present in her body. Did Hillory simply have the unbelievable misfortune to be chemically assaulted and suffer heart failure in one hellish night?
    It seemed that we were forced to this improbable conclusion, until Fieler, et al. turned up a surprising new piece of this puzzle[140]. In a test of their GHB assay technique, they were able to detect GHB levels of up to 168mg/L in the blood of cadavers that had not ingested any! Barring the possibility of a desperately confused necrophiliac at the coroner’s office, it seems that the body may produce huge quantities of endogenous* GHB when near death. Considering various findings that GHB protects the brain [141] and organs [30] from low-oxygen conditions, and the body’s own use of GHB to reduce oxygen consumption [45], it seems reasonable to theorize that a death due to loss of circulation would naturally lead to the production of high levels of GHB during (or after) the final moments. Note that this is, as of now, by no means a supported or peer-reviewed conclusion, but I hope to soon have it critiqued by minds armed with medical training.
