Geelong Corpse Plant - What has this got to do with Sharon Stone's Armpit and the Price of Fish?

Corpse flowers, also know as Carrion Flowers, emit odour that resembles rotting fish.

The genus amorphophallus titanum created news in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, when it flowered, making a number of visitors to the Botanic Gardens vomit.¹

Recently my friend Dr Bine Stebel wrote about the side effect of Covid19 jabbing that changes body odour, as famously mentioned by Sharon Stone in late December 2021.²³ Note that the Express article might not load properly for you, so please let me know of another report from around that time to check that it is authentic.

Here I will mention just a few of the known noxious chemicals emitted by Corpse Flowers, Rotting Fish and Endotoxin Jabbed Humans.

Endotoxin causes Humans to Stink

Mats Olsson and coworkers in Sweden injected healthy Human volunteers with 0.6 nanogram Endotoxin per kilogram body weight (Lot numberr G3E0609, United States Pharmacopeia Rockville, Maryland) to make them stink in 2023, rating the effect on body odour perceived as more aversive, on a scale of intense, unpleasant, and disgusting.⁴

Within just a few hours, Endotoxin-exposed individuals had a more aversive body odor relative to when they were exposed to a placebo.

Body odors were sampled using tight T-shirts. Urine samples were also collected and studied separately.

They used a group of healthy control Humans injected with Saline.

Mats and friends provide many useful references to their earlier experiments⁵⁶⁷, and those done by others, that showed the odour effect in Humans and other animals.

They used Human sniffers presented with Armpit T-shirt samples and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to look at the change in Human stench after Endotoxin. Body odour donors, for inclusion, had to be 18–50 years old, right-handed, medication free (except for non-barrier contraceptives for female participants), non-smokers, and without a history of drug abuse, chronic pain, or psychiatric disorders.

A physician supervised the participants during the full sampling phase of the study to ensure immediate medical attention in the event of an acute reaction to the Endotoxin.

Levels of four cytokines associated with Endotoxin-induced inflammation were measured to confirm an inflammatory response to Endotoxin.

These were three proinflammatory cytokines, TNF-alpha, IL-6 and IL-8, and the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10.

Here is the disgust level found after Endotoxin (LPS) jabbing

Figure 1. Perceptual ratings of body odor samples. Mean ratings of the perceived (A) intensity, (B) pleasantness, and (C) disgust of T-shirts worn by individuals exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and a Placebo (saline injection). Error bars show standard errors. An asterisk (*) indicate a significant difference between conditions (p < 0.05) whereas † reflects a p-value between (0.5 and 0.10).

An analysis of the treatment effects on pleasantness ratings, while adjusting for effects of treatment-based intensity increases, yielded a significant decrease, d = 0.101, t(47.929) = 2.066, p < 0.011.

My comment on their experiment, is that it would be interesting to determine sex-specific responses of the Human sniffers and whether they were heterosexual or homosexual, as we know Pheromones are very important.⁸ But that would require a larger sample and a revised ethics approval.

Mats Olsson and coworkers found GC–MS analyses generated a total of 36 peaks that could potentially be attributed to body odor. Five of these compounds were significantly different between the Endotoxin and placebo jabbee samples.

One component, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, also known as the Mosquito attractant Sulcatone⁹, was significantly higher after correction for multiple testing in the Endotoxin compared to the placebo samples.

Sulcatone is also an Alarm Pheromone signal secreted by the mandibular glands of Formica worker ants.¹⁰

Cadaverine

Cadaverine, 1,5-Diaminopentane, pentamethylenediamine, has five carbon atoms in a chain between two amino groups.¹¹

Humans have genes that act as specific receptors for Cadaverine.

GMO E. coli bacteria have been created to maximize their production of Cadaverine.¹²

Use of Cadaverine to detect Endotoxin

Dentists suffer occupational hazard of patients’ bad breath caused by oral Gram-negative bacteria.¹³

Putrescine

Putrescine, 1,4-Diaminobutane, 1,4-Butanediamine, a small molecule with 4 carbon atoms in a chain between two amino groups, is found in all plants, fungi and animals, normally in small concentration, speaks (actually reeks) for itself when abnormal amounts are created and released.

It too has been produced in GMO Escherichia coli bacteria.¹⁴

Trimethylamine

I used Trimethylamine Oxide (N,N-Dimethylmethanamine N-oxide)¹⁵ to gently remove Carbon Monoxide attached to metals by oxidation to Carbon Dioxide and in the process my laboratory colleagues and I suffered the smell of the liberated Trimethylamine despite performing the reaction in a good fume cupboard.

M(CO)_n + Me₃NO + L → M(CO)_n−1L + Me₃N + CO₂

Odour Changes are not due to mRNA

We can rule out mRNA as a major cause of the body odour change because earlier studies by Kimball and coworkers in 2014 on Rabies-Vaccinated (RV), West Nile virus (WNV) vaccinated and unvaccinated Control Mice showed similar results to Endotoxin challenge.¹⁶

In 2017 Kimball and coworkers showed that although the Endotoxin jabbing inflammation subsided within hours or days, the Urine odour change persisted for weeks in inbred male C57BL/6 Mice.

Kimball extended the study in 2021 to show that mouse Urine odour changes depend on the type of inflammatory assault.¹⁷ They tentatively identified o-toluidine, 5-hepten-2-one, 6-methyl-3-heptanone, 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, and dimethylsulfone as upregulated volatiles.

Taste alteration with Human Endotoxin Jabbing

Many Covid19 Jabbees reported altered sense of Taste or Smell.

