SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - An international team of scientists says Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda did not die of cancer, as officials in Chile had said.
The panel of experts focused on identifying pathogenic bacteria that might have caused the death of the poet. They made their announcement Friday in the Chilean capital.
The leftist writer died in the chaos following Chile’s 1973 right-wing military coup. The official version was that he died of cancer but some have speculated that he was poisoned.
Neruda’s body was exhumed in 2013 to determine the cause of his death but those tests showed no toxic agents in his bones.
Still, Chile’s government said in 2015 that it’s “highly probable that a third party” was responsible for his death.
Neruda was reburied last year.
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