Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Investigating Zombies In Haiti

From a 2009 article in Men's Journal, comes a first-hand account of traveling in the Caribbean's land of the undead. Although, in claiming to want to get to the bottom of this, I have to wonder if this writer hadn't already read the work of Harvard ethnopharmacologist, Wade Davis. His book, The Serpent and the Rainbow detailed his journey to the island and his claims that tetradotoxin, a poison from the puffer fish, was largely responsible for producing these not-so-dead, but highly-drugged "zombies". While Davis' work remains controversial, many are under the impression that it is still possible--even if the exact recipe eludes science. But as Davis points out , the drug needn't work all the time; you only need a couple of success stories to keep the controling power of the zombie legend alive.

1 comment:

Sharon Day said...

Okay, it's official. I have a certain song by Cranberries stuck in my head now.