Woman Claims Sick Hamster Killed Husband

BOSTON -- A woman whose husband died after receiving a liver transplant claims a diseased hamster purchased at a pet store is to blame.

Nancy Magee, 51, of Whitman, Mass., is suing PetSmart for negligence.

Thomas J. Magee was one of three people who died after receiving organs donated by a woman who had contracted lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCMV) from a hamster she bought at a PetSmart in Warwick, R.I., according to a law suit Magee has filed in federal court.

The organ donor later died of an unrelated stroke and the transplants were done by hospitals which had no knowledge of her disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control Web site, lymphocytic choriomeningitis is a rodent-borne viral infectious disease with symptoms similar to meningitis.

Thomas Magee’s liver transplant was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital in April 2005. Five days later, the suit says, he “was exhibiting high blood pressure and a fever.”

Weeks later he died and according to the suit, the virus was the cause of death. “The immediate cause of” Thomas Magee’s death was “determined to have been the dissemination of LCMV in the liver he received.”

An attorney for PetSmart told the Boston Herald that the company would have no comment on the suit.