On the night of February 19, 1994, a passing ambulance broke the tranquility of Riverside, California, USA.
In this ambulance bound for Riverside General Hospital, Gloria Ramirez (hereinafter referred to as Ramirez), who had difficulty breathing and was confused, was quickly taken to the emergency room Rescue.
No one would have expected that from the moment Ramirez entered the emergency room, the medical staff involved in the rescue were blocked by bad luck.
In the next hour, a total of 23 doctors and nurses fell to the ground one after another, and all were accompanied by dizziness, stiffness of limbs and other symptoms.
Later, some of these medical staff lost their lives, some were left with permanent disabilities, and could only rely on crutches.
What happened during this rescue? What happened to Ramirez, the rescued?
All this has to start from the rescue room.
1. The weird patient, the paralyzed medical staff
When the ambulance rushed to Ramirez's home, Ramirez was already confused and talking nonsense. After some simple first aid measures in the car, Ramirez was taken to the nearest Riverside General Hospital.
Abnormal heartbeat, unsteady breathing, and rapid drop in blood pressure, the doctors present have already taken it off. After learning that Ramirez was suffering from cervical cancer, the doctor quickly identified several suitable sedatives based on his experience, hoping to relieve Ramirez's symptoms.
At the same time, nurse Susan Kane is drawing blood for Ramirez at the request of doctor Julie Gorchynski in order to determine the cause more accurately.
When Susan took blood samples for the patient as usual, something strange happened.A foul smell came out, like rotten fruit mixed with garlic.
Thinking of Ramirez as a housewife, it is common to prepare meals for the children and husband on weekdays. Perhaps this smell is left by the food before the illness?
(blood draw)
Thinking of this, Susan didn't worry too much. However, when Ramirez's blood entered the needle tube, Susan was puzzled. Her blood was obviously different from ordinary people, with gray particles floating in it.
Although I am puzzled, it is not the time to find out. The blood was handed to Dr. Julie, and Susan continued the rescue work.
As soon as Julie received Ramirez's blood, Susan felt nauseous and dizzy, and her face was burning like a fire. She fainted before she could call for help.
(blood sample)
Everyone thought that Susan was just too tired, not to mention that Ramirez, who was in a coma, had to be rescued. Everyone simply carried Susan outside to rest, not too much. alert.
At this time, Julie also saw the white particles in the blood, thinking about all possible causes in her head, and Julie also felt dizzy and nauseous at this time. With Susan's lessons learned, Julie hurried to the nurse's station to rest.
"Julie, why did you come out and how do you feel?"
At this time, Julie was unable to respond to the questions of her colleague, and fainted like Susan.
The situation in the emergency room on the other side is also very critical, respiratory therapist Maureen Welch became the third person to faint.
Maureen said in the later description,She suddenly lost consciousness. After waking up, she also felt dizziness and nausea, accompanied by stiffness in her limbs, and did not recover for a long time.
The successive fainting of three people did not end this terrible incident. In the following time, people fainted to the ground without warning.
The symptoms are without exception, nausea and vomiting, cheeks are burning like fire, and I feel stiff limbs and unable to move after waking up.
A total of 23 medical staff fainted during the rescue process, and the hospital leaders could no longer sit still.
Based on the experience analysis of past accidents, everyone believes that it is possible that toxic chemicals have spread into the emergency room, which caused a large number of people to faint.
In order to prevent other patients from being inexplicably injured, the hospital decisively moved all patients to a ventilated parking lot, and dispatched experienced doctors to deal with this unexpected accident.
Second, Ramirez’s final outcome, the hospital’s "ridiculous" explanation
Even though the situation is already so critical, the doctors still took the risk to continue to rescue Ramirez.
When the initial sedative was ineffective, the doctor immediately used electric shock defibrillation to restore Ramirez's heart rate.
(shock defibrillation)
When the nurse cut off Ramirez's coat, everyone saw the oil on her chest and smelled a strange smell like ammonia.
This situation is obviously abnormal. If it is said that Ramirez himself applied essential oil , then this oily shine should cover the whole body, why does it only exist on the front chest now?
No one on the emergency vehicle should smear Ramirez with grease-like liquid. Where does this shine come from?
too late to think about these issues carefully,The doctor continued to defibrillate Ramirez with electric shocks.
