Think of the most unlikely object a man could murder another person with. Now combine that with the world of science. Can’t think of anything? I wouldn’t worry too much about it, because if you did, you might consider yourself a murderer and hand yourself in before you get too far into it. Or, you might just luck out, just as the assassin who murdered Georgi Markov did, back in September 7, 1978. The weapon of choice? An umbrella. As perplexing as it seems, the umbrella was a mere disguise hiding the tiny air rifle inside that could easily pierce through clothing and skin to release a deadly biotoxin, with just the right amount of velocity. It held a pellet that had a diameter of 1.7mm with two minuscule cavities that held, at most, 0.4 mg of the biotoxin. The Bulgarian Secret Service had to make sure such sneak attacks were completely undetectable, therefore holding inanimate objects disguising weapons would do just the trick. Markov’s friend who worked for Radio Free Europe, was also attacked.
Georgi Markov and Vladimir Kostov were both associated with the communist leadership in Bulgaria, and both thought it was a bunch of-, well, to put it nicely, they both disagreed with that specific state of government. The two of them worked for the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany, which meant that the slandering was heard across the nation, and we all know how the communists dealt with that. On August 27, 1978, Kostov was attacked...by a suitcase. Well, not really a suitcase, just the by the man holding the air gun inside the suit case. The pellet struck Kostov in the small of his back (Think: Forest Gump saying “Yes sir, [the bullet] jumped up and bit me directly in the but-tocks.”) Maybe the situation itself would have been funnier if he actually said it, but I’m sure that was not even close to what he was thinking. On a more serious note, the pellet perforated his skin, releasing the biotoxin, ricin, into his body, which caused fever and swelling at the injection site. Luckily, he survived the attempted assassination. Less than a month later, Markov was walking to his car (too bad they did not have blue lights surrounding the parking lot like they do on campus.) A man “accidentally” dropped his umbrella close to Markov’s leg, and it just so happened to have stabbed his right leg. Later, he discovers that it was a similar situation to Kostov’s attack. Unfortunately, Markov began to run a high fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit and proceeded to vomit, leading him to a stay at the hospital. There, his blood pressure fell extremely low, and his white blood count rose to 33,000 (normally 5000-10,000). He continued to vomit blood, stopped peeing because of the damage done to his kidneys and suffered from delirium. His heart finally had enough and gave out, as well as the rest of his organs.
Those communists were surely something else, weren’t they? If anything, they were pretty genius when it came to chemistry, or at least knew the right guys. Their selection of poison was not just a lucky guess. Ricin is a rather deadly poison produced by the castor bean plant, Ricinus communis (Emsley, 2008). The toxic part of this plant is the protein molecules located in its seeds (Emsley, 2008). Toxicity levels for ricin are 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, so it takes about ten castor seeds to kill an average-sized adult human being, which would equal 200 to 500 micrograms (Emsley, 2008). All of this can easily fit on the tip of a pin! The Bulgarian Secret Service really knew what they were doing.
More recent research discovers that ricin has another warfare tactic on its own. Originally noted, ricin damages protein synthesis as a cell’s function, however, researchers discovered that ricin also prevents a cellular defense process noted as an unfolded protein response, UPR (“Taming,” 2008). Understanding molecular biology, protein synthesis requires precise patterns of folding these long molecular chains, so the UPR does its job by removing the unfolded or incorrectly folded proteins and sends them to the endoplasmic reticulum, or, the ER (“Taming,” 2008). Just as before, that sneaky A Chain enters the molecule, and is sent to the ER, at which the UPR should signal a distress response, but before it can, a little piece of the ricin A protein tells the ER to turn off the UPR and cellular stress response which is vital for the cell’s survival, thus killing the cell (“Taming,” 2008).
Such a toxin has been known for its usages in chemical warfare because of its potency, physical attributes, and means of dispersal, since ricin can be injected, digested or inhaled into the body, even which can cause different effects. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, good CAN come from ricin. Ricin has been known to have chemotherapeutic qualities, which has been used in the treatment of cancer. But it seems for the most part, ricin is only good if you want harm to come to others, which unfortunately, there are some out there who feel this is a wonderful thing to use just for that. Unfortunately for Georgi Markov, his understanding of chemistry came with a price, and he learned the hard way just how deadly an umbrella, I mean chemistry, can be!
Sources
Emsley, J. (2008). Molecules of Murder: Criminal molecules and classic cases. United Kingdom: The Royal Society of Chemistry.
Noblis. (2010). [Information chart]. Toxins: Ricin. Retrieved from http://www.noblis.org/MissionAreas/nsi/BackgroundonBiologicalWarfare/Pages/Toxins.aspx.
Taming the ricin toxin. (2008). International news on fats, oils and related materials: Inform, 19(4), 243-244. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/223593996?accountid=28902.
Image courtesy of: http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~hjakubow/classes/rasmolchime/00ch331finproj/Ricin/page1.html
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