In 2012 German Humans jabbed with 0.4 nanogram of Endotoxin per kilogram of body weight suffered rise in body temperature, decreased mood, increased anxiety levels and increases in plasma concentrations of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-10, and Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF)-α, as expected.¹⁸

Endotoxin Jabbees suffered averse reaction to a novel tasting beverage.

Prepubescent Rats differ from Adult Rats

In 2009, Japanese researchers studied the reaction to altered body odour in Male Sprague–Dawley Rats jabbed with Endotoxin (LPS).¹⁹

Here is the abstract:

The present study examined odorant communication during acute illness provoked by injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 100
μg/kg) and how these effects vary between prepubertal and adult conspecifics.

Exposure to odor of LPS-treated adult male rats produced increased avoidance in both sexes of adults and prepubertal male partners. This response was not found when they were exposed to odor of LPS-treated prepubertal males. Even a 2.5-fold higher load of LPS in prepubertal males failed to produce aversive odor cues, suggesting that the difference in the odor is not a simple issue of dose/body volume. Both estradiol benzoate (20
g/kg) and testosterone propionate (500
g/kg), but not dihydrotestosterone (500
g/kg) pretreatment in prepubertal males administered LPS restored the expression of aversive odor. These hormone treatments per se did not influence odor properties of prepubertal males, indicating that estrogen receptors may play a key regulatory role in the expression of aversive odor in LPS-treated prepubertal rats. These data suggest that the expression of sickness-related odor emerges through puberty, and likely involves a complex interaction between inflammation and sex steroids across development.

Sharon Stone was Not Alone!

Photo Credit.²⁰

I will flesh this article out with more interesting references linking Endotoxin to the smell of rotting Fish after circulating within the Substack email length limit.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrion_flower

2. https://geoffpain.substack.com/cp/151525344

3. Hollie Beale. 29 December 2021. 'Am I the only person?' Sharon Stone, 63, questions possible odd side effect of Covid jab. https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1542303/Sharon-Stone-side-effect-covid-vaccine-armpit-odour-Instagram-basic-instinct-age-news

4. Amy R. Gordon, Johan N. Lundström, Bruce A. Kimball, Bianka Karshikoff, Kimmo Sorjonen, John Axelsson, Mats Lekander and Mats J. Olsson. 2023. Human scent as a first‑line defense against disease. Nature Scientific Reports 13:16709

5. Mats J. Olsson, Johan N. Lundström, Bruce A. Kimball, Amy R. Gordon, Bianka Karshikoff, Nishteman Hosseini, Kimmo Sorjonen, Caroline Olgart Höglund, Carmen Solares, Anne Soop, John Axelsson and Mats Lekander. 2014. The Scent of Disease: Human Body Odor Contains an Early Chemosensory Cue of Sickness. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797613515681

6. Amy R. Gordon, Bruce A. Kimball, Kimmo Sorjonen, Bianka Karshikoff, John Axelsson, Mats Lekander, Johan N. Lundström, and Mats J. Olsson. 2018. Detection of Inflammation via Volatile Cues in Human Urine. Chemical Senses. doi:10.1093/chemse/bjy059

7. Christina Regenbogen, John Axelsson, Julie Lasselin, Danja K. Porada, Tina Sundelin, Moa G. Peter, Mats Lekander, Johan N. Lundströma, and Mats J. Olsson. 2017. Behavioral and neural correlates to multisensory detection of sick humans. PNAS. 114(24):6400–6405.

8. Georgia Sarolidou, John Axelsson, Bruce A. Kimball, Tina Sundelin, Christina Regenbogen, Johan N. Lundström, Mats Lekander and Mats J. Olsson. 2020. People expressing olfactory and visual cues of disease are less liked. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 375:20190272

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheromone

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulcatone

11. RM Duffield, JM Brand and MS Blum. 1977. 6-Methyl-5-hepten-2-one in Formica Species: Identification and Function as an Alarm Pheromone (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 70(3):309–310. https://academic.oup.com/aesa/article-abstract/70/3/309/2758668

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaverine

13. Xuemei Liu, Ruoshi Luo, Dan Wang, Kaixing Xiao, Fanzhen Lin, Ya Qi Kang, Xue Xia, Xiaojie Zhou, Ge Hu. 2024. Combining directed evolution with high cell permeability for high-level cadaverine production in engineered Escherichia coli. https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/biot.202300642

14. Huggins T, Haught JC, Xie S, Tansky CS, Klukowska M, Miner MC, White DJ. 2016. Quantitation of endotoxin and lipoteichoic acid virulence using toll receptor reporter gene. https://europepmc.org/article/med/29178719

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrescine

16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimethylamine_N-oxide

17. Bruce A. Kimball, Maryanne Opiekun, Kunio Yamazaki, Gary K. Beauchamp. 2014. Immunization alters body odor. Physiology & Behavior. 128:80–85.

18. Jan-Sebastian Grigoleit, Jennifer S. Kullmann, Anne Winkelhaus, Harald Engler, Alexander Wegner, Florian Hammes, Reiner Oberbeck, Manfred Schedlowski. 2012. Single-trial conditioning in a human taste-endotoxin paradigm induces conditioned odor aversion but not cytokine responses. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 26:234-238.

19. Hiroyuki Arakawa, Keiko Arakawa, and Terrence Deak. 2009. Acute Illness Induces the Release of Aversive Odor Cues From Adult, but Not Prepubertal, Male Rats and Suppresses Social Investigation by Conspecifics. Behavioral Neuroscience. 123(5):964–978

20. https://www.elle.fr/Cannes/Tapis-Rouge/Cannes-2021-Sharon-Stone-Louis-Garrel-et-Vicky-Krieps-illuminent-le-tapis-rouge