A rash of nearly lethal mushroom poisonings in Ohio
cleveland.com
cleveland.com
Here's some quotes from the article:
Approximately 40% of people who ingest the deadly Amanita mushrooms die or require a liver transplant, according to Dr. Pierre Gholam, the liver specialist at University Hospitals who treated Hickman.
...
They immediately began preparing an application to the FDA for the emergency use of an investigational antidote – that if administered within 72 hours of ingestion can prevent liver damage and death in almost every patient who receives it.
The drug, called Silibinin, is derived from the milk thistle plant and given intravenously. It has been available in Europe for over 30 years, but here in the United States it has yet to be approved by the FDA, so it is not stocked in hospitals or pharmacies.
The result is that in order to obtain it for patients, an emergency use application must be submitted to the FDA for every patient who needs it, after which it is flown in by courier directly from the FDA laboratory in Philadelphia.
“This literally takes an army of people working after hours,” said Gholam. “There are tireless, really unsung heroes at the UH research office who make this happen for every patient – they have to do this over and over and over.” Forty-seven times in the last 10 years to be exact.
The biggest enemy in this process, says Gholam, is time. If the drug is administered after the 72-hour window closes, the chances of a full recovery drop dramatically.
Making licensed physicians jump through these hoops while risking their patients lives should be a criminal offense. Yes, it's great that this particular patient survived, but there needs to be a better cost benefit analysis for drug approval. Almost certainly, there are patients who have suffered permanent damage or death because of the difficulty of obtaining this drug. What benefit is there to making this drug so hard to get? How many people miss the time window because of these requirements? How safe does a drug need to be if result of not getting it is a 40% chance of death or a liver transplant?
The question is, why not the plant itself? (Dried and powdered in a readily available pill)
[0]: https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/157/4/1694/2422745?log... [1]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.5b02105
You often have to leach something out of a plant to get to the good stuff without damaging your liver of kidneys with the bad stuff.
So I am a bit wondering what you should have broken for 100k USD without requiring surgery or overnight stay.
Probably the latest model ultra-light e-bike and your Vaude vest.
Still outrageous. In Spain you pay 300 euro a month and in Lithuania it’s like 50 per month. So what you paid buys years of insurance on its own.
P.S. not a fan how the social taxes are collected since whenever you are supposed to get benefits it’s always capped at some ridiculous number…
My late grandmother was often slighted and not offered treatment by VA medical personnel because of her age. It was disgusting, overt ageism beyond whether a particular treatment was suitable or not, she was treated as a second-class citizen not worth helping.
And I had a powered vehicle collision that cost ~$83k without any surgery. The care was so bad (waiting 4 hours for stitches) and when they wanted to admit me, I said to myself "fuck it, I want to get some real sleep at home where I won't be woken every 45 minutes just so they can pad the bill even more as an expensive hotel." I got up and walked out. Minus CT and MRI, I could've done what they did in 3 hours what took them 18. 3 broken bones (T-8, nose, and shoulder) and they kept pushing me to take opiates. The pain was tolerable because it was a high-energy impact with clean breaks.
Also, around 2016, I spoke with a young lady in coffee shop in Redding CA who had a nasal infusion pump with a small tube taped to her face. She was preparing her documentation to attend a bankruptcy hearing across the street. She had stage IV terminal cancer and the doctors and hospitals were trying to take everything she owned while she was alive. 62% of all bankruptcies are due to medical bills and 78% had some form of insurance that obvious didn't help them.
I suggest you might want to get out more and talk to people. The US healthcare system is a fucking racket. People with the privilege of good health insurance rarely get outside of their bubble because "they got theirs" and assume everyone else has the same opportunities and protections. That's not the reality.
The FDA just has to get their act up.
By keeping stock centralized at the FDA they can keep enough on hand and rubber stamp the exception.
Incidentally, these protections exist because of several breakdowns in drug safety in the past, notably Elixir sulfanilamide and Thalidomide.
I'm not suggesting that there should be no improvements, I think there should be a conditional use waiver program that allows these drugs to be in the field. But suggesting that it should be criminal that it's not is over the top moralizing and provocation of outrage for little return.
