He lived for 113 days off the land in a place where there's not a lot of game," says Krakauer. You gotta be careful out there."Īnd regardless of exactly the mechanism that killed this young man, there's this: "What he did was not easy. The real lesson people should take away from this, Krakauer says, is that "there are many, many species where you can eat one part and will die if you eat another part. It's the same toxin in alfalfa and jack bean, which, Krakauer writes, may have permanently paralyzed 100,000 people in the 20th century. But Krakauer's research confirms the presence of this toxin in the plant. And there isn't much research on what eating the seeds does to the human body.
There's no way to know exactly how many of the seeds Chris McCandless ate in that two week period leading up to his death. The debate about how this young man died will likely continue. But he also says he's holding out for an independent analysis to confirm the Avomeen results. "I admit that I very well could have missed this compound in my earlier study," he tells The Salt. Thomas Clausen is an emeritus professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and an expert on toxins in Alaskan plants who did the original tests on the seeds in the 1990s. The Alaskans who've questioned Southard and Kraukauer's paper fall into two categories: state residents who've long grown tired of the McCandless saga and chemists.
And people in Alaska seem to have very strong viewpoints about this."
The controversy, he says, "has to do with the story, not with the science. We've confirmed something that was already in the literature," adds Southard. "So, scientifically, it's a really small finding. "There's millions of plants out there, and they make lots of strange compounds that we don't know about yet."Ī paper from 1960 had found the same toxin in a few species of the plant. "Through all these twists and turns, now, finally, I think we have figured out what is in those plants," says Southard. Krakauer had a co-author on the paper: Jonathan Southard, a biochemist at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "So, they knew something that we didn't." "Once the roots became unpalatable in midsummer, the natives did not eat these seeds," Krakauer explains. But Krakauer could find no record of people eating the seeds. McCandless, along with plenty of Alaska natives, had relied on the carrot-like roots as a staple. The hardy little plant grows across Alaska and northern Canada. The plant in question is the Eskimo potato, also known as alpine sweetvetch, or Hedysarum alpinum. "It screws up your ability to metabolize, so you essentially starve. "And then it wreaks havoc," says Krakauer. The compound is similar an essential amino acid, arginine, and it tricks the body's cells into thinking it's good for them. Plenty of legumes store this toxin in their seeds to ward off predators. About nine months and some $20,000 later, Krakauer published results in the journal Wilderness & Environmental Medicine in March showing that the seeds did indeed contain a toxin. He sent the seeds back to the Michigan lab, Avomeen Analytical Services, for more thorough tests. Results showed that the seeds had a lethal concentration of a compound called beta-ODAP that has caused gradual weakening and paralysis in famine victims relying on a certain pea.īut after more back and forth from the scientific and non-scientific community in Alaska, Krakauer realized the only way to prove his point was to jump into the world of academic peer-reviewed publishing. The Salt When Edible Plants Turn Their Defenses On Usīy September 2013, after sending samples to a lab in Michigan, Krakauer thought he'd closed the case.
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