How George Floyd Really Died

[psk836]

It wasn't Derek Chauvin's knee, and it wasn't the fentanyl either.

https://spectator.org/how-george-floyd-actually-died/

"As recently reported in these pages, Hennepin County prosecutors knew from day one how George Floyd did not die. Medical Examiner Andrew Baker reported to the prosecutors the evening following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death, “There were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

For political reasons, the prosecutors buried the truth. To save his career and possibly his life, Baker finessed his findings to include “neck compression” and declared the manner of death a homicide. So doing, he gave the state the wiggle room it needed to slip a noose around Chauvin’s neck.

To learn what did kill George Floyd, I have consulted with two physicians. One, Dr. John Dale Dunn, is a veteran emergency physician and lawyer with expertise in cause of death matters. The other, a pathologist at a major medical center with more than two decades of experience, I will call “Dr. Quincy.”'

"The line in Floyd’s autopsy report that caught Quincy’s attention was this one: “Taken together, the gross and microscopic (H&E-stains) features of the lesion are most suggestive of an extra-adrenal paraganglioma.” This rare tumor was found in Floyd’s pelvis. Baker recognized the tumor, argues Quincy, but he failed — or refused — to understand its potency and significance.

These tumors, says Quincy, produce the most potent hormones in our bodies, namely adrenaline and noradrenaline. The class of hormones they belong to is called catecholamines. “When the tumor goes off,” he tells me, “that is what’s called a catecholamine crisis. It might as well be a bomb.”

Among the symptoms of such a crisis are high blood pressure, confusion, excessive sweating, muscle weakness, anxiety, panic attacks, shaking, delusions, and hyperactivity, all of which Floyd exhibited on that fateful evening in May. More critically, when massive amounts of catecholamines are released into the blood, various organs of the body fail. Quincy compares the effect to the flooding of a lawnmower’s carburetor."

[psk836]

“It appears to me, watching the police bodycam videos, and now knowing he has an occult paraganglioma” says Quincy, “that Mr. Floyd exhibits many of the signs and symptoms of a full blown catecholamine crisis.” The crisis was likely triggered when Officer Thomas Lane taps the window of Floyd’s car with his flashlight at 8:09 that evening. Floyd, who had been nodding contentedly in the front seat of a borrowed Mercedes SUV, is startled and flips out.

A minute later, Floyd is crying like a child. “Okay Mr. Officer, please don’t shoot me. Please, man.” Lane had no intention of shooting Floyd. His crime was passing counterfeit money, not murder. At 8:14, Officer Alex Keung, the son of a Nigerian immigrant, tells Floyd that he will be put in the back of a police car.

"As Keung leads Floyd across the street, his mouth now foaming, Floyd says, “I’m scared, man.” Even before he gets in the car, Floyd tells Keung, “I got anxiety for real man, and I’m claustrophobic.” He adds, “I can’t choke, I can’t breathe Mr. Officer! Please. Please! Aaaaaah!”

When Keung tries to place Floyd into the car, his legs collapsing underneath him, Floyd says, “I’m claustrophobic man, please man, please.” He moans, “I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. Okay, okay. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground.” A friendly onlooker named Charles shouts at Floyd, “Bro, you about to have a heart attack and $#@%, man. Get in the car.”

Squirming feverishly, Floyd refuses to remain in the patrol car. “I’ll roll windows down, okay?” says Lane. At about 8:17, Floyd foretells his doom, “Y’all, I’m going to die in here. I’m going to die, man!” A minute later he adds, “I’m scared as #@%$ man…. When I start breathing, when I start breathing, it’s going to go off on me, man.”

As Quincy argues, it already has gone off. The confusion, paranoia, muscle weakness, anxiety, claustrophobia. and shear terror that Floyd exhibits are all signs of a catecholamine crisis that is causing serious acute bilateral heart failure. Floyd’s complaint that he cannot breathe — even before he gets in the squad car — indicates the resultant pulmonary edema is causing respiratory failure too. He is minutes from dying, and Floyd is the only one who senses this."

"As Dunn and Quincy agree, lying on the ground is not at all helpful for someone experiencing acute heart failure. Upright as he was in the patrol car, Floyd at least had gravity to help lessen the back pressure on the lungs. On the ground, he loses that advantage, and the accumulating pulmonary edema accelerates.