Also, there are good reasons why this drug is restricted access too - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silibinin
Now whether that leads to better outcomes or is just a protectionist measure for the local industry is anyone’s guess. A bit of both, I would imagine.
[1]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2006-title21-vol5/pd...
Similar rules are applied to passports and driving licenses too, some countries are trusted more than others.
Since we're talking about something that cause death or liver transplant to such an enormous proportion of the patients (for efficiency, you just need a sample of 6 cases to get a result with p<0.05).
Drug safety is important but I think we can agree you can't beat the alternative in the case of poison antidote
That's why the FDA approves chemotherapies for cancer. Safety is always relative to the condition being treated.
> Drug safety is important but I think we can agree you can't beat the alternative in the case of poison antidote
Only 40% die or require a liver transplant. You need a treatment that would not make things even worse.
Those protections are immaterial when the patient is going to die anyway.
The paperwork is to show the patient is going to die anyways, and doesnt just have a trivial problem.
Only 40% are going to die or require a liver transplant. There is no a-priori reason to assume it won't make things even worse.
We have the recent experience of the early months of Covid. In retrospect, it is quite evident that over treatment, especially aggressive intubation and experimental drugs, caused more harm than good.
The question is always whether the proposed treatment is safe and effective. Safety, of course, should be relative to the condition being treated.
Right, which is why the doctors actually treating the patient should be free to make judgment calls without a bureaucrat looking over their shoulder.
There absolutely is. It is called an investigational drug application (AKA clinical trial).
There was a clinical trial running for Silibinin until the manufacturer stopped it in 2020
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00915681
Perhaps this is an opportunity for doctors to conduct an investigator initiated trial?
This is the real reason it hasn't been approved. If only we had some kind of system in place where profit wasn't the main, and often only, motivator for getting life-saving medications approved by the FDA.
With a metric shit ton of caveats, that were outright denied until the public raised an unholy fuss with regulators to get it clamped down on in light of the severity of birth defects/reproductive complications it produces.
I guess emergency use would still be okay?
And it's been for decades without any safety issues.
Granted that in cases of mushroom poisoning it's given only in hospital setting probably through IV, probably in much higher doses.
But those people would die without it. Any reasonable safety profile of this drug is better than safety profile of untreated deathcap poisoning.
Whereas they should be 'in the last 10 years, 100 people were treated with this drug and 27% survived. 71 were not treated with the drug and 1% survived. You use your professional judgement to decide if it is suitable for your patient'.
The FDA shouldn't be doing blanket approvals or bans. They should be making the information available for medical professionals to make the decision themselves.
Ohh, the poor guys have to hand in 4.7 forms per year to get access to an unapproved medicine they need.
I would've thought it was satire, but it seems you're serious? Amazing.
If they issue the medication immediately after the form is submitted, without further inquiry or scrutiny (which is actually good in the case of something this urgent), why are they even bothering keeping it under such lock and key anyway?
That's what would sound like satire to anyone without an unflinching faith in the importance of a nanny state.
Do all of the patients die from the drug? Are doctors administer it as a new fad for the common cold, ect?
Do you sincerely think the EU would keep a drug available for common use if everyone who took it died? If not, drop the red herring and try to have a halfway serious discussion.
So... The one that's doing that is pretty much you.
None of us can argue about wherever the drug should be approved by now, as we don't know why it isn't yet. You'd have to first get a statement from the agency before that discussion can take place
>Do you sincerely think the EU would keep a drug available for common use if everyone who took it died?
No, but this is the type of data the FDA will collect and verify. It is not an approved product so they don't have this data tracking on it like they would for a normal product.
I guess I dont think your central point is credible. You dont think that a form can be examined to see if it has a doctors approval and valid need within 72 hours?
Here is the process if you want to educate yourself:
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/expanded-access/expanded-acc...
Here's a life-saving drug that US pharmacists (only) are not allowed to stock; a drug that saves lives but only if given in a small time windows; and to get this drug you need to fill out a form and simply hope that someone happens to be working at whatever time you start to die.
