Medicine: Canned Death

For the vacationing Nelson family from Kansas City, it was a festive family dinner down on the farm—Grandpa Aaron Gruwell’s farm at Idaho Falls, Idaho. Kenneth Nelson, 45, a mechanic, and his wife Naomi had driven west with their five children, aged 4 to 15. Grandma Gruwell always set a good table. This time she served home-canned beets, but explained at the dining table: “I didn’t can these myself. I got them from a friend, and they taste to me like they need a bit more vinegar.”

Last week, because of the beets, Aaron Gruwell was dead. So were Kenneth Nelson (after lingering more than a week, part of the time in an iron lung) and daughter Wanda, 15. Naomi Nelson, just out of an iron lung, might take months to recover fully. Martha Nelson. 4, was running around but still under observation. Grandma Gruwell, 64, was propped up in a hospital bed, apparently on the mend. Three children—Eileen, 14, Allen, 10, and Donald, 8, who had not eaten the beets—were in good health.

Cause of the disaster, as in similar instances rarely but regularly reported in the U.S., was botulin—a deadly nerve poison secreted by a microbe (Clostridium botulinum), probably from soil. The germs produce botulin only under airless conditions, are hard to kill even by boiling. And since the beets were served cold, Mrs. Gruwell had not boiled them—which might have destroyed the poison.

Though it is the most concentrated poison known (one ounce could, theoretically, kill 100 million people), the botulin did not show its effects until the next day. Then the Gruwells and the four beet-eating Nelsons started to get headaches, feel dizzy, see double. Soon they could not swallow or speak clearly. They were taken to Idaho Falls’ Latter-day Saints’ Hospital, where their illness was quickly diagnosed. But then the doctors’ difficulties began.

The only antidote for botulism, and only moderately effective at best, is a Ledejle Laboratories antitoxin (made by injecting botulinus toxin into horses and extracting their immune serum). It costs about $68 a 20,000-unit vial, and each victim needs at least 50,000 units. Nearest supply was in Portland, Ore.: six vials. More was flown from Denver and Los Angeles. Still not enough. At its Pearl River (N.Y.) headquarters, Lederle drained the barrel, packaged nearly all the remaining antitoxin. Total haul: 139 vials, tagged at $9.591—which Lederle marked “paid,” as a public service.