[Putin] has brought in a series of laws, tripling the price of vodka and threatening dire penalties if people drink black market moonshine, which they call samogon.
And that is, of course, what everybody who can't afford shop-bought vodka does.
They called it the yellow death. It started in the summer when dozens of people turned up in casualty, a vile shade of yellow.
They called it the yellow death. It started in the summer when dozens of people turned up in casualty, a vile shade of yellow.
The dozens turned to hundreds, then a thousand. The better cases recovered, but will die long before their time.
The worst cases? Natasha is not yet 30, she's got a seven-year-old boy called Maxim and she has less than a year to live.
Her whole body has gone yellow - an instantly recognisable feature of toxic hepatitis.
Something has destroyed her liver and now all the natural toxins in the body are stacking up.
Her own body is poisoning her and there is nothing medicine - or at least nothing state medicine in Russia - can do about it.
[...]
A doctor told me that the most likely cause was something which had been added to the moonshine - polyhexamethylene biguanide hydrochloride.
And that stuff had got on the market as a medical disinfectant, Extrasept. It was 95% pure alcohol and tax exempt - making it cheaper than moonshine.
Dodgy traders had mixed the cheaper Extrasept with the home-made samogon - and made a killing.
[...]
Later, when we got back to London, we had Extrasept tested on human liver cells - and it killed every single one.
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