On the Hunt for "Killer" Mushrooms

Since the late 1970s, more than 400 people of all ages in remote areas of China’s southwestern Yunnan province have dropped dead — sometimes in midsentence — from a mysterious cause, mostly during the summer. The so-called sudden unexplained deaths (SUDs) seemed to be the result of heart attacks, but no one was sure what was prompting them as only half of the autopsies revealed underlying heart disease.