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From: reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: sci.med,net.cooks
Subject: Re: fugu sashi
Message-ID: <6539@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Fri, 21-Nov-86 14:31:48 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.6539
Posted: Fri Nov 21 14:31:48 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Nov-86 21:59:23 EST
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Reply-To: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
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In article <7911@lll-crg.aRpA> figmo@lll-crg.UUCP (Lynn Gold) writes:
>Has anyone out there been to Japan?  If so, have you ever tried fugu
>sashi?  Fugu is the blowfish that is reputed to be a delicacy yet
>poisonous.

There was an entire chapter devoted to a discussion of the Fugu sushi
phenomenon in the book "The Serpent and the Rainbow". The book was primarily
about Voodoo and zombies (clearly Garry Trudeau read this book right before
the Uncle Duke zombie episode). I have no first-hand experience at eating
fugu, but I can tell you what this book says.

Fugu is a species of poisonous puffer fish. Certain parts of its body contain
a powerful neurotoxin. That neurotoxin, in large doses, is used to "zombie"
people in Haiti: it paralyzes the body so completely that the body seems
clinically dead.

Japanese fugu enthusiasts enjoy flirting with death, and they especially
enjoy the LSD-like "high" that comes from eating a sub-lethal amount of the
toxin. Supposedly if you eat a little bit of the toxin, you get a very
enjoyable drug experience. If you eat a bit more, you turn into a zombie. If
you eat more than that, you die. Japanese custom is that when someone appears
to have died from eating fugu (it happens altogether too often), they are not
buried for some long time afterwards, just on the off chance that they are
not actually dead and might in fact recover. Frequently they do: there is a
considerable medical literature in Japan of people who supposedly died from
fugu poisoning, but then suddenly came back to life as the toxin wore off.

There are certain organs that are known to contain high concentrations of the
toxin. I believe that one of them was the liver. Fugu chefs are specially
trained to recognize how close to the poisoned organs they can get away with
cutting, keeping in mind that their customers generally want the largest
sublethal dose possible, in order to maximize the "buzz" that they get from
the fugu.

I do not remember the name of the neurotoxin in question; I don't suppose it
really matters.