Mystery Deaths in the Night

Disease detectives are stumped by a Laotian malady

When the pastor of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Paul arrived at the church early one morning this month, he tried not to wake the Laotian refugee family that had been staying in the basement while waiting for permanent lodging. Suddenly Cha Mang, one of the refugees, appeared and beckoned the clergyman to follow her to the room where the family, which had arrived in the U.S. just five days earlier, slept. There she pointed to the bed where her husband Lue Thao, 36, was lying. Lue Thao was not asleep; he was dead.

Lue Thao was the tenth Laotian to die mysteriously in Minnesota, Iowa and Oregon since October 1979. About 21,000 Laotian refugees settled in these states in the past seven years.

The deaths have a puzzling pattern.

All the victims were men, ages 25 to 50, and apparently healthy. Each died between midnight and dawn, presumably while asleep. Sometimes the deaths were preceded by heavy breathing and nightmarish screams. Says a St. Paul-area medical examiner, Michael McGee: "The autopsies have been uniformly negative. We're really quite baffled."

Nine of the victims belonged to the Hmong tribe, and tribal leaders theorize that the deaths are a delayed reaction to what they believe was nerve gas dropped by North Vietnamese forces in retaliation for Hmong support of U.S. efforts in Viet Nam and Laos. Dr. David Paulson of the St. Paul health department does not buy that notion: "Nerve gas usually kills instantaneously and it does not discriminate between the sexes." Indeed there is no firm evidence that any of the victims had even been exposed to chemical agents in their homeland or that the North Vietnamese ever possessed any nerve gas.

Another possibility put forth by the Hmong is that the deaths are related to stress and depression brought on by their relocation to the U.S. Says Tou-Fu Vang, who works in a federal refugee resettlement program: "The Hmong were kings of their area in the mountains. Now they find themselves in a situation that is completely out of their control."

Medical Examiner Larry Lewman in Portland, Ore., offers several possible explanations. The victims may have suffered from sleep apnea, a disorder characterized by halts, usually brief, in breathing during sleep. Or, as Lewman thinks is more likely, there may have been some disturbance in the electrical conduction system that governs heartbeat. He also notes a similarity to bangungut, or "nightmare" syndrome, a condition that strikes Philippine males and may be related to eating rice or special sauces for meat or fish. "The victims go to bed, thrash and cough and cannot be resuscitated," he says.

A representative of the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta last week met with officials in Minnesota. Their preliminary investigation did not reveal evidence of a communicable disease, an inherited malady or exposure to a noxious agent. The mysterious deaths have, however, had an easily identifiable side effect: an increase in homesickness Says Si Thao, an interpreter for Lue Thao's widow: "She has no skills, no education and she cannot speak English Now she has no husband. All she wants to do is go back to Laos."

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