From: steuart@btinternet.com   
      
   The CO in HP's blood sample has long been gist to the mill for the   
   conspiracy thinkers.  Once again, French confidentiality laws, the tight   
   secrecy around the Stephan investigation and the fact that only a tiny   
   number of individuals had access to its findings, allowed speculation to   
   multiply; partial details, anicdote and sheer irrationality to substitute   
   for   
   hard fact.  A study of the ACPD archives reveals this starkly.  Using the   
   search terms 'CO' and 'carbon monoxide', there is nothing from 31st August   
   1997 though to May 1998, posts only emerge in June 1998.  This is nothing   
   curious about this.   
   What posters might find surprizing, is that the founder of   
   ACPD, thought the whole CO story 'a complete red herring' and 'crap'(See   
   Henri Paul Suffered Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, 1st and 2nd June, 1998).  His   
   tune changed very quickly.   
      
   It is relatively easy to narrow down the emergence of the details pertaining   
   to the CO, to two sources:  the book 'Death of a Princess' published in Feb   
   1998 and the documentary 'Diana - Secrets of the Crash' broadcast in the UK   
   on the 3rd June, 1998.  The common factor between these was in the person of   
   M. Fayed, who was a source for both and was also a member of the tiny club,   
   that had access to the ongoing investigation in France.  It was he who must   
   have been responsible for the partial leak, of the 20.7% HbCO in HP's blood   
   sample.  This effectively skewed the debate and misled the public for a   
   year.  There were of course, those who wanted to be misled; they resided   
   mainly at ACPD.   
      
   Things began to look shaky, when Martyn Gregory's book 'Diana - The Last   
   Days' began to be serialised in the Daily Mail June 1999.  Gregory revealed   
   for the first time that there were in fact two tests.  The second, taken   
   from femoral blood, was much lower at 12.8% HbCO.  Gregory also republished   
   Dr Pepins(charged by the investigation to carry out an expertise on the CO)   
   toxilogical reports verbatim.   I reported this in my 'CO Update!' posted   
   Sun 18 Jul 1999   Paget has now republished this report in full(See Page   
   319-320)   
      
   HP AND SMOKING.   
      
   In Feb 1999, I posted the following to the NG,   
      
   "Whether you like or not, HP's smoking WAS a possible source of CO, between   
   the time that he arrived at the Ritz and died in the accident and could   
   alter the measurements significantly." (CO in HP's Blood, Mon 22 Feb 1999)   
      
   This was months before it entered into public discourse.  Lack of details   
   about HP habits, the sample and the skewed nature of the debate, which   
   had been orchestrated by the Fayed organisation, meant that these remarks   
   could   
   only be tentative.  I was thrilled however, when Gregory began his   
   revelations about the case.  The two tests - the thoraxic 20.7% and the   
   femoral 12.8% - proved that HP had a background level of CO that had been   
   linked by the investigation via Gregory, to his smoking habit.  Paget has   
   now made the full expertise available and has concluded that HP was a heavy   
   smoker and who would typically have a HbCO of 10%.   
   Averaging the two tests and allowing for HP's smoking, the anomolous HbCO   
   amounted to 6.75%, according to Lecomte and Pepin.  They now sought to   
   resolve the source of this CO, quite reasonably, from the car accident and   
   particularly the action of the airbags.  Contrary to the pro-conspiracy   
   posting at ACPD, airbags DO produce CO.  Michel Kazreff, Director of   
   Research and Development at the firm Autoliv, Manufacturer of airbags, told   
   Lecomte and Pepin, that the release was of the order of one gram to a few   
   grams, more than enough to accounts for HP's CO levels.  We will have an   
   opportunity to return to his issue later.   
      
   Only a few days ago, I was challened to produce evidence of HP's smoking   
   habit.  The primary source was the bodyguards, at least until the   
   publication of the Paget investigation, which has opened the French files.   
      
   HP's long term smoking habits were confirmed by a number of witnesses:   
   Claude Garrec, HP's closest friend said that he smoked "a packet of   
   cigarillos a day"; Myriam Lemaire and Josiane Le Tellier, both proprietors   
   of bars frequented by HP, often witnessed him smoking cigars while reading   
   in their bars; Jean Discazeaux, a tobacconist said that HP came to collect   
   his cigars for the past eight years; Jean-Pierre Brizay, lawyers for HP's   
   parents wrote that he was 'a moderate smoker'.   
      
   On the night in question, Jean-Peirre Alidiere, barman in the Vendome at the   
   Ritz, saw HP smoking 'a small cigarillo'; Pierre Haunsfield, a pap at the   
   Ritz Hotel, noticed HP "tapping a small cigar against his cigar box"(See   
   Page 326-327)   
   Further evidence came from the Ritz CCTV, which showed HP smoking at 22.36,   
   23:46   
   and 00:03(See Pages 227, 241 and 242 respectively) .  HP's sample also   
   contained Cotinine, the main metabolite of   
   nicotine, which meant that HP had used "tobacco based products or other   
   products containing nicotine"(Page 345).   
      
   This seems to resolve the matter.   
      
   CO AND SUICIDE.   
      
   In 1998, conspiracy posters at ACPD, were uncritically replicating the   
   misleading outpourings of the Fayed organisation, to the effect that HP's   
   sample was "typical of a suicide, by exhaust gas inhalation".  This became   
   the byword of the 'sample was swapped' senario.   
      
   Around November of that year, I undertook research into typical suicides   
   from CO poisoning.  I posted the results of an Australian study into 74   
   cases, in which the average level of HbCO was 77.1%(carbon monoxide update   
   1, Sun 22 Nov 1998).  This proved beyond any   
   reasonable doubt, that the suicide/swapped senario was not true and the   
   conspiracy pundits were wrong.  But reasonableness, rationality and evidence   
   were far from the conspiracists vocabulary.  Time and time again, they   
   posted the same false assumption, even in the face of  my challenges.  These   
   interactions were marked by a complete absense of integrity: they   
   distaughted, they played word games and were almost psychotic in their   
   denials.  The final word must go to Paget,   
      
   "There was a suggestion that a suicide victim who died from carbon monoxide   
   poisoning was used deliberately or inadvertently to replace Henri Paul.   
   Neither of the figures above would support such a suggestion. Carbon   
   monoxide deaths commonly show carboxyhaemoglobin levels of 50% or more.   
   Neither of the two levels here was fatal"(Page 361).   
      
   Again,   
      
   "Deaths from carbon monoxide suicide tend to show a 50% level of   
   carboxyhaemoglobin or higher. If one took the reading of 12.8%   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)