The officers know none of this. They believe Floyd is either acting or reacting to the drugs he swallowed. The officers had found a “weed pipe” on Floyd and seen him swallow something. Given Floyd’s behavior, Lane questions whether the drug might have been PCP. According to the NIH, “The elicitation of violent or psychotic behavior by phencyclidine (PCP) administration is well documented.” Police understand this."

[psk836]

"For the next 9 minutes and 30 seconds, Chauvin restrains the muscular 6’6” Floyd using the same restraint I saw the officer use on a Kansas City woman weeks earlier. At 8:21, the officers upgrade their request for emergency assistance to a Code 3. With the fluid rapidly filling his lungs, Floyd is breathing, but he knows something is terribly wrong. Although he can still inhale, exhale, and talk, he is literally drowning in his own fluid.

For the next several minutes, Floyd complains that he can’t breathe, that his stomach hurts, that everything hurts. “Then stop talking, stop yelling,” says Chauvin. “You can’t win,” onlooker Charles chimes in. “You didn’t listen.” Even after he passes out, Lane worries that Floyd might spring back into action. At about 8:27, the ambulance arrives. By this time, Floyd is already dead."

[psk836]

"One can forgive the cops for not correctly diagnosing Floyd’s condition. Baker and the other state witnesses deserve no such grace. Quincy was stunned to learn that once Baker observed Floyd’s paraganglioma, he failed to test for catecholamines. Quincy had been taught that if a catecholamine producing tumor is found during the autopsy of someone who dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a catecholamine crisis is the prime suspect. Unless the lab results come back normal, it remains the prime suspect.

“There is no way in God’s green Earth that Baker can honestly say [the paraganglioma] is an incidental finding without running the catecholamines,” says Quincy. “The absence of ordering these test convicts Baker’s lack of knowledge.”

Dunn is a bit more cynical. “[Baker] didn’t know about catecholamine crisis? Never saw it?” scoffs Dunn. He discounts the wisdom of “Hanlon’s Razor” — “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” — and opts instead for “the paranoid approach” — “Bad things spring from bad intentions.” Baker had a powerful incentive to fudge his findings, says Dunn. “He knows if he goes with the evidence, he likely loses his job and he and his family are at risk from the mob and his career will be extinguished.”

If Quincy’s theory is correct — and Dunn believes it is — here is what happened. Floyd’s paraganglioma, set off when he was startled by Lane, released a large bolus of adrenaline into his circulation. This excessive catecholamine then overwhelmed his heart, causing acute heart failure. The severe acute heart failure then precipitated pulmonary edema leading to respiratory failure, hypoxia, and death.

If Quincy is right, nothing the officers might have done would have reversed the course of Floyd’s demise. “Even if Floyd had made it to the hospital alive,” says Quincy, “he almost certainly would have expired.” The medical personnel would not have known he was having a catecholamine crisis. and would have found him profoundly hypotensive as a result of his acute heart failure The medical personnel would have administered adrenaline to bring his blood pressure back up. As Quincy observes, any additional adrenaline would be contraindicated in someone in a catecholamine crisis, which, once given, would have sealed his fate."

[psk836]

"Given that roughly one-third of catecholamine-producing tumors are inherited, Quincy believes the state should share this knowledge with the Floyd family. With proper screening, family members will have a better chance of avoiding George’s fate.

As for Chauvin, Lane, Keung, and Tao, George Floyd’s fate sealed their own. Knowledge, however, will not save them unless a person of character and consequence acts upon it. And in a state full of cowards, such a person may no longer exist."

[nolaxride]

It wasn't Derek Chauvin's knee, and it wasn't the fentanyl either.

https://spectator.org/how-george-floyd-actually-died/

"As recently reported in these pages, Hennepin County prosecutors knew from day one how George Floyd did not die. Medical Examiner Andrew Baker reported to the prosecutors the evening following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death, “There were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

For political reasons, the prosecutors buried the truth. To save his career and possibly his life, Baker finessed his findings to include “neck compression” and declared the manner of death a homicide. So doing, he gave the state the wiggle room it needed to slip a noose around Chauvin’s neck.

To learn what did kill George Floyd, I have consulted with two physicians. One, Dr. John Dale Dunn, is a veteran emergency physician and lawyer with expertise in cause of death matters. The other, a pathologist at a major medical center with more than two decades of experience, I will call “Dr. Quincy.”'