And here you are, making fun of people who think this is a ridiculous idea!
Who wrote this? Death?
My previous astonishment was clearly misplaced, these doctors know best after all.
I guess FDA only understands the urgency only if you have money and power.
Making a one-off decision that ends up with a bad outcome is no reason to punish someone further.
"Oh sorry. It was you that ran the red light. The other car that hit you is not at fault. We can't treat you. It was your decision."
Really?
Robert Califf (FDA commissioner) has a funny saying, “In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
That would depend on whether it is effective. Is it?
But why FDA is to blame? Just get it from nearby euro-drugstore and do your unlicensed fix.
I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?) around foraging, when in fact there's a whole universe of flavors and textures to be had from wild mushrooms that are simply better, and more fun, than the grocery store.
The other thing is that the truly deadly varieties, such as the subject of this article - Amanita phalloides, are really not that hard to avoid. When you're a novice forager, there are plenty of varieties that don't look remotely like Amanita, and are much easier to differentiate.
There are some hardcore foragers who even consume certain varieties of Amanita (some of which are edible!), but to me this would be too much of a hassle, since it would involve spore prints and maybe even microscopy of the spores to be absolutely sure.
I don't endorse any rules-of-thumb for foraging, but a much better differentiator for beginners is whether the mushroom has pores vs. gills under the cap. There are virtually no deadly varieties that have pores.
Never heard this one before. Adding it to my bug out notes. Thanks!
Put a few common pored edibles (Laetiporus sp., Cantharellus sp., Grifola frondosa, etc.) in your notes for sure though, with basic descriptions, as even their few remote lookalikes (at least pored ones -- some people think Omphalotus sp. look like Cantharellus for some reason) are just going to give you a moderate stomach upset at worst, and may be edible themselves.
Chantarelles don't have pores?
Everything else a good book for identification. If its not 100% clear that it is editable, it gets thrown away.
The most obvious examples are our two major trails, the Pacific Coast and the Appalachian, which take a full year to hike and are done by tens of thousands annually.
Then I moved to another city just a few hundreds of km away, and I couldn't collect many mushrooms anymore. The mushrooms variaties were quite different. The ones I could recognise were not so common anymore, and I didn't know the other ones. I stopped foraging now, because I don't have the urge to learn mushrooms again.
books with photos, very in-depth descriptions, pictures and descriptions sent to friends who also forage, and when all else fails, spore samples.
I've only had to make it to spore samples 6-7 times because I couldn't identify with the first three methods. I will note that I never ate any of the ones I took spore samples of - because I was then able to correctly identify them as poisonous (or close enough that I wasn't willing to take the chance).
When you get to know the specific bits of anatomy of the mushroom body, the trees with which they're symbiotic, the seasons in which they occur, etc., then identifying different varieties becomes as clear as identifying a baseball vs. a tennis ball.
E.g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvopluteus_gloiocephalus#Edi... == In the United States, there have been several cases of Asian immigrants collecting and eating death caps (Amanita phalloides), under the mistaken assumption that they were Volvariella. ==
That has also happened here in Denmark.
When you put your fingers on the foot of a bolet, you know immediately, just from the firmness, relative temperature, etc.
It's magical.
He damn sure was not using an app on his phone to identify them.
In Western Europe, for instance, there is are edible wild champignons that are very similar “groene knol ameniet”, which is deadly.
I recently read that fatalities are on the rise because east europeans that migrate here look for wild champignons but do not know about the poisenous lookalike: it does not grow in the forests they grew up in.
Every region has some mushrooms species that you can learn to easily recognize and that don’t have “evil twins”. You should be aware that this varies by area.
So apps can be a useful tool but a good book that covers the region where you pluck is essential.
It's not like they're chocolate.
https://www.nhbs.com/the-third-hunt-book
I agree with the thread-starter that some actions look incredibly stupid, like an attempt to eat something similar to Amanita (indeed, no taste is worth the risk) or the belief that there any no deadly mushrooms in any given place on the planet. Exclusion first - as kids we were allowed to touch Boletuses only, and then some distinct non-boletuses that have no poisonous lookalikes.
But the described actions are not actually stupidity if you think about it. It’s an attempt to do something that can be done safely only if you are immersed in a culture that preserve and cherish knowledge on this subject and promotes safe indulgement in related pleasures.
We can respect all cultures, probably. But to gather and eat mushrooms safely you should follow (not necessarily) a culture you have grown up in but culture of people or groups who know how to do it safely.
Out of curiosity, have you used any of the apps?
They're really good at flora, and include identification of fungi because they are outdoors and attached to soil and flora. They greatly amplify the most passive and casual interest to something far beyond the tools employed professionals would have. Even the state (but thats a low bar, admittedly).
But the identification isn't for eating things. But knowing that people do that, and for mushrooms I would say there is a case for a warning label in the apps, after positive identification of some things.
Technically the person themselves made the leap to calling it edible.
Although it wouldn’t hurt for the flora identification app to have warnings about not eating things unless you’re very certain and have expertise on the subject. Or make it clear it’s a well informed guess not a perfect identification.
The person went out of their way, but I could see many people going down the same path.
My dad always brought the stuff we picked there, it was close by enough and it's just a totally normal thing here.
I would imagine it would be a nightmare to do this in the US due to legal liabilities.
But if your grandma checks them, no need. :)
I pick only boletus, chanterellus (which has a bad lookalike in North America but it’s not really that close and where I am in Europe there is no really poisonous lookalike at all). Even easier late in autumn when you can pick various cratherellus and there are almost no other mushrooms at all.
It seems reckless and stupid to not immediately approve it given the impact.
In 1960, Kelsey was hired by the FDA in Washington, D.C. At that time, she "was one of only seven full-time and four young part-time physicians reviewing drugs"[4] for the FDA. One of her first assignments at the FDA was to review an application by Richardson-Merrell for the drug thalidomide (under the tradename Kevadon) as a tranquilizer and painkiller with specific indications to prescribe the drug to pregnant women for morning sickness. Although it had been previously approved in Canada and more than 20 European and African countries,[8] she withheld approval for the drug and requested further studies.[3] Despite pressure from thalidomide's manufacturer Grünenthal, Kelsey persisted in requesting additional information to explain an English study that documented peripheral neuritis,[9] a nervous system side effect.[4] She also requested data showing the drug was not harmful to the fetus.[9]
Kelsey's insistence that the drug should be fully tested prior to approval was vindicated when the births of deformed infants in Europe were linked to thalidomide ingestion by their mothers during pregnancy.[10][11] Researchers discovered that the thalidomide crossed the placental barrier and caused serious birth defects.[7]
Edit: I found this, which suggests that it should work in theory, but intense vomiting from the poisoning probably makes it not possible to take a large dose orally: http://bayareamushrooms.org/poisonings/silymarin.html
Now there's an app that'd have to be designed very conscientiously.
While the article cites some persons who ate poisonous mushrooms because an app said they weren't poisonous, ultimately it will come down to "Did the app sell itself as telling you what's safe to eat and what's not?"
From the video, I'm particularly harsh towards Google on this as it doesn't seem to include the confidence level or analysis process and instead focused on showing a result and even trying to sell you something based on the result. This does seem like it's the wrong approach that will get people killed, with thoughts like "well Google thinks it's this, and it's even trying to sell me some, so must be okay."
For the others, you can see warnings in the apps about eating identified stuff, you can see how confident it is in the analysis, and they at least appear to be considering things like the region you're in when making an analysis.
I think it would be fairly defensible based on the warnings and preparation that a reasonable person would not be expected to take the identification as a go-ahead to eat something. That unreasonable persons take unreasonable actions as a result of these apps wouldn't really change the legal interpretation, but of course maybe it can be persuasive in other directions.
At first I shared the same opinion as you that these are dangerous apps, but watching what the apps do in the linked video, the non-google ones are actually pretty acceptable in my opinion. I would prefer they include a few more warnings though when there is low confidence matching or when there is conflicting matching just to remind the person using the app "hey, btw, a lot of plants can kill you. Don't eat this, I'm just an app."
They're mostly intended as entertainment, but some of them use the data to analyze where species are growing in realtime.
There’s a lot of room between a one in a billion mistake that hurts somebody and a fifty fifty chance a mushroom is poisonous. There are plenty of edible vs deadly mushrooms that only have incredibly subtle differences that you should trust nobody but a human expert to identify.
Effectively what I’m saying is a disclaimer shouldn’t be able to get you out of murder charges for a game of Russian roulette.
By your logic knife makers will all be praying that their knives arent used for killing or harming people or they'd be charged for murder.
These identification apps are selling incomplete information where the need for full information about toxins is obvious.
Nobody was ever surprised that a knife hurt somebody or had cause to accuse a knife maker that their product could cut things in a way a consumer wouldn’t know about.
The issue isn’t that a tool can be harmful but that a danger to the producer of a product would be obligated to know and share isn’t obvious to the consumer without previous knowledge. If you’re selling information you must know your audience.
Any human teaching you to identify mushrooms will teach you about the risks of poison right away. “I didn’t tell you what you needed to know but you should have known better” only works when it’s reasonable for you to know better. General audience mushroom identifiers shouldn’t be expected to know how easily a misidentification could kill them, plus it’s just not difficult to do.
This doesn’t match the situation with knives unless you can find me someone who really does need to be warned about knives and isn’t, say, 4 years old.
Did the developers of google maps fail their moral obligation if they know some users will follow google map's directions, despite their GPS being broken, and go down wrong streets, walk into walls, get lost without water, etc?
Did the developers of the bird scooter app, which tells you to wear a helmet (but developers know that warning will be ignored), fail their moral obligation since they know some scooter riders won't actually know how to ride and will fall and be injured?
Do the developers of competitive sport apps, like strava, fail a moral obligation since they know some people will injure themselves trying to get on a leaderboard?
Like, I agree that there's a moral obligation for developers. But on the other hand, I feel like you can expect some baseline of "bad users who misuse the app horribly", and it feels like if that's enough to obligate you to not build said app, you just can't build anything. Just about anything can be misused, and at the scale of most apps, it's reasonable to expect it will be.
Is there something about plant identification that makes it more special than the other apps above?
I think you're missing how many steps are necessary.
Those apps for identifying your local poplars and evergreens.
This person pointed it at a mushroom, picked the mushroom, used it as a topping and digested it.
I would be for an additional warning label when mushrooms are identified. But we need more people on the same page about the apps themselves, if you haven't used them I think you might be out of the loop.
There was a time when you could publish a book on how to make a pipe bomb and nothing would happen to you. Now the wrath of the government descends on you as if you broke the law by having knowledge and telling it to someone.
I do like mushrooms but I think it's just a step too far into 'Russian Roulette' territory to risk trying to forage for those. Eating something which might make you sick for a day or two is one thing. But risking eating something which might kill you or require a liver transplant, if you get it wrong, is a bit too scary for me. The only mushroom I'm confident in my ability to ID is psilocybin.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.floraincog...
Every responsible resource will be full of this kind of caution and neglecting it should be criminal. It isn’t covering your ass or putting an obligatory warning label on everything, a primary point of interest in mushroom identification is toxicity. If you don’t do it you kill people, not like maybe but certainly.
You also don't know that the app doesn't warn users that it shouldn't be used in life and death situations, but I'll maintain that it shouldn't have to. To avoid "criminal negligence" accusations.
If I have a rock identification app does it need to say not to eat rocks to avoid liability for dental damages? If I sell bicycles do I have to tell you that rolling downhill fast can cause death or injury?
It is more comparable if you built an app to identify cancerous moles, except it produced false negatives significantly more often than an actual doctor, leading to people dying. This isn’t a “roll the dice” thing.
> he used the plant identification app
Which I think is a different category of app altogether from a fungus/plant edibility app.
What about an app that tells you how to pump gas while smoking a cigarette? That seems like pretty obvious negligent design. In California at least that opens you up to a lawsuit. [0]
[0] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/product-liabili...
How is it okay to make fundamentally broken software and then release/sell it as if it's functional? It shouldn't be, just like it isn't for architects, engineers(real ones) to design and build buildings that fall down and cars that explode.
Or a hundred people who have their intellectual curiosity satisfied. I recently used Google Lens to ID (with like 75% confidence) a mushroom I had zero intention of eating either way.
Mushroom identifying books have all of the same issues. I guess one could make an argument that it's unconscionable to publish those, too.
However he made the very interesting point that having an app tell you if something is edible is a completely incorrect starting point for foraging because the main thing you get from using a reference book is that you are forced to notice that there are many plants that may look similar but are different (meaning you are more aware that your task is more about differentiation than identification, since botany is a bit fuzzy around the edges) and might seriously differ in their toxicity. None of these apps have a feature to say "it looks like this edible plant but if the angle you took the photo from was slightly off, it's definitely poisonous because the group of plants that look like this only only one or two edible members and everything else will definitely kill you". Some list confidence percentages but there were examples where the percentages were far too pessimistic or optimistic for a certain match, making them not particularly useful.
My impression is that these apps are developed using the same "move fast and break things" model as most other things these days, which definitely seems like the best model to use when making an app that may or may not lead to people's deaths (not your fault of course, because you waived all liability in your ToS). /s
I'll just stick to distinguishing a '67 from a '68 Mustang.
Okay, but there must be data, since the EU approved it based on something, right?
But that's not the FDA we have.
Haven't heard that before, but it does make sense.
It was on the market between 1976 and 2009, and is thought to have caused between 500 and 2,000 deaths.
It's true that the "European FDA" sometimes approves things they have to recall later. But the American FDA also does that. Only rejecting by all medications can you avoid that.
My thought is that medical science works the same way in Europe as in the US, so if it was a scientific matter, approvals would be "portable".
I think a model that explains things better is that the approvals are political/regulatory. And I wish the were scientific.
I used to hang out on r/mycology, and even experts would ask tons of questions before even making a guess.
There's no way in hell an app can do this reliably, and while I hate to say it, I hope people sue them into oblivion. This isn't something benign like hotdog or not, or bird ID. This has fatal consequences...
’But unbeknownst to many, Ohio is home to some of the world’s deadliest mushrooms -- and they can look a whole lot like their edible cousins.
A recent rash of nearly lethal poisonings have experts worried that mobile naturalist apps may be lulling otherwise cautious citizens into a false sense of security ‘
"The death cap mushroom is an invasive species from Europe, now present on every continent except Antarctica. It became such a world traveler because humans spread the mushroom’s spores around like glitter at a kids’ glitter party...
"...the death cap made a sudden appearance in 1938 and became increasingly common after that year."
https://slate.com/technology/2014/02/most-dangerous-mushroom...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%91-Amanitin
It's mode of action is so unique (binds RNA polymerase, so destroying liver and kidney protein synthesis and leading to widespread cell death) that it's used in molecular biology labs for the study of protein synthesis.
Maybe some of the more obvious edible types (boletes, chantrelles, some others) are fairly easy to identify, but even there they have stomach-upset causing relatives. Anything even vaguely similar to Amanita should be viewed with caution (there are closely similar edible types, no thanks). A few good books with lots of pictures, close attention to things like spore prints, going with someone with a lot of experience, that's the best introduction.
That's how I've been doing it for the last decade. I forage a lot of mushrooms, but don't consume anything I'm not sure of.
Also, there are "beginner" mushrooms, that don't have any dangerous look-alikes, such as the famous "chicken of the woods" (laetiporus sulphureus). You can't really go wrong with mushroom like these.
Some of them get expensive and a few I've found rather unpleasant.
There is absolutely no way that I could find these things myself, so I would suggest a dealer like this if you are in an area large enough to support one.
This is the dealer at my market:
https://shop.marketwagon.com/collections/vendor/3711?redir=t...
