Gloria Ramirez

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Gloria C. Ramirez (January 11, 1963 - February 19, 1994) was an American citizen from Riverside , California . She gained notoriety through her death at the age of 31. Her demise is said to have been accompanied by puzzling incidents which, despite intensive investigations, have not yet been fully clarified. As a result of the events, Gloria became known in the media and through urban legends on the Internet as The Toxic Lady (in German "The Toxic Lady").

incident

On the evening of February 19, 1994, around 8:15 p.m. local time, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to Riverside General Hospital after complaining of shortness of breath (more precisely: Cheyne-Stokes breathing ), nausea and a racing heart. She also suffered from severe cervical cancer . She vomited several times in the admission ward, and her blood pressure was found to be too low. Despite the administration of various sedatives (including diazepam , lorazepam and midazolam ), Gloria's condition deteriorated rapidly, only a few minutes later she suffered a heart attack and she was transferred to the intensive care unit . Gloria was resuscitated with a defibrillator and connected to a ventilator, and her heart rhythm was monitored by EKG. According to the doctors and nurses , the oddities started when Gloria was drawn blood.

Initially, the senior doctor, Dr. Julie Gorchynski , as well as nurse Susan Kane noticed a garlic- like scent emanating from Gloria's body and mouth. An oily substance then formed on Gloria's skin. Susan Kane felt sick, and eventually sagged. When Dr. Gorchynski picked up the blood-filled syringe , she noticed an ammonia-like scent emanating from the syringe. On closer inspection, she also noticed strange, straw-colored crystals floating in the blood. Then she felt sick too and passed out . When other hospital employees also fell ill in quick succession and / or even fainted, the emergency room and intensive care unit were evacuated immediately because they feared a dangerous disease or toxic gases would break out. For safety reasons, more patients were moved to neighboring hospitals. In the meantime, it turned out that attempts to resuscitate Gloria had failed and she was pronounced dead around 9:06 p.m. local time.

Investigations, diagnosis and attempts to explain

Gloria Ramirez's private medical history reveals that the woman was taking various analgesics (painkillers) because of her cervical cancer . She may also have used a cream containing dimethyl sulfone. The cancer caused her to have chronic urea stagnation in her blood. Against this, she took various medications.

The official, general and forensic findings on the cause of death are " kidney failure due to cancer and urea oversaturation". What remained inexplicable, however, was the oil film on Gloria's skin, the tiny crystals in her blood and the strong smell of ammonia and garlic. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory offer the following possible explanation: Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) could have formed in your blood through the absorption of dimethyl sulfone from the cream and the already existing urea oversaturation. By using a defibrillator, the DMSO was converted into the highly toxic substance DMSO 2 . Even DMSO tends to form crystals if the temperature is too low and when the nurse took blood, the blood cooled down and the DMSO 2 crystallized. However, this theory is not uncontested.

A special team that entered the intensive care unit in special protective suits could not find any toxic gases, bacteria, viruses and / or substances despite intensive and repeated searches and chemical tests. The oily substance on Gloria's skin actually turned out to be a fat dissolving cream containing a lot of dimethyl. Cancer patients in the USA use it (often secretly and without the advice of their doctor) as a skin cream because it has a pain reliever effect. This “cream” is actually a cleaning agent. It is also noticeable that both the emergency doctors and the paramedics in Gloria's house neither fell ill nor reported any strange smell. Therefore, in most cases of affected hospital employees, mass hysteria is now generally accepted.

literature

  • Max M. Houck, Jay A. Siegel: Fundamentals of Forensic Science . Elsevier, Amsterdam / New York 2015 (3rd edition), ISBN 9780128002315 .
  • Anne Simon: Monsters, Mutants & Missing Links: The Real Science Behind the X-Files . Ebury, London 2011, ISBN 9781448116942 , 115.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Birth and death dates of Gloria C. Ramirez on sortedbyname.com (English); last accessed on November 30, 2018.
  2. ↑ Max M. Houck, Jay A. Siegel: Fundamentals of Forensic Science . Pp. 157 & 177.
  3. ^ Brian Dunning: The Toxic Lady . Internet article from January 3, 2012 on skeptoid.com (English); last accessed on July 30, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Ramirez, Gloria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Toxic Lady
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American citizen
DATE OF BIRTH around 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Riverside
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1994
Place of death Riverside