A mysterious cluster of deaths amongst Amish children has finally been solved

Sara Chodosh in Popular Science:

In 2004, two Amish children—siblings, in fact—died while playing. They weren’t doing anything particularly dangerous, just normal recreation, but somehow they both passed away suddenly.

When their autopsies came back negative for any known underlying cause of death, the local Medical Examiner’s office reached out to the Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory, a specialized lab at the Mayo Clinic that investigates exactly these types of unexpected deaths. Even they couldn’t figure out what exactly happened.

But in the intervening 15-odd years, a lot has changed technologically. So when two other siblings died more recently, the Mayo Clinic had better tools at their disposal. And they’ve now solved the mystery.

More here.