Mother and son survive thanks to experimental new drug containing “Death Cap” mushrooms

According to the UMass Memorial Medical Center, 27-year-old Kai Chen and his 63-year-old mother Kam Look were poisoned by eating mushrooms known as “death caps,” which they found near their Amherst home a few weeks ago , Massachusetts.

The two survived, and one of their doctors recently told the Boston Globe that it was thanks to the help of Legalon, an experimental drug flown in from Philadelphia and made from an extract of the milk thistle plant. However, Kam required a liver transplant and the two also suffered kidney damage.

“The treatment involved obtaining special permission from the FDA to provide an antidote that is currently under investigation — and then making that antidote curable from Philadelphia,” said Dr. Stephanie Carreiro from the Department of Toxicology at UMass Memorial Medical Center in a press conference. “We had tried many methods to try to remove the toxin from their bodies. And eventually, Kam also required a liver transplant.”

Death caps, known among nerds as Amanita phalloides, are a ubiquitous fungus that grows throughout California and most parts of the world. According to Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz, the mushrooms are all white from top to bottom and commonly grow on wood shavings, but are found pretty much everywhere in North America. The mortality rate for those who consume death caps varies from 25 to 50% depending on the source.

Death caps and a handful of other particularly fertile and toxic mushroom species cause deaths in people who ingest them every year, largely because symptoms don’t start immediately after ingestion. By the time people seek help, it is often too late and liver damage has already begun. However, Kai Chen told CBS Boston that they got a feeling something was wrong pretty quickly.

“This should be a very big cautionary tale,” Kai Chen said in a news conference. “Be careful what you find out there in the woods, especially mushrooms.”

Levon Durr, owner of a mushroom-growing business called Fungaia Farms in Eureka, Calif., told the High Times that death caps have actually only been recorded since this year in places where they have not otherwise been found, which may indicate climate change is causing them to grow allowed to continue gaining ground, so to speak.

“Amanita phalloides (death cap) was officially registered in Humboldt County last year and appears to have migrated north over the past decade. They’ve been recorded in the Bay Area for years and then became more common in Mendocino County and now in Humboldt,” Durr said. “The theory is that the warming, drying climate has opened up new habitats for them to migrate north. So one can surmise that unfortunately we will see more poisoning as it expands its habitat into areas where people are less familiar with the death cap.”

Mushrooming season is upon us and despite all the direst warnings I can think of, every year people will inevitably go out and confuse one thing with another. Mushroom experts have collectively warned the community for decades that properly identifying mushrooms is extremely difficult and requires much more legwork than a simple photo comparison. For example, one of the most commonly hunted psychedelic mushrooms known as “Wavy Caps” (Psilocybe cyanescens) has a deadly doppelganger called Galerina marginata that is often virtually impossible to tell apart without proper training.

“When gathering wild mushrooms for food, one rule supersedes all others. When in doubt, throw it away. If you’re not sure if your mushroom is edible, don’t eat it.” – Excerpted from Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast.