ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1981, a sudden outbreak of flu-like symptoms, nausea, and vomiting in the working-class suburbs and dormitory towns around Madrid, Spain, left almost 400 people dead and 20,000 suffering from the lasting effects of what appeared to be toxic poisoning. It began on May 1 with 8-yearold Jaime Vaquero Garcia; when his condition suddenly deteriorated and he had severe difficulties in breathing, his mother rushed him to the La Paz Children’s Hospital in Madrid, but, on the way there, he died in her arms. When the doctors learned that Jaime’s five siblings had similar symptoms, they had them all brought into the hospital. One of the girls was immediately put into intensive care, while the other four were transferred to Hospital del Rey, Madrid’s prestigious clinic for infectious diseases. There, the doctors treated them with antibiotics for “atypical pneumonia” (Woffinden 2001).
