In Panama, Cough Syrup is the Kiss of Death

After a long day working in the cafe, it is nice to be sitting here in front of a fire, ablaze as I write this blog. I read a story in the NY Times about an outbreak in Panama that is causing consternation. It seems that a government bottled cough syrup has killed 22 people, because diethylene glycol, instead of propelyn glycol, was used to make the formula.

This isn't the first time this has happened. It took sleuthing and flying samples out of Panama back to Atlanta on the Centers for Disease Control jet. Then they saw these bottles of cough syrup on many of the victim's night tables. They matched up the chemical makeup of the cough syrup and the poison and voila, the answer. Now the big question is was it an accident, or did somebody deliberatly substitute the agent used in antifreeze in the cough syrup? Now people are timid to go buy drugs in the government pharmacies.

I thought about Panama after I read this because Sony is going down there with her camera this weekend to shoot more footage than she did during her trip there in July. She's keen on pitching this to a big cable network, and we look forward to publishing her story on Panama soon.