It is a pity that the doctors failed to rescue Ramirez by any means. After entering the emergency room within an hour, Ramirez lost his breath.
The treatment in the emergency room is over, and the panic in the hospital is still spreading. If the reason behind this incident is not found, it is possible to faint again at any time.
In order to reduce casualties, all the clothes of the first responders were cut into small pieces and placed in sealed bags and buried deep underground.
Ramirez's body was not handed over to his family, but placed in a closed coffin for storage.
Since all the people who fainted smelled the smell of garlic and ammonia, the investigators immediately thought of highly volatile and highly toxic chemicals.
The emergency room is a relatively confined space, and there are only two ways to spread odor: the sewer and the air-conditioning exhaust outlet.
After careful investigation of the sewers and exhaust vents, no toxic chemicals or other abnormalities were found. This conjecture was quickly overturned.
In the next time, the hospital was checked up and down, and there was no leakage of toxic materials, and no other risks were found.
Therefore, everyone can only learn from the medical staff who have awakened.
"There are off-white particles in the blood."
"There is an oil film on the chest."
"There is a smell of rot, and it looks like ammonia."
heard the unanimous description of the fainted person, The hospital had to accept this terrible reality: Ramirez is likely to be the culprit in the accident.
Even if Ramirez has stopped breathing, no one wants to unplan her body now. One week later, the inspectors wore the most advanced gas masks and the safest protective clothing to de-plan the corpse.
A total of three unplaning were carried out before and after,Ramirez's heart, spleen, kidney and other tissue samples were sent to more than 20 laboratories, but the final results were not satisfactory, except for the detection of Ramirez's body exceeding the standard of dimethyl sulfone, nothing was gained.
dimethyl sulfone itself smells of ammonia, which explains why the medical staff who fainted smelled the smell. However, dimethyl sulfone is not toxic, not to mention it can cause 23 medical staff to faint.
In order to prevent things from continuing to ferment, the report given by the hospital showed that Ramirez died of sudden kidney failure.
(Powdered Dimethyl Sulfone)
As for the accident of collective fainting during the operation, the hospital explained that it was accidental collective hysteria.
Ramirez’s family had no doubts about the results of the hospital’s report, but the medical staff who fainted did not accept this explanation and jointly took the Riverside General Hospital to court.
The reason for bringing the hospital to court is simple. The incidence of mass hysteria among medical workers is not high, basically zero.
More importantly, many of the people who fainted had sequelae, and some suffered permanent disabilities. For example, female physician Julie.
3. Hysteria was cast aside, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Intervention Investigation
After this incident, Julie suffered from hepatitis and pancreatitis, and her legs were also due to ischemia Sexual necrosis left disability.
This situation does not only exist on Julie, some of the medical workers in the emergency room died directly, and those who survived had varying degrees of hepatitis and pancreatitis, and there were not a few people with disabilities.
Julie was the first to disagree with the statement of mass hysteria given by the hospital.
First,The onset group of collective hysteria is the group with poor psychological endurance.
The people who fainted are doctors and nurses. It is not uncommon for patients like Ramirez to suffer from hysteria suddenly.
Even if someone suffers from hysteria under various occasional conditions, it would be a coincidence that 23 staff members have a sudden hysteria at the same time.
Secondly, the sudden collective hysteria is simply the hallucinations of the entire group. This disease only exists on the spiritual level. However, Julie and the others really suffered physical injuries, and because of this, they lost their lifelong sequelae and had to say goodbye to their work in the hospital.
The hospital simply classified their encounter as a result of an "illusion", which naturally could not heal the injured mind and body of Julie and others. So Julie and other injured medical staff sued the Riverside General Hospital.
While the lawsuit was in full swing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (hereinafter referred to as LLNL) began a more in-depth investigation.
(Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
According to previous autopsy reports, LLNL researchers focused on the special substance dimethyl sulfone. Why is there a large amount of dimethyl sulfone in Ramirez's body?
Maybe because she used an analgesic containing dimethyl sulfoxide .
(dimethyl sulfoxide)
Dimethyl sulfoxide is a commonly used pain reliever in the folk. Ramirez is a cancer patient who used dimethyl sulfoxide because of body pain. A reasonable thing.
