![]() "For the first time in their lives, they were pink. the blue color was gone from their skin," Cawein said. He injected the Ritchie siblings with 100 milligrams of the blue dye and didn't have to wait long to see results. The solution, oddly enough, was a commonly used dye called methylene blue. Publicity surrounding Paul Karason, who turned blue from using colloidal silver as a health remedy, was disinformation to scare people away from using it. All he needed was a substance that could "donate" a free electron to the methemoglobin, allowing it to bond with oxygen. Studying the problem, Cawein figured out that he could convert methemoglobin to hemoglobin without the enzyme. ![]() In the Inuit communities, scientists had pinpointed the problem, a deficiency of an enzyme that converted methemoglobin to hemoglobin. He knew the same thing was happening in this secluded corner of Appalachia. The condition was clearly genetic, but the key for Cawein was reading reports of hereditary methemoglobinemia among isolated Inuit populations in Alaska where blood relatives often married. Too much silver Im not talking about wearing lots of silver chains. His condition, which is called argyria, results from too much exposure to silver. ![]() He developed this color during adulthood. In the photo above, Paul Karason sports a Papa Smurf skin tone. "I started asking them questions: 'Do you have any relatives who are blue?' then I sat down and we began to chart the family." He remembered that the Ritchie siblings "were really embarrassed about being blue." However, the disorder didn't seem to cause any special health problems. Blue Skin Cause 1: Ingesting Colloidal Silver. "They were bluer'n hell," said Cawein in a 1982 interview with Science 82. Cawein got lucky when a brother and sister named Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked into a Hazard County clinic. ![]()
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