Hmmm. According to the article, a women mixed a sleeping pill into a drink and gave it to her husband, who subsequently died. The sleeping pill reportedly was temazepam (Restoril). The oral LD50 of temazepam is 1963 mg/kg in mice, 1833 mg/kg in rats, and > 2400 mg/kg in rabbits. There isn’t any data available about the LD50 in humans, but if anything about human toxicokinetic data can be extrapolated from these tiny mammal studies, an equivalent lethal oral dose in humans would be absolutely gargantuan. For instance, since temazepam only comes in capsule form (7.5mg, 15mg, 22.5mg and 30mg) but the capsules can be broken open and the powder removed and combined. Assuming 100% bioavailability of the drug (unrealistic, since no drug is 100% bioavailable), for an average 100kg man, you would need to add the powdered contents of about 8,000 of the 30mg capsules and that might ONLY kill him. In simple terms, it’s very, very difficult to kill someone by feeding them temazepam in a drink. Of course, the drink could be sulfuric acid or something equivalently noxious, but you’d think that info would be somewhere in the article. Bottom line – something doesn’t smell right. I’m no Nancy Drew, but I think the legal authorities are going to have a tough time proving that this individual died of temazepam poisoning.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/1296526/geneva-woman-charged-murder-poisoning-husband
The accused and the scene of the crime
I don’t remember this one!
