Doctors back up poisoning theory
Say it’s ‘plausible’ in Russian activist’s case
BERLIN — German doctors treating a member of Russian protest group Pussy Riot said Tuesday that claims he was poisoned are “highly plausible,” but they stressed they can’t say how this might have occurred.
Pyotr Verzilov has been receiving intensive care since arriving in Berlin from Moscow on Saturday, but his condition isn’t life threatening, Dr. Kai-uwe Eckardt of Berlin’s Charite hospital told reporters.
Verzilov’s symptoms, together with information received from relatives and the Moscow hospital he was admitted to last week, “make it highly plausible that a poisoning took place,” Eckardt said. He said Charite doctors have found “no evidence whatsoever that there would be another explanation for his condition.”
Eckardt said Verzilov fell ill Sept. 11 in Moscow and was admitted to a hospital that evening with symptoms that included disorientation and widened pupils. Russian doctors suspected possible poisoning and treated him accordingly, Eckardt said.
He said the symptoms indicate Verzilov is suffering from an anticholinergic syndrome that can result from the disruption of the nervous system that regulates the inner organs.
While doctors in Berlin haven’t yet determined what was responsible for the poisoning, they said it could have resulted from various substances, including high doses of some pharmaceuticals and plants that contain particular toxins.
Dr. Karl Max Einhaeupl, the Charite hospital’s chairman, said doctors wanted to “refrain completely from all speculation about what made these problems happen.”
While he wouldn’t rule out that recreational drugs were responsible for the poisoning, he said such drug use is very rare.
“We have no evidence that there is a drug problem and it would be very unusual for someone to take a drug in the dose that it was taken,” he said. “That would be done with suicidal intent, but we have no indications of this.”