L'histoire mystérieuse du pain maudit de Pont-Saint-Esprit, or "The Mysterious Story of the Cursed Bread of Pont-Saint-Esprit," is a very short 2018 documentary by Brut, an online media company out of Paris, France. While the movie is in French, it's very easy to translate & can be watched with English captions turned on if you please. The visuals--which include photography, colorful animation & old silent movie clips--are utterly entrancing & will leave you wishing this was a full-length doc.
The plot revolves around an obscure unsolved mystery: In 1951, villagers in Pont Saint Esprit (literally "Holy Spirit Bridge") in Southern France were stricken with hallucinations, violent panic attacks & psychotic symptoms resulting in suicide and major self-harm. To this day the cause is unknown. For decades it was believed to be a case of ergotism caused by "cursed" bread contaminated with the parasitic fungi ergot, but now we know that may not be the full story. Listening to the victims recount their harrowing stories is beyond intriguing. One man states: "I went 21 days without sleeping. My nights, I spent them counting. To murmur the word “saxophile” which rhymes absolutely with nothing, without stopping."
Ergot of rye
Yikes. Ergotism is caused by Claviceps purpura, a fungus that grows on rye. Symptoms include not only psychedelic hallucinations but physical atrocities like gangrene, peeling of the affected limbs or digits, seizures/convulsions and loss of affected body parts. As many drug nerds will know, ergot is the precursor to lysergic acid diethylamide: the drug better known as LSD, which does not cause these nasty peripheral side effects. It's also used in the production of some Parkinson's & migraine medications.
This doctor believes the Pont Saint Esprit episode was a classic case of "mal des ardents" (the burning disease), aka ergotism. Between 150-250 people suffered severe psychotic symptoms in all, & animals that ate the bread also developed the convulsive illness. This means the cursed loaf was almost certainly the source. There were 5 to 7 fatalities in all, for which bread miller Maurice Maillet faced charges of manslaughter, though he was freed when tests on the flour didn't reveal any known toxin. Mercury & nitrogen trichloride were also looked at as possible causes.
...and then there's the "other" theory.
Frank Olsen, the man who knew too much
In 2009 American journalist Hank Abarelli believed he saw a link between the story & the death of Frank Olsen, Biochemist for the CIA. Olsen had gone to France a few months before the Pont Saint Esprit affair & began acting strangely upon his return to the U.S., when he told his wife he'd made a "terrible mistake" but didn't elaborate further. He intended to leave his job at the CIA but died after falling out a window in New York in 1953 when he was given LSD without his consent. Abarelli discovered a CIA document labeled "Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F.Olson Files. SO Span/France Operation file, inclusive Olson. Intel files. Hand carry to Belin - tell him to see to it that these are buried." 😱
In addition, the Sandoz laboratories were located only a few hundred kilometers from Pont Saint Esprit. Sandoz is the company that manufactured pharmaceutical grade LSD for military experiments in those days. It was the only place on Earth where LSD was being produced as it wasn't a popular recreational drug yet. Albarelli later got access to a CIA report from 1954 about a meeting between a CIA agent and a representative of the Sandoz Chemical Company. According to the agent, the Sandoz rep stated: "The Pont-Saint-Esprit 'secret' is that it was not the bread at all... For weeks the French tied up our laboratories with analyses of bread. It was not the grain ergot, it was a diethylamide-like compound.”
Say WHAT?!
A Third Option?
St. Anthony's Fire (ergotism) induces fiery hallucinations
Of course that leads us to a 3rd option: that it was neither LSD nor ergot that caused the villagers' madness but some man-made ("diethylamide-like") hallucinogen created by the CIA, or possibly a neurotoxin like mercury from the bread production line. But with mercury you'd expect the children to have lasting or fatal effects since heavy metals are the most harmful to their developing brains. In fact this is the opposite of what happened--it was mostly elderly folks who died & the kids who recovered first from the hallucinogenic effects. Other cases of mass mercury poisoning such as Minamata Disease & the Iraq "Pink Death" Grain Poisoning outbreak of 1971 resulted in much higher death tolls, and lead poisoning is similarly detrimental to long-term health of survivors (particularly children). There were also no known cases of teratogenic effects or birth defects in subsequent generations as can happen with dioxins & heavy metals like mercury.
