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Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

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Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#41

Post by laser_eagle »

DougN7 wrote: post #25
AdamN wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that strange? Cyanide seems like an obvious thing to test for at scale. Safety engineering doesn't say 'that doesn't seem likely even though it's dangerous and easy to control for so I'll not handle the scenario'. It says, 'anything unsafe should be mitigated with the right cost-benefit analysis applied for the scenario'. Testing for cyanide makes sense regardless of whether it's in the factory.

I really don’t know, but could there be 100 other substances as dangerous and easy to mix/administer as cyanide? There must be some cut off since you can’t test for everything. I’d be interested to know what that test matrix/decision document looks like.

Cyanide is found as an impurity from both natural sources and as a byproduct during the manufacturing process, a lot like lead. So it's common enough to warrant the expense of testing

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#42

Post by laser_eagle »

Corey_ wrote: post #15
RedCardRef wrote: post #2

Recently watched the Netflix docu series on this, J&J claimed that cyanide was not present in the factory, so there is no way the pills could have been contaminated at the factory. Then later on one of the doctors asked J&J if a test for cyanide is done for each batch in QA at the factory. J&J said yes, each batch was tested for the presence of cyanide. The doctor then asked, "Why were they testing for it(cyanide)?",…

What’s more worrying isn’t that they tested—it’s that the existence of the test feels like a smoking gun. That says more about our broken trust in institutions than anything else.

It says more about the nature of pharmaceutical manufacturing than anything. We often need to screen for impurities, and cyanide is a pretty common one.

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#43

Post by locallost »

john-h-k wrote: post #24

> When Pishos smelled an almond-like scent, Donoghue asked the county's chief toxicologist, Michael Schaffer, to test the capsules, and Schaffer's team determined that four of the 44 remaining capsules from the Janus' bottle contained nearly three times the fatal amount of cyanide (From the wiki page) This is super interesting, because there was a NileRed video testing this and finding that cyanide doesn't really sme…

I've never smelled cyanide, but there's a distinct taste in almonds that I notice in other foods containing cyanide (for instance stones of plums, apricots, mirabelles etc. contain cyanide and when you preserve them with the stones, the taste can leach out). So I've associated that taste with cyanide.

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#45

Post by metalman »

I looked, but could find no link to a much greater death toll involving vitamins made from a poisionous pre cursor, 90's?, factory that made the vitamins was in Austrailia, but by the time investigators moved in it has been striped and the paper work was faked, no "leads", deaths in the US....made the news, but totaly swept under the rug

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#46

Post by TonyTrapp »

> At one point a psychic called in saying he’d had a crystal clear vision of a 46-year-old Japanese woman who was angry at J&J for refusing to hire her. She’d bought a jar of olives at the store before dropping off the poisoned Tylenol, he said. The specificity of his details made his story seem plausible until police asked how he came upon his visions and he told them his magic pen wrote the details out for him whenever he picked it up.

These days they could be asking an LLM instead and get a similarly convincing response.

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#47

Post by jjcob »

rootsudo wrote: post #32
tecleandor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that there is anybody still taking seriously "lie detectors". It's just stress provoking tricks. About ibuprofen, here in Spain (and I think the whole Europe), it's BTC (no prescription) until 400mg. Over 400mg you need a prescription. And when it's pills/capsules, it's sold in pill sheets (is that the name?) individually sealed. I think everything register as a medicine in Europe has to be BTC. Of cour…

Which doesn’t make sense to me - no one is stopping you from taking two 400mg ibuprofen to make 800mg, etc. I agree that 400mg is sensible dosage for one pill, but you buy a pill sheet of ten , you get 4000mg. But what is the other solution just put everything being a prescription? As for the lie detector test, in the USA it is federally required for sensitive jobs and roles - while it isn’t criminally admissible , d…

Most people will realise that taking 4 pills is probably too much, but people will take two without thinking much.

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#49

Post by 59nadir »

woodstrips wrote: post #20

OT but are there any decent services that'll turn this text into decent speech or podcast?

I use Speechify for this. For this particular page it actually can't detect the text automatically (on most pages it can, so you just click "Play" on the text and it will read from there on) but marking/selecting it and pressing play (Alt+A) will read the marked text without issue.

Re: Poison Pill: Is the killer behind 1982 Tylenol poisonings still on the loose?

#50

Post by 59nadir »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #46

> At one point a psychic called in saying he’d had a crystal clear vision of a 46-year-old Japanese woman who was angry at J&J for refusing to hire her. She’d bought a jar of olives at the store before dropping off the poisoned Tylenol, he said. The specificity of his details made his story seem plausible until police asked how he came upon his visions and he told them his magic pen wrote the details out for him when…

Or the equally unhelpful amateur sleuth who's given everything they know to an LLM and thinks the output is of any use to police.
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