Doctor says food may have intoxicated woman
Waukesha, WI (AP) - 3/18/93

A physician testified at the drunken driving trial of a 48 year-old woman that food she had eaten the night she was stopped by police may have helped make her inebriated.

William G. Crook said Wednesday at the Waukesha County Circuit Court trial of Marjorie Minor of Wawatosa that she had a medical history of someone suffering from Candida albicans drunken syndrome, a gastrointestinal fermentation process that produces alcohol.

She was issued a citation Nov. 24, 1991, by a Waukesha police officer. Authorities said she had a BAC of 0.21%, more than twice the legal level of intoxication in WI.

Crook, a Memphis, TN, physician who has written on the syndrome, said Minor had a long history of chronic health problems, including yeast infections.

On at least one occasion, he said, she was diagnosed as having an overabundant amount of yeast in her system.
Those factors, combined with the fact that she had been taking antibiotics in the weeks prior to the incident and that she had eaten a pasta dinner and consumed several glasses of cola the night she was stopped, made her a prime candidate for the syndrome, the doctor said.

The syndrome mainly affects women and those with a heavy use of antibiotics and sugar, Crook said. "I think she had a double whammy set up" the night she was stopped, he said.

But Peter Sohnle, the Medical College of WI's chief of infectious disease, testified that an article in JAMA called the syndrome theory "speculative and unproven.“

Patricia Field, chief of the WI State Laboratory of Hygiene's toxicology section, said, "It doesn't happen in real people.“

Police Office Paul DeJarlais testified that Minor smelled of alcohol when he stopped her, and she failed several field sobriety tests.
He described her behavior as "belligerent and obnoxious" and said she attempted to leave the scene despite his instructions that she should not do so.

But Minor denied that was the case. She said she told the officer twice that she did not think she could successfully perform the field sobriety tests because she had a broken ankle. She said the cast had been taken off prematurely because of an infection.