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Published online 27 November 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news061127-1
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Murder most mysterious
The death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko has highlighted how long it can take to diagnose a poison. Nicola Jones asks how hard can it be?
You'd think, in this day and age, that diagnosing the culprit in a suspected poisoning wouldn't be that tricky. Bang the symptoms into a database, plug the blood into a mass spec and spot the toxin.
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