Was famed poet Pablo Neruda poisoned? Scientists warn case not closed

22 February 2023

Forensic investigation uncovers evidence that a lethal bacterium could have been in his body when he died.

Michele Catanzaro

Scientists have concluded that renowned poet Pablo Neruda, a member of the Chilean communist party, might have had a toxic bacterium in his system when he died.

The finding is the latest in a decades-long investigation into the exact cause of Neruda’s death on 23 September 1973. Although the poet had advanced prostate cancer when he died, some have said that the timing of his passing — 12 days after general Augusto Pinochet overthrew the socialist government that Neruda supported — was no coincidence.

When announcing the new results on 13 February, Rodolfo Reyes, Neruda’s nephew and a lawyer representing his family, said they were proof that his uncle had been poisoned. Remnants of Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that can produce the deadly botulinum toxin, were found in Neruda’s teeth, and they could have appeared there as the result of an injection, Reyes said. (Teeth have blood vessels in their roots, so pathogens circulating in a person’s blood when they die could theoretically be preserved there.) This method of poisoning “grants the appearance of a natural death”, Reyes told Nature.

Some of the researchers who helped with the investigation, however, say the evidence is far from conclusive. There is nothing in the science that proves he was poisoned, says Hendrik Poinar, a molecular geneticist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. It’s neither a “closed door” nor a “smoking gun”, he adds.

More:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00525-z