A reader sent me this very different take on Yuschenko’s disfiguring ailment by Justin Raimundo. He claims we should not accept uncritically the universal conclusion from the press that Yuschenko was poisoned, especially because it comes from the administrative director of the Viennese clinic where he was evaluated, not the medical director, who resigned during the furor after reportedly having his life threatened for disputing the conclusions his boss had announced. Raimundo has little besides this circumstantial evidence, his instincts that something was funny about the ‘poisoned-by-the-bad-guys’ scenario, his mistrust of the mainstream media, and the assumptions he cites of several others to the effect that the story is anti-Russian propaganda spread by reactionary elements in the U.S. Just because a story fits the worldview of the powers-that-be doesn’t a priori mean it is false, it seems to me, although it makes it far more likely [grin]…
A similar assumption that the mainstream media version is either “misinformation or disiinformation” appears here, although his piece is colored by the weblog’s a priori agenda of showing that the US press does not understand Europe.
Then there is this medical weblog which argues against the dioxin-poisoning assertions on two grounds. First, the weblogger does not think dioxin makes a good murder weapon because it takes so long to kill. This assumes the aim of the poisoner was assassination, which is not at all a given. Things in Slavic politics are inevitably more Byzantine and complex than we would assume them to be; perhaps grotesque disfigurement, making a mockery of visibility and popularity, and a slow gruesome death better serve someone’s needs…
Second is the medical dictum that ‘an uncommon presentation of a common disease is more likely than a common presentation of an uncommon disease’. The weblogger suggests that Yuschenko’s presentation is much more consistent with alcoholic pancreatitis and an alcohol-induced eruption of the skin disease rosacea than with the characteristic chloracne rash of dioxin poisoning. But like all good medical rules of thumb, this one must be evaluated thoughtfully. I think the explosive onset of Yuschenko’s disfigurement (if we are to take it as true that the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos are only two years apart) would be such a stratospherically uncommon presentation of a common disease that the chloracne hypothesis is actually indeed more likely (although, I emphasize as a psychiatrist, it is a long time since I studied any toxicology). Now I do not know much about Viktor Yuschenko’s private life, but I hope that the assumption that medical complications of alcohol are a likely scenario for him reflects more than just a stereotypical prejudice about the likelihood that a Slavic male is a problem drinker…
Finally, let us be reminded that those who accuse others of being credulous leave themselves open to the same charge of credulity. Despite Raimundo’s take on it, it was not only the Austrian clinic that has concluded Yuschenko was dioxin-toxic. An independent analysis by a Dutch toxicologist found massive levels of dioxin in his tissue samples — “the second-highest level of dioxin poisoning ever recorded in a human – more than 6,000 times the normal concentration” (Guardian.UK), if the Guardian‘s reporting is not suspect.
Somewhere in my whirlwind tour through this issue, I saw a reader comment contrasting the mainstream’s readiness to embrace the poisoning theory in Yuschenko’s case with the scorn heaped on suggestions that Arafat was poisoned by the enemies of the Palestinians. I agree that the truth of a matter can be as easily obscured as elucidated by the reportage (and the weblogging) it receives; I would be interested in your comments on either or both of these issues.
