Four people have been hospitalised during five days after eating the deadly poisonous amanita verna, or "death angel" mushroom. Some of the patients could require a liver transplant. Professor Krister Höckerstedt says that an artificial liver machine is being used in an attempt to detoxify the patients' blood.

   

Poisonings caused by the amanita verna are quite rare in Finland. During the past ten years, two mushroom poisoning victims have been given liver transplants at Helsinki's liver surgery clinic.

   

The deadly white mushrooms are exceptionally plentiful in Finnish forests now, because of the warm summer.