The thin-branched, flowering tree bears a deadly harvest: a softball-sized fruit with seeds so toxic they can stop a heart. In the 19th century in Madagascar, where the tree is also found, thousands of people per year died after consuming the seed in “trials by ordeal” believed to determine whether they were guilty of witchcraft or other crimes. And a 2004 study found that it’s responsible for roughly a death per week in Kerala, most of them suicides. Researchers believe that more people have taken their own life using othalanga than any other plant in the world.
May 8, 2015
Othalanga, the suicide tree.
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12 comments:
We have found the replacement for lethal injection. Better yet, it is natural, gluten-free, preservative free, and organic.
I found this typical and hilariously idiotic,
" Toxicologists told Agence France Presse that between 70 and 75 percent of those who use the fruit to commit suicide are female, raising questions about the kinds of pressures faced by women that would drive them to such desperate measures."
Raising questions with who? It is well known that in India, as elsewhere, the male suicide rate is twice that of females.
PLEASE---Let me cater the next DNC conference!!!!
A cheap herbal remedy for old people who cost the family money. No one tell the professionals at the Medical Ethics Departments or we will all be serving this stuff to mother at mother's day.
These Indian youth are the poor ones wanting a better life from cheap electricity that comes from carbon based energy fuels. So they all deserve to die according to the NYT Liberals.
Hmmm. Does Oregon have a State Tree?
Is it a painful death?
This does sound like a chemical that would be fascinating to study.
I will stick to trial by apple seed. It contains a small amount of cyanide, and if you bite into one, it releases a warm glow across your tongue similar to biting into a liquor-filled candy.
It started out as a potentially interesting article about a poisonous tree, but it finished abruptly as yet another plaintive article about the pressures that women face.
I remember a time when I felt like I learned things by reading newspapers.
MadisonMan said..."This does sound like a chemical that would be fascinating to study."
It is. It's structurally quite similar to the cardiac drug, digoxin.
Other plants that can kill you, off the top of my head: jimson weed seeds, many mushrooms, castor seeds, oleander leaves. Any allergy-inducing plant that leads to anaphylaxis, like peanuts, which can also choke you to death. None of which are intentionally ingested for suicidal purposes, as far as I know.
And loggers might make a case for any number of tree species as pretty dangerous when using a gravity assist.
Surely a substance that can be used for suicide can also be used for murder?
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