10% of the LD50 dose. Interesting, the Viet Namese people with 413 ppt (or .4 ppb) were at about 20% of Yushchenko's level. I wonder if they had similar symptoms?

I hope my math is correct (I know my spelling of certain names isn't).

NEWS:
David Spurgeon
Traces of Agent Orange are found in food in Vietnam
BMJ, Sep 2003; 327: 521.
The Agent Orange herbicide, containing tetrachlorodibenzop-dioxin (TCDD), was sprayed in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971, primarily as a defoliant. Typical blood concentrations of TCDD among Vietnamese people are 2 ppt (parts per trillion), but concentrations as high as 413 ppt were found in Bien Hoa City.

[goforit]

49. Is there an anedote for this drug???.....Any Medical DUr's??

[LisaL]

25. Well, if that is so, why couldn't they find what it was

when he got sick? Presumably, it would have been a lot easier than so much later after the fact. Do dioxins even stay in the blood that long for them to presumably find them now?

[savistocate]

26. Website from Ukraine -updates Journal

and morebackground.

http://orangeukraine.squarespace.com

[makhno]

35. Rather biased site, isn't it

At least they're being honest about it, unlike your post, which helpfully fails to mention just whose "background" the link provides.

[geek tragedy]

27. But Vladimir Putin has such a good soul.

:puke:

[Chicago Democrat]

30. Welcome to Bush World &

Putin World....


Two birds of a feather.

The planet is doomed.

[Massachusetts]

31. When

are the Aliens coming back to reclaim this place?:tinfoilhat:

[Dem2theMax]

52. Hopefully tomorrow.

And I'm calling 'shotgun' for the front seat of the spaceship. ;)

[OETKB]

32. This story is not clear yet.

Dioxin is a class name for a series of compounds that are found everywhere on earth. It is heavier than water and sinks. As far as I can see from reading the effects take place over time. What happened to this man still does not make total sense. Finding high dioxin may be a product of eating in the wrong places for an extended period. We still don't know enough.

[bettyellen]

36. they believe it was a high dose, he suddenly took ill after a dinner with

security peole from ?? forgot the name of it, but it's the agency that replaced the KGB. After that dinner, he took ill w/ symptoms consistent w. high level of dioxin taken orally.
i don't know why they couldn't diagnose it correctly immediately though.

[makhno]

38. More to the point

Why couldn't "they" poison him properly? This story smells of propaganda, especially if it transpires in the future that the good President-select Yushchenko has no long-term effects on his health.

[DeepModem Mom]

33. CNN Int.'s report includes Y's wife, who they say is an American citizen

I didn't know that.

[makhno]

34. It's becoming popular among the US puppets in the FSU

Saakashvili, Yushchenko - American advisers, American-born or educated wives, American money. It's sad that these countries have never seen a period of true independence, going quickly from being Soviet republics to American client-states.

[daleo]

40. I think she was the one that was a member of the Heritage Foundation

And other right wing causes. Or that could be his running mate. One of them anyway. There seem to be pretty deep waters on all sides.

[makhno]

41. His wife is a right-wing corporatist

Kathy -- she is now known as Kateryna -- is one of the brightest, most dedicated conservatives I have ever known. She has an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and is well versed in that school's free market economics tradition. The first time we ever met was at a Heritage Foundation event.

<...> I helped get her a position there with KPMG, an American consulting company, where she trained Ukrainians in Western methods of banking, accounting and other fundamentals of a market economy.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/printbb20041026.shtml

Yushchenko's running mate, Timoshenko, is as corrupt as anything that part of the world has seen in the past ten years. Her husband was convicted on charges of fraud and she herself is wanted in Russia.

[daleo]

43. Thanks for the details.

I thought it was something like that.

[savistocate]

46. "thought it was something like that" -that's a conservative

website. I wouldn't jump on that.

makhno says --"at least they're honest unlike your post which helpfully
fails to mention whose 'background' the link provides"---
The website title IS __orangeukraine. This needs to be more specific then?

Weird just weird is the wild leap without a net into--"sounds like a suicide attempt".

[daleo]

51. I had heard about the U.S. connection from other sources

It just refreshed my memory. I don't see why a right wing source would plant untrue stories that this man's wife had been connected with right wing causes in the U.S. - it seems she was tight with the U.S. administration during the Reagan/Bush I era. I think that is relevant to the current power jockeying going on in the Ukraine, particularly as it relates to the east-west dynamic. From the same source:

"As it happens, I know Yushchenko’s wife, Katherine Chumachenko, an American of Ukrainian descent. She and I met in the late 1980s when she was working in the human rights bureau at the State Department. Later, we worked together at the White House, where she was in the Office of Public Liaison, and the Treasury Department, where she was in the executive secretary’s office.

Kathy — she is now known as Kateryna — is one of the brightest, most dedicated conservatives I have ever known. She has a MBA from the University of Chicago and is well versed in that school’s free-market economics tradition. The first time we ever met was at a Heritage Foundation event.

