Fred Belf

Fred Belf is one of the patients whose illness exposed a pattern of suspected insulin poisoning at Saint Barnabas Hospital. His symptoms followed the administration of a heparin drip, and his swift improvement when it was disconnected helped investigators link the patients’ unexplained crashes to contaminated IV bags.

Illness During the Heparin Drip

Belf’s heparin began at 7 a.m. By noon he was vomiting onto his chest and could not keep down orange juice. Doctors ordered dextrose to be given intravenously alongside the heparin. The two drips then ran together through the day and night, each counteracting the other in what the account likens to a metabolic teeter-totter. The treatment’s opposing effects left Belf caught in the same unstable pattern seen in another patient, Anna Byers.

The Bag Becomes Evidence

By 7 p.m. the following evening, staff had connected the heparin bags with the symptoms occurring on the unit. Belf’s nurses disconnected his drip, and he quickly began to feel better. They removed his IV bag with gloved hands, sealed it in sterile plastic, and sent it for testing. The result was positive for insulin.

A microscopic examination found numerous tiny needle punctures on the bag, including three along its edges. Although saline bags might be punctured while being connected to a stopcock, punctures around the perimeter were not part of that ordinary process. The marks therefore suggested repeated, intentional tampering rather than an accidental connection.

Significance to the Investigation

Belf’s illness and the tested bag gave investigators a concrete link between an individual patient’s abrupt symptoms and insulin in the hospital’s IV supply. Alongside the bag from Byers and other anecdotal cases, his episode prompted a review of recent cardiac-care records for similar unexplained insulin crashes. Laboratory findings later showed that affected patients had exceptionally high levels of insulin, much of it foreign to the body. Belf’s recovery after the drip was removed did not, by itself, establish who had contaminated the bags; it helped turn scattered clinical alarms into evidence of a possible deliberate poisoning campaign.