Killed by a natural remedy.

[AshtonBlack]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8520171.stm

(I feel for the poor woman, but still. Idiot.)

[leo-rcc]

Auto Darwination at work.

[Feck]

At least it was a plant remedy not body parts of endangered animal species or bear extract.

[AshtonBlack]

At least it was a plant remedy not body parts of endangered animal species or bear extract.

Rare shark spleen.

[Alan B]

I used to run a Traditional Chinese Medicine shop (from 2002 to 2004) and I was acutely aware that aristolochia extracts were poisonous and banned and I made sure that my Chinese staff were also aware. There is no excuse for ignorance in this area of expertise because there are regulations, both UK and EU, that define which Traditional Medicines may be permitted to be sold without prescription. Aristolochia is not one of them! It was banned in 1999. See here.

However, in defence of the practitioner, the listed ingredients on the bottle of pills for Xie Gan Wan does not include aristolochia, which would suggest that it was a contaminant, either accidental or deliberate, by an unregulated supplier outside the EU. But that does not totally excuse her since the pills were obviously sourced from such an unregulated supplier or personally imported from China and then sold as the shop stock (this is not an uncommon practice).