While metal poisoning can cause hallucinations, they are generally not as pronounced as neurological symptoms like loss of balance, narrowed visual field, burning/tingling sensations in the skin (paraesthesia), convulsions & tremor, and survivors of heavy metal poisoning are also more likely to incur lasting physical effects like hair and tooth loss and kidney damage. The vast majority of survivors of this incident recovered fully. So I think it's safe to rule out heavy metals.
Whatever caused this trip was a long-acting hallucinogen, and lots of it.
Frank Olsen was exhumed in 1994 upon request by his son Eric, who was suspicious that his death was not caused by an accidental fall. Indeed, some strange injuries were found on his body that pointed to foul play and the possibility he was pushed out that window. Eric Olson claims that the forensic evidence points to a known CIA assassination method included in their first manual that says: "The most efficient accident in simple assassination is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface." The Olsen family was awarded $750,000 by the U.S. government in a wrongful death suit & received apologies from President Gerald Ford & then-CIA Director William Colby... As close to a confession as anyone will ever get, I suppose.
Whether you believe the Pont Saint Esprit incident was caused by a bad case of food poisoning or something more sinister, L'histoire mystérieuse du pain maudit de Pont-Saint-Esprit is definitely worth checking out. I recommend watching it at 3:00 a.m. with the lights out like I did for maximum creepy effect.
If graphic discussion of sexual assault or medical abuse is distressing to you, turn back now.
Can you think of a setting in which the vaginal penetration of an unconscious woman under the influence of total sedation would not be considered criminal sexual assault? What about anal penetration on an unconscious person by a large group of strangers while others watch--gang rape, right? Sexual assault is bad enough when it occurs at a drunken frat kegger or high school house party where teens with undeveloped brains & no supervision get caught up in an alcohol-soaked atmosphere, but it's somehow worse when it involves adults in powerful positions like doctors or nurses. They should be held to an even higher standard than the rest of society.
So why are non-consensual pelvic exams being performed on anesthetized women(and occasionally men) all over this country while they're undergoing totally unrelated procedures? And why are so few people aware of it?
What do these exams entail? A group of med students will gather 'round the unconscious patient, who may be in the process of receiving surgery for something like a spinal or uterine condition, and "take turns" penetrating her vagina digitally after the instructor demonstrates the proper method as if he or she was giving a mini-TED Talk. Surgical patients fill out a general consent form first, but the language is extremely vague & you'll have no idea you're signing away your right to not be used as a living cadaver. If you wish to avoid this barbaric violation of your private parts, you have to specifically state "DO NOT GIVE A VAGINAL EXAM" or whatever, which means you'd have to know such a thing was even a possibility first. Many, many women do not.
There's no reason to suspect you'll wake up bleeding with a sanitary napkin shoved between your thighs like this poor woman in the UK, who just went in for a laparoscopic procedure of her abdomen & got a whole lot more. If you've already suffered sexual abuse or molestation in your life as roughly 1 in 4 women has, the trauma of this violation can be enough to send you into a tailspin. Many would say this counts as a sexual violation in itself. By all legal definitions it does. (And wtf: There's NO reason a vaginal exam should cause bleeding and pain!) When asked for consent in one study, 100% of women said NO to vaginal exams under anesthesia in medical settings. This is what prompted the medical institution to go ahead with non-consensual exams. (I guess "no" means "yes" in teaching hospitals). Med students have to learn how to conduct these exams on real live patients, which I can empathize with. But this is not the way.
Women do not exist for you to "practice your craft" on. We're not dummies or fuckdolls--we're human beings like you. Just because you view the human body in a detached, analytical manner does not mean the rest of us do. Consenting to surgery is not consenting to being flayed open & used as a live Annie doll by an entire graduating class of eager MD's. The fact that doctors view women with such contempt makes me question just how much (rather, how little) they value our lives on the operating table in general. Should they even be performing surgery on us if they feel this entitled to abuse our bodies? How big of a God complex must you have to think this is okay? If a woman were to deny consent to a pelvic exam before surgery, would she be more likely to get poor quality care or even face retaliation from a vengeful surgeon while in his/her care? Has anyone ever bothered to do a study on such things?