How do you cook them? They are pretty cheap here so I tried number of times this summer and found the flavour just not worth the cleanup hassle. Maybe they are different in NA. IIRC the traditional method here is to boil them and then cook with bacon and onion, so chances of their flavour is 0.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=laetiporus+sulphureus&client...
Morels are super popular around me because they are very easy to identify and false morels aren't very hard to differentiate once you have seen true morels a couple times. They may look similar to someone who has never seen or picked morels before, but they have very distinct differences once you know what to look for.
At the very least someone should learn what the extremely deadly mushrooms, like death caps or destroying angels, look like so they know what to most definitely avoid. Especially with the delayed reactions which might prevent them from connecting their illness with the mushrooms they ate a day or two before.
A good field guide will specifically call out similar but deadly mushrooms when referencing edible mushrooms and are very clear on the dangers of misidentification and the minimum neccessary identification required. Some mushrooms require a microscrope, but many others just require you to identify certain distinguishing features.
Edit: this is the definitive resource for serious amateur mushroom enthusiasts in North America. It has a wealth of information on understanding the identifying characteristics of mushrooms, as well as keys to aid in the identification of many common genera and species. It's one of those books I find entertaining just to open and read at random. YMMV.
I've also changed the title to a representative phrase from the body of the (current) article.
(Submitted title was "Fungi Foragers Freaked"; please don't post titles like that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
For example, almost anyone can learn to identify chicken of the woods, morels, oysters, and maitake and safely pick them with very minimal training.
Trusting some app without context is an obviously stupid move IMO though and not surprising that people are getting hurt if that's how they are approaching foraging.
This is missing a very important factor, which is that there are some edible species with highly toxic lookalikes. These lookalikes are quite common in Ohio, hence why poisonings from misidentified mushrooms are also common.
There are two, but I'm guessing you're not basing this off of actual knowledge. If you avoid those two, you can forage dozens of other edibles easily. It's not hard to avoid those two (and their entire genus, though there are some easily-distinguished edibles in the genus as well).
> learn to identify the safe edible species
The whole point is you shouldn't just run around picking stuff up, taking a run at an identification, and then popping it in your mouth. You should go out already knowing what you are willing to pick based off of what can safely be picked in your area. Safe here means no edible look a likes (or that you know how to differentiate with confidence)
1. When ID'ing mushrooms look for 3 points of comparison. Never go on one comparison. Any good mushy ID's will document size shape color smell bruising color.
2. Use more than 1 set of eyes. Just because your convinced doesn't mean your right. Post pictures to a forum and get some other eyes on the specimen and make sure your ID is confirmed.
3. From my experience the best place to start and ID is the medium its growing in. Soil Wood Excreta Moist Dry Sunny Time of Day. Find as many points of comparison as possible and when in doubt DONT EAT THE GD THING!
Nearly all of the deaths come from people who don't know this tiny baseline of information.
I would caution anyone who doesn't know what a death cap or a destroying angel is to avoid wild foraging.
If you want to get into foraging, there are some really easy to identify safe ones without dangerous lookalikes. Get a good identification book on the topic. Don't listen to random strangers on the Internet, and don't trust apps.
Not really, as you can cultivate only a handful of mushrooms. The good ones have to come from the woods.
It’s not the potential risk. Mushroom hunters are usually both very careful and very knowledgeable, or at least very careful to defer to people who are very knowledgeable. And a lot of them are either chefs or supplying chefs. For everyone else I t’s mostly because the variety available is so much more limited than you portrayed, and because mushroom hunting is a hobby some people enjoy either for its own sake or for the context of being in the woods to forage for that’s own sake.
Why is this even a question?
But above that, the risk is that you have misestimated your level of "knowing what you're doing".
So, the sensible thing to do is make the cutoff at the point where the risk of that error is lowest. And that point is "is it a wild mushroom?"
Or you can just assume your knowledge is good enough and risk becoming a Dunning-Kruger statistic.
Why? Because it's not that hard to figure out whether you're misestimating your level of knowledge if you actually do things to attempt that verification.
If you're not going to attempt that, yes -- you should stay away from virtually all things that have ever killed anyone, ever.
