A MAELSTROM OF QUESTIONS
Damon's family has been waiting 3-1/2 months for the results of Damon's autopsy. In the meantime, bits of information have been trickling in. "I recently received his medical records," said Hildi Halley, Damon's wife, who said her husband never told her about the boils -- probably not to worry her, she guessed. "They said it was an allergic reaction to the malaria medication they were giving him," she said, "so they switched him to Larium and said, 'Continue as usual.' "
Larium is an anti-malarial drug that has been criticized recently for severe side effects, and whose safety became the subject of a congressional inquiry in 2004.
The report also revealed that Damon had an infection in the tissue around his heart. With this new information, Halley then started looking further back. Damon's computer and Palm Pilot hard drives had been erased -- upsetting Halley greatly -- but she soon found an e-mail from her husband to an anesthesiologist friend asking about Cipro -- an antibiotic used for a wide range of ailments, including anthrax poisoning -- which he was taking daily.
"They had told him it was for malaria," she said, reading from the e-mail. "Nowhere in these records does it say they gave him Cipro at all. And what about the vaccines he took? Part of me wonders if maybe he contracted smallpox from a vaccine."
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