More importantly, dimethyl sulfoxide is available on the market, and it appears in the form of a gel. The smell of garlic that Susan first smelled and the state of the oil film after cutting the clothes were consistent with the characteristics of dimethyl sulfoxide.
Since Ramirez used dimethyl sulfoxide, why did the autopsy report show that the content of dimethyl sulfone exceeded the standard? What are the off-white crystals appearing in Ramirez’s blood?Is it because the medical staff fainted because of dimethyl sulfoxide?
For the above series of questions, LLNL answered them separately.
When the medical staff shocked Ramirez at the same time, the dimethyl sulfoxide reacted under the action of the electricity to generate dimethyl sulfate .
(dimethyl phosphate)
However, dimethyl sulfate is not stable. Once the electric shock is over, it loses the reaction conditions and becomes dimethyl sulfone. Nurse Susan found that Ramirez’s blood The off-white particles are dimethyl sulfone.
This explanation seems reasonable, because dimethyl sulfone is indeed off-white particles at room temperature, and dimethyl sulfate is indeed toxic.
Unfortunately, this statement did not stand up. On the one hand, the poisoning time of dimethyl sulfate is not so fast, and it usually takes several hours to attack.
On the other hand, the symptoms of dimethyl sulfate poisoning are convulsions and tears. The actual symptoms of poisoning of medical workers are burning sensation on the face, accompanied by nausea and vomiting.
not only did not match the symptoms of poisoning, many scientists at that time used LLNL's explanation to reduce the electric shock of dimethyl sulfoxide into dimethyl sulfate, but unfortunately exhausted all methods without success.
Until today, there is still no more scientific official statement about this matter. As for what happened at that time, everyone just guessed based on these known conditions.
4. Various speculations
1. Conspiracy theory
According to some speculations at the time, Ramirez was not the instigator of this incident, and the black hand behind it was actually the hospital.
(methylamine)
The hospital synthesizes methamphetamine privately for profit,Inadvertently infused methylamine (the synthetic material of the virus) into Ramirez's body, which completed Ramirez's death.
In order to cover up this illegal act, all relevant evidence was erased, so the autopsy report was so perfunctory, and LLNL did not investigate the final result.
This statement only explains the smell of ammonia that everyone smells, but it does not scientifically explain why many medical staff fainted. From a scientific point of view, there are fundamentally many loopholes, which are just as bad as the previous hysteria statement.
This kind of explanation can only be used as entertainment for everyone.
2. Sulfur dioxide poisoning
When everyone reviewed the poisoning reaction that occurred at the time, someone found that everyone had overlooked an important piece of evidence: people who fainted had a burning sensation on their faces.
plus the excess dimethyl sulfone given in the autopsy report, someone suggested a possibility-sulfur dioxide poisoning.
From the performance after poisoning, sulfur dioxide poisoning does produce burning sensation, headache, nausea, nausea and other symptoms.
If this conjecture is reasonable, the sequelae of pneumonia and pancreatitis of Julie and others can also find a reasonable explanation.
So how did sulfur dioxide appear? This goes back to LLNL's conjecture about Ramirez's application of dimethyl sulfoxide.
Dimethyl sulfoxide has a strong reducibility, the temperature of the emergency room is suitable, the oxygen content is relatively high, and sulfur dioxide is formed under constant electric shock.
As the frequency of electric shocks increased, so did the concentration of sulfur dioxide, which caused 23 medical staff to be poisoned.
This speculation does seem reasonable at first glance, but why does Julie and others have physical disabilities? Can dimethyl sulfoxide turn into sulfur dioxide? All this is still unknown.
Summary:
has no way to explain the mystery that happened in the last century.Ramirez was reported as a "super poisonous girl" by many media after his death.
Compared to various scientific explanations, everyone seems to be more inclined to hospital conspiracy theories, because one after another, people fainted, it is impossible for them to have no traces. The most likely reason is that the hospital destroyed the evidence.
(Pictures of Ramirez's daughter and mother)
However, all this is just speculation after all, and there is no sufficient evidence to provide strong support.
And the truth of the matter may become another unsolved mystery...
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