Anyone who met Kathy quickly discovered that the liberation of the Ukraine from communist tyranny was her primary mission in life, to the exclusion of almost everything else. So it was no surprise to me when she moved to Kiev soon after it broke free of Moscow’s control in 1991. I helped get her a position there with KPMG, an American consulting company, where she trained Ukrainians in Western methods of banking, accounting, and other fundamentals of a market economy."

I didn't see anything about suicide attempts, so I don't get your reference.

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200410270757.asp

On edit - I see the suicide reference in a later post. For the record, I certainly don't think his condition is a suicide attempt or intentionally self administered poison. But, there are many other possibilities other than getting a load of dioxin in a bowl of soup.

[daleo]

39. Another interesting comparison with ancient Rome

Some people have noted how the U.S. has seemed to parallel the history of the Roman Empire lately, when it went from a republican form of government to government by an Emperor. Now the talk of poisoning is in the air, rather like that period in ancient Rome. Robert Graves devotes a fair bit to the subject in "I Claudius". The collective unconsciouses is an interesting phenomenon.

[enki23]

45. very weird. i wouldn't jump on that one.

obviously he wasn't administered straight "dioxin" (if they're talking about 2,3,7,8-TCDD anyway). exactly how much dioxin did they find? it sounds oddly like he self-administered something... like a suicide attempt? do they still manufacture 2,4,5-T in ukraine? dioxins aren't made, except for extremely small amounts for research purposes. and if you took any measurable dose of such a substance, you'd just be dead. period. i truly doubt anyone alive knows what "dioxin" tastes like on someone's lips, if anything of the sort has ever even happened anyway.

weird. just weird.

however... is that a nasty bit of chloracne he has going? i don't know what it actually looks like.

[dummy-du1]

57. Bullshit

Too bad that nobody was allowed to see the candidate's face shortly after his poisoning. This chloracne meme was originally created by a doctor that has only seen photos of his already healing facial lesions. They could also have been caused by a severe case of steroid acne. Perhaps he tried to rejuvenate himself, made a dumb mistake and overdosed. The Former Soviet Republics are a main producer of steroids (especially for black markets) on the Eurasian continent, and I guess it's pretty easy for anybody to get them there.

So his doctors say they think it was dioxin, but they still don't know for sure. The doctor who said it first in an interview, broke his duty to keep the patient's information confidential (Ärztegeheimnis) to do so. Did he forget his obligation? I guess he won't be punished for it anytime soon. The more I hear about this story the more I think I am just fed bullshit.

[rndmprsn]

47. KGB has a LONG history of political poisoning

and their predecessors under the czars too.

[makhno]

54. Who did they poison, besides Markov? [nt]

[dummy-du1]

58. Hmm, why do they still suck at doing it after such a LONG practice? n/t

[Hosnon]

48. Putin

I'd like to think that if he was involved he is somewhere in the Kremlin going:

(under his breath) "god damn freakin' free(er) press!!!"

over and over again.

[Guarionex]

55. Not surprised....

incredible...what a world we live in...

the poor guy looks like a frog...i hope he recovers

[Carl Brennan]

56. Dioxin is key component of Agent Orange.

Apparently the Soviets and CIA both have used it.

http://www.peace.ca/usabiologicalwarcolumbia.htm
...In 1965 the US Army and the Dow Chemical Company injected dioxin into
70 prisoners (most of them black) at the Holmesburg State Prison in
Pennsylvania. The prisoners developed severe lesions which went untreated
for seven months. A year later, the US Army set about the most ambitious
chemical warfare operation in history.
From 1966 to 1972, the United States dumped more than 12 million
gallons of Agent Orange (a dioxin-powered herbicide) over about 4.5
million acres of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The government of
Vietnam estimate the civilian casualties from Agent Orange at more than
500,000. The legacy continues with high levels of birth defects in areas
that were saturated with the chemical. Tens of thousands of US soldiers
were also the victims of Agent Orange.

[enki23]

59. it wasn't a "component." it was a contaminant

one they didn't even know existed at the time. the agent orange story wasn't one of malfeasance, at least initially. subsequent attempts to cover it up may well have been, of course. in any case, the herbicide wasn't "dioxin powered." that's just wrong. it was a contaminant produced in extremely small quantities (keep in mind, though, that it's extremely toxic) in the production of 2,4,5-T. Agent orange was a name for a mix (or various mixes) of herbicide compounds including (possibly among others?) 2,4-D, which didn't contain significant quantities of dioxin, and 2,4,5-T, which did. even so, the quantities found in 2,4,5-T still weren't very large, certainly not large enough to elicit recognizable acute effects from the dioxin itself. the possible long-term effects of the low-dose repeated exposures, however, are another matter. and the true kicker is that the stuff is extremely persistent, highly fat soluble, and thus prone to bioaccumulation and biomagnification.

anyway, it's more an object lesson in an environmental and human-health sense about the assumed safety of some of the synthetic chemicals we use every day than an example of opressive state actions. both 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T were in general use at the time, i believe. we didn't know anything about dioxins at the time, and probably didn't have the technology to measure the extremely low quantities of the stuff we're talking about. nobody really knew any better at the time it was done. but like the tobacco companies should have learned, the subsequent coverup is itself a crime.