A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them in Science and Inquiry

Mar 13, 2022 Petra X rated it liked it

Shelves: getting-a-bit-personal-here, reviewed, 2022-read, medicine-science, 2022-reviews, psycho-neurology-crime

Review "The 'Final Solution". Fill in the missing word: "During World War II, hydrogen cyanide was used to gas thousands of [*] in the death camps of Aushwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek as part of the so-called Final Solution." That was an excerpt of the book. Did you think the missing word was Jews? I did. It wasn't, it was prisoners. And what's all this "so-called Final Solution"? It does make you think, doesn't it? Writing of any book is as much about the author as the subject.

The subject of the b ...more

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Mar 31, 2022 David Rubenstein rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, science, biology, chemistry

This book is a marvelous blend of stories about crime, and biochemistry. I love how the author describes each type of poison in a separate chapter, interleaving stories about crimes committed with the poison's chemical and biological characteristics. A major theme in the book is the multiple uses of these poisons. The lethality of many of them depend on dosage; at low dosage these poisons are actually in use to improve health in some way!

The crime stories are absolutely fascinating. Here are som This book is a marvelous blend of stories about crime, and biochemistry. I love how the author describes each type of poison in a separate chapter, interleaving stories about crimes committed with the poison's chemical and biological characteristics. A major theme in the book is the multiple uses of these poisons. The lethality of many of them depend on dosage; at low dosage these poisons are actually in use to improve health in some way!

The crime stories are absolutely fascinating. Here are some examples:

"Gin and tonic" was invented by the British in the mid-1800s. It consisted of gin, sugar, lime, and a quinine tonic. The gin, sugar, and lime were used to mask the bitter taste of quinine, which was discovered to prevent malaria. However, during the Napoleonic era, French physicians assumed that since quinine, a bitter white powder, was medically useful for treating malaria, that all bitter white powders would also be beneficial. Strychnine is also a bitter white powder, so ...

In 2017, Betty Miller lived in a retirement home in Vermont. She harvested castor beans on the home's property, and processed them to make ricin. She put the ricin in the food of other residents. She wanted to test the effectiveness of ricin as a poison, before using it to commit suicide. However, none of the residents became very sick, because her ricin was not pure, and ingestion of ricin is not an effectivve route for poisoning. Today, research is being done to see if ricin could be targeted to kill cancer cells.

Alexander Litvinenko was a KGB agen, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, he became an FSB agent. He found evidence that his superiors were colluding with a crime syndicate that was trafficking heroin from Afghanistan to Western Europe. He alleged that Putin was personally involved in a cover up. He later defected to the West. In 2005, while living in the UK, he was poisoned with polonium-210. It is suspected that Putin himself gave the order to poison him!

I am very much puzzled by the stories about arsenic. It accumulates in the body, so it can be used in a series of small doses to simulated a slowly-worsening natural illness. On the other hand, consider the people living in the region of Styria in Austria, home of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many people there regularly eat arsenic as a health tonic! They start with small doses, and gradually build up an immunity. There seems to be some truthg that a series of small, increasing doses does provide some health benefit. But, how does this reconcile with its usage as poisoning in small, cumulative doses?

I was encouraged to start this book because of the high ratings here on Goodreads. But before I started reading it, I thought that this would not be an interesting book. But -- it is a real page-turner for me! It is so well-written, and the blend of chemistry and crime is presented so nicely. I highly recommend this book! ...more

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