Yellow oleander seed poisonous and may lead to suicide

Jannie · Gold Member Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 428

Sri Lanka has been suffering from a growing epidemic of suicide attempts. The poison of choice is the seed of the Yellow Oleander tree.
Michael Eddleston, a British doctor, has spent much of the past ten years in Sri Lanka and said it is becoming the suicide capital of the world.
The Yellow Oleander is an ornamental plant often used for hedging that grows all over the island. It has yellow trumpet-like flowers and a fruit of a conker size. Inside is a single large seed. One is enough to kill you.
Although the plant grows in large parts of the tropics, it is only in Sri Lanka where it has become associated with suicide. It is not only young people using it for suicidal purposes. In a remote hospital in Pollonaruwa, where Michael Eddleston has done much of his research, the old man was recovering from a suicidal attempt.
Many of the suicidal attempts are semi-serious but up to 10% are fatal anyway. The lesser percentage is in the West where the good anti-poisoning drugs and facilities could be found. Michael Eddleston wanted to something about that as in the West there is a similar medicine used to treat heart beat irregularities called Digoxin. It actually slows the heart beat.
An Oleander seed is like 100 digoxin tablets in one container and the effect it has on the heart is dramatic.
Western doctors had at their disposal the anti-body for digoxin.
Michael Eddlestone wanted to prove this theory and ran a small trial of the drug. It eventually did work but it would cost a region 3,000$ to treat one patient.
So for much of the last decade, Eddleston was giving his best to find the anti-digoxin drug that would be affordable to Sri Lanka inhabitants.

Yellow oleander seed poisonous and may lead to suicide

LIFEFORM SOCIAL COMMUNITY NETWORK