In the fractured news coverage on the finding of ricin in a Las Vegas hotel room there are increasingly common references to how easy it is to make ricin from castor beans.
All of those claims refer to the recipe for making ricin being available on the internet. I wondered if that were true, so I went looking. The result of my search is below the fold.
There are actually several websites which purport to contain a recipe for making ricin. One of them is here. It's pretty typical of all of them and, at first glance, sounds entirely plausible.
Fortunately, the same websearch that returns recipes on "how to make ricin" also returns a link to a website maintained by a firm named Global Security. Global Security, launched in 2000, maintains a website which contains information on security threats. One of the pages on that site addresses the recipes posted on the internet for making ricin.
In reality, these so-called recipes are, to quote Global Security, "a crock".
Contrary to all those breathless reports about how easy it is to extract ricin from castor beans, ricin is not simple to make, nor do the recipes posted online contain any process for isolating ricin from other compounds in the castor bean.
Specifics from that Global Security page on ricin:
The recipe includes instructions for the use of acetone and lye -- a non-specific term for any strong base, usually sodium or potassium hydroxide. Both are common chemicals. However, neither powerfully address any unique properties of ricin which would be exploited to differentially separate it from every other complex component in the mash of a castor seed. Indeed, the entire recipe shows no real effort to achieve this end. Even the step by step instructions, as written, can be picked apart for a variety of reasons.
In fact, according to Global Security those online recipes all seem to stem from a posting made in the early '90's on an early bulletin board system called The Temple of the Screaming Electron.
Media reports of information supplied by Las Vegas and federal authorities imply that the occupant of the Extended Stay American hotel room in Las Vegas must have been cooking up his own ricin, since castor beans were found in the room.
Don't believe it. I do not believe we are being told the truth about this incident. Please read all news reports with a healthy dose of skepticism and verify what you read.