And yes, occasionally men are given prostate exams without consent as well. It's far less common but every bit as vile. Unfortunately the "lack of consent" issue goes beyond the sexually abusive into more life-threatening territory, including horrors like trainee-performed spinal taps & "ghost surgeries" in which a medical student performs your surgery instead of the doctor you consulted with who you were led to believe would be conducting it. These things are standard practice at teaching hospitals. Emergency care also has different standards for consent* when it comes to medical trials. In 2004, a bunch of ER patients who were unable to verbally consent due to critical injury were given synthetic blood ("Polyheme") transfusions that later killed them. 46 patients died in all compared to only 35 in the control group. "No matter how you slice it, it's a disaster" is how Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli referred to it back in 2006.
*According to 21 CFR 50.24, there are exceptions to informed consent in emergency research, including when 1.)The subjects will not be able to give their informed consent as a result of their medical condition;2.) The intervention under investigation must be administered before consent from the subjects' legally authorized representatives is feasible & 3.) There is no reasonable way to identify prospectively the individuals likely to become eligible for participation in the clinical investigation.
... yeah, those sound like YOU problems.
Restoring Medical Ethics
"4 Pillars of Medical Ethics": Is your doctor meeting this low bar?
Informed consent is the cornerstone of ethical medical treatment & is codified into both national & international law. It's made appearances in every document from the Hippocratic Oath of 500 B.C.E. to the UN's International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights drafted in 1966. And for good reason: Lack of informed consent resulted in some of the most grotesque war crimes in human history, including Japan's Unit 731 & the CIA's MK-ULTRA covert mind control experiments to name a few. The fact that doctors & surgeons in Western nations are still conducting intimate exams & carrying out experimental medical treatments on unconscious patients without our consent is a violation of not only medical ethics but our basic human rights. It's criminal assault & should be treated as such.
Everyone has a right to not be sexually violated while seeking medical care. If you think these exams & medical trials are so damned important for the advancement of medicine, you sign up for them or do a better job of convincing patients to volunteer for them willingly. Figure out another way for your med students to get their hours & experience in. But what you're NOT gonna do is use me or my loved ones as cannon fodder for your rapey exams.
I would urge anyone who's concerned about this issue to write your representative and, actually, scratch that,go write up an advance directive that includes CLEAR language about what you do and do not consent to in a worst-case hospital scenario. Research & include which sedatives you want to be given if you're on a ventilator, what life-saving measures you want to be administered if you require resuscitation & how long to keep you on life support if it becomes necessary. Don't consent to a pelvic exam or experimental ER treatment? Include that too along with your organ donor status. (Google "organ donor horror stories" before checking that box on your driver's license, seriously). This should be separate from your last will & testament, which includes who will inherit your belongings after you die. Nobody likes to think about this stuff but it beats ending up trapped in a non-functioning body unable to scream while doctors of death harvest your organs or talk graphically to your loved ones about "pulling the plug".
I should add that not all medical professionals who are forced to engage in these consent-free procedures feel good about doing it--some are loudly opposed & traumatized by the practice. But it's part of their required training. This short video gives an example of just that:
Med student expected to give 100 pelvic exams on anesthetized patients
Also, this is not a reason to become paranoid or distrusting of the medical system in general. There are many dedicated doctors & nurses who sacrifice their personal lives, physical well-being & sanity in the name of caring for their patients. We should all be grateful for their devotion to seeing through the grueling hours of medical school & the mental trauma of their jobs. This is a legislative issue reflecting lawmakers' disregard for the sanctity of human life & bodily autonomy, not of a clump of non-sentient fetal tissue but of feeling, breathing, thinking human beings with loved ones & lives of their own. It's on all of us to put a stop to it by demanding better.
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