A 57-year-old Haines fisherman died from heart disease, not paralytic shellfish poisoning as previously suspected.
Kate Saunders, wife of Mike Saunders, said an autopsy by the state medical examiner’s office found as much as 90 percent of her husband’s heart was blocked and that he likely died of arrhythmia arising from previous heart damage.
“He may have had smaller heart attacks that we didn’t know about or he hadn’t noticed,” Saunders said.
A test for PSP came back negative, according to Saunders, who spoke with Dr. Gary Zientek of the examiner’s office Monday. A copy of Zientek’s report was not available at press time.
Heart disease runs on both sides of her husband’s family, Saunders said. It claimed his father at age 57 and his mother when she was in her sixties. Saunders’ younger brother suffered a heart attack last fall at age 50. “Sometimes genetics are stacked against you,” she said.
She said she felt vindicated by the findings. “From the very start we were stunned when they said it was PSP. It never made sense to me or to Mike, either. We were in total disbelief that was going on.”
Saunders said she also feels relief for residents who threw a party where Saunders ate crab before he died. They had feelings of guilt when it was reported he had died from ingesting the PSP toxin through crab viscera.
Saunders was diagnosed with PSP at Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital. The state office of epidemiology also attributed Saunders’ death to PSP, and sent out a bulletin that he contracted it by eating Dungeness crab viscera. That led to news stories in Juneau and Anchorage that also linked the death to PSP.
But hours before he died, Saunders expressed skepticism that he’d been poisoned by shellfish. In an interview with the Chilkat Valley News, he flatly denied having eaten any viscera.
“I hope the crab industry can pick up again. I understand they’re catching a lot of crabs but can’t sell them because no one’s eating crabs anymore,” Saunders said.
Terry Pardee, a 40-year crab fisherman, said he wasn’t surprised to hear PSP wasn’t involved in the death. There’s never been a case of people being affected by the toxin after eating crab, or viscera, Pardee said.
After Saunders’ death, the state found barely detectable levels of PSP in viscera of tested crabs caught in the same area where Saunders’ crab was harvested, Pardee noted. No toxins were found in crab meat.
Crab sales took a hit from publicity about the case, he said. “There’s no doubt there was an immediate impact in that regard. They were reporting up in Whitehorse not to eat crab because of the PSP issue.”
Pardee said a similar scare occurred about 30 years ago, when concern about PSP in crabs “got rolled into” a death from eating shellfish.
“At that time, it wasn’t such a big deal. This time, with the media and all the hysteria, it got big real quick,” Pardee said. “(The media) reacted to the idea too soon. It originated in Juneau. When it gets that kind of exposure, it takes a life of its own.”
At a health screening about a year ago, Saunders’ blood pressure and cholesterol were found to be “slightly elevated” but not high enough to trigger alarm, Kate Saunders said.