"The line in Floyd’s autopsy report that caught Quincy’s attention was this one: “Taken together, the gross and microscopic (H&E-stains) features of the lesion are most suggestive of an extra-adrenal paraganglioma.” This rare tumor was found in Floyd’s pelvis. Baker recognized the tumor, argues Quincy, but he failed — or refused — to understand its potency and significance.

These tumors, says Quincy, produce the most potent hormones in our bodies, namely adrenaline and noradrenaline. The class of hormones they belong to is called catecholamines. “When the tumor goes off,” he tells me, “that is what’s called a catecholamine crisis. It might as well be a bomb.”

Among the symptoms of such a crisis are high blood pressure, confusion, excessive sweating, muscle weakness, anxiety, panic attacks, shaking, delusions, and hyperactivity, all of which Floyd exhibited on that fateful evening in May. More critically, when massive amounts of catecholamines are released into the blood, various organs of the body fail. Quincy compares the effect to the flooding of a lawnmower’s carburetor."

SMH... This conspiracy theory is one of the best I've heard.

[psk836]

I would like to verify the tumor diagnosis and its alleged effects, but the actual court determination has never made sense.

The tumor, the fentanyl, the meth, the deleterious effects of all of the above on Floyd’s heart, coupled with eyewitness testimony and observations indicated the suffocation process was underway long before Floyd was ever placed on the ground, and well before Derek Chauvin implemented the MSP restraint procedure for non compliant detainees.

[donttreadonme]

It wasn't Derek Chauvin's knee, and it wasn't the fentanyl either.

https://spectator.org/how-george-floyd-actually-died/

"As recently reported in these pages, Hennepin County prosecutors knew from day one how George Floyd did not die. Medical Examiner Andrew Baker reported to the prosecutors the evening following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death, “There were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

For political reasons, the prosecutors buried the truth. To save his career and possibly his life, Baker finessed his findings to include “neck compression” and declared the manner of death a homicide. So doing, he gave the state the wiggle room it needed to slip a noose around Chauvin’s neck.

To learn what did kill George Floyd, I have consulted with two physicians. One, Dr. John Dale Dunn, is a veteran emergency physician and lawyer with expertise in cause of death matters. The other, a pathologist at a major medical center with more than two decades of experience, I will call “Dr. Quincy.”'

"The line in Floyd’s autopsy report that caught Quincy’s attention was this one: “Taken together, the gross and microscopic (H&E-stains) features of the lesion are most suggestive of an extra-adrenal paraganglioma.” This rare tumor was found in Floyd’s pelvis. Baker recognized the tumor, argues Quincy, but he failed — or refused — to understand its potency and significance.

These tumors, says Quincy, produce the most potent hormones in our bodies, namely adrenaline and noradrenaline. The class of hormones they belong to is called catecholamines. “When the tumor goes off,” he tells me, “that is what’s called a catecholamine crisis. It might as well be a bomb.”

Among the symptoms of such a crisis are high blood pressure, confusion, excessive sweating, muscle weakness, anxiety, panic attacks, shaking, delusions, and hyperactivity, all of which Floyd exhibited on that fateful evening in May. More critically, when massive amounts of catecholamines are released into the blood, various organs of the body fail. Quincy compares the effect to the flooding of a lawnmower’s carburetor."

SMH... This conspiracy theory is one of the best I've heard.

If he read it on the interwebs it must be true.

[Shred]

Compression of the carotid arteries constrained blood flow to the brain resulting in unconsciousness, heart stopping and death.

[psk836]

Compression of the carotid arteries constrained blood flow to the brain resulting in unconsciousness, heart stopping and death.

'"As recently reported in these pages, Hennepin County prosecutors knew from day one how George Floyd did not die. Medical Examiner Andrew Baker reported to the prosecutors the evening following Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death, “There were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

For political reasons, the prosecutors buried the truth. To save his career and possibly his life, Baker finessed his findings to include “neck compression” and declared the manner of death a homicide. So doing, he gave the state the wiggle room it needed to slip a noose around Chauvin’s neck."

You weren't here. Everybody involved in this investigation and trial, from the Police Dept to the mayor, to the judge and members of the jury, were well aware that their safety and possibly their lives were on the line depending on the desired outcome of the Chauvin trial.