The case of the desperately ill spy and the untraceable poison

It sounds like the stuff of Bond films, but 10 years ago the tragic case of ‘Edwin Carter’ presented doctors and police with exactly this scenarioOn the afternoon of 3 November 2006 Edwin Carter arrived at Barnet Hospital, London, in an ambulance. He was vomiting, had bloody diarrhoea, and was in a lot of pain. He had been like this for two days. His own doctor said it looked like typhoid, but it wasn ’t typhoid. Staff at the hospital diagnosed gastroenteritis and started a course of antibiotics.The man ’s condition improved slightly, but there were puzzling discrepancies in his lab results. Someone suffering from a bacterial infection would be expected to have a high white blood cell count, as the body produces more of these cells to fight off the infection. In this case the white blood cell cou nt was very low and decreasing. Perhaps this was a reaction to the antibiotics. Perhaps not.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Forensic science Alexander Litvinenko Source Type: news