On 2009/04/24, at 2:23 PM, Harry Wyeth wrote:
As a horse owner, I am shocked by the deaths of the polo horses in
Florida. It seems there was a pharmacy error in compounding the
stuff that was given the horses that died. I will try, and maybe
others can also, to see if there was a metric/"traditional" mixup in
preparing the compound.
See
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7411620&page=1
HARRY WYETH
Dear Harry,
Some further information that might be useful to your investigation.
It is from the bottom of the page at: http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/2236121/posts?page=8
To: CindyDawg
It’s a routine supplement — B12, selenium, potassium, and magnesium —
all stuff that any 10 year old can buy off the supplement shelf at any
drugstore. Math matters. Most substances can kill in large enough
quantities, even water. I suspect the selenium in this case, because
potassium toxicity is so well-known (plenty of human deaths from
potassium overdoses in hospitals) and the amount of potassium it would
take to kill a horse would be massive. And potassium would probably
have killed faster if it was going to at all — it’s commonly used for
deliberate lethal injections.
I bumped into a story about a 75 year old Australian man who read on
the internet that selenium might prevent prostate cancer, purchase
bulk sodium selenite powder (the form of selenium in the brand-name
product that was supposedly copied for these horses), took 100,000
times the safe dose (he took 10 grams), and died 6 hours later despite
intensive medical treatment. That sounds like about the same time
frame as these horses, who had reportedly been given the supplement
earlier the same day.
And this looks like a recipe for Biodyl
To: bobsatwork
Grams, instead of milligrams in this case (microgram doses of selenium
are for humans).
Each 100 ml of Biodyl contains:
Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12)..........0.05 g
Sodium selenite................................. 100 mg
Potassium aspartate semihydrate ..... 1.000 g
Magnesium aspartate tetrahydrate..... 1.500 g
Excipient q.s. .................................. 100 ml
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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