I know people who self-admittedly overcorrect and refrain from picking even a few easily-distinguished mushrooms that happen to be vaguely similar colors and shapes to deadly mushrooms, but the idea that you need to not pick any mushrooms at all, ever, in order to eliminate the risk is silly.
Picking wild mushrooms is not done (except by those who haven't done the trivial amount of info-gathering that is actually necessary) by gathering lots of different mushrooms and then identifying them and eating the ones that appear to be edible species. It isn't done by taking a field guide out and IDing mushrooms from scratch and then eating the ones that look like the edible ones in the book. It is done by learning species one or two at a time, along with all of their potential lookalikes. People who do this and start with easy mushrooms will encounter far more risk both from getting to the foraging area and from walking around in it than they will from the mushrooms.
It's a gamified experience of the wilderness, too, in some ways.
It provides many people a connection to their culture and ancestry.
It's a literal connection to the earth. Besides the amazing health benefits of mushrooms, I'm sure your microbiome gets a boost.
Mushrooms and herbs both have plenty of potent phytochemicals that have impressive effects on the body, often for good, sometimes not. When I gather mushrooms or herbs for my own consumption, I have complete control over the supply chain and am confident that I'm consuming reasonable subclinical doses. I have a healthy distrust for supplements of mushrooms and herbs in the US; they're poorly regulated, the supply chain is totally opaque; rarely can you know anything about the age, quality, harvesting conditions, etc., or even if you really have the herb or dried mushroom claimed, much less the actual dose of any chemical in there. Sure, I don't know the actual chemical contents of my blue vervain or turkey tail or whatever either, but I also know I'm not grinding it up and chowing down on a concentrated dose.
Of course accurate identification of the plant or mushroom is important, as can be understanding of how growing conditions affect the plant and how preparation should be carried out (Kentucky coffee tree seeds are nice legumes if boiled a couple times, can kill cows if just left in the water trough in the sun; amanita muscaria can be boiled several times and eaten or pickled then eaten).
I sometimes collect trash from the woods near me and weirdly enough the feeling in the brain of finding a good mushroom is very similar to the feeling of finding a plastic bottle to collect.
https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2006/11/22/i-survived-the-...
(can't remember the source, but that spoke to me)
Educate from both sides, or risk death
No idea if this is accurate but it seems reasonable.
A few hours? A few days? A few weeks?
The apps themselves are really good. If you haven't used some popular ones I would say you're being too dismissive. But those apps were never for finding something to eat, and especially not for finding mushrooms to eat.
I can see how this isn't as Darwinian as I would otherwise lean toward.
- machine learning could be used to visually identify fungi
- Portable DNA sequencing devices i.e. nanopore? https://nanoporetech.com/products/smidgion
> So he did what he thought was the responsible thing: he used the plant identification app on his phone to determine the species of mushroom.
I consider myself a beginner at foraging wild mushrooms, and even I can tell that the apps are laughably bad at identifying them.
I can't fathom eating some wild fungi without doing this kind of due diligence, blindly trusting an app.
Even if the recognition rate would be way better - NOPE.
There are mushrooms that look really identical - but one is deadly poisenous and the other good to eat.
Some mushrooms you can only identify by slicing them up, smelling, watch color change, look for certain small details under the top - and where they grow.
With current state of ML, you can get only a very rough classification and I doubt that changes anytime soon.
Portable DNA sequencing sounds better, but I am sceptical, if the tech is mature enough. (If it is, sign me up, but it sounds expensive, they do not even have a price tag)
- not eating wild mushrooms
Also I think you need to perform some kind of DNA extraction on the fungal tissue before using the nanopore?
To be relatively sure on an identification you can combine a good knowledge of the location where the mushroom was found, smell and even taste, but a microscopy (observation of the size, shape and color of the spores, characteristics of the sporophore, hymenium, etc.) is necessary to be certain. In fact, the taxonomy was entirely based on it before genetic analysis started to take over.
You could probably do machine learning and reach a good accuracy based on microscopy, but certainly not with a blurry picture taken from a smartphone.