Updated on : Thursday, April 29, 2010WASHINGTON: George W Bush's wife Laura has claimed that she and her husband were poisoned during a G8 meeting of world leaders.
Mrs Bush said the couple and several members of their staff fell ill under mysterious circumstances at the summit in Germany in 2007.
Her husband was bedridden for part of the trip but an investigation by the Secret Service was inconclusive and doctors concluded that they could have contracted a virus.
The former First Lady made the poisoning claim in her book Spoken From The Heart, which is due out in the U.S. in May.
She has also used the book to speak in detail for the first time of how she crashed her car at the age of 17, killing a schoolmate.
She tells vividly how the death has haunted her for most of her adult life and caused her to lose her faith in God.
The supposed poisoning took place at the 33rd G8 meeting in Mecklenburg in Germany which included Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who was then still Chancellor, among the attendees.
Other world leaders present were German chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian president Vladimir Putin and French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The summit's big achievement, a non-binding communique on climate change, was overshadowed by a video of President Sarkozy apparently drunk.
But Mrs Bush's claims point to potentially more serious events going on behind closed doors.
The morning after sharing a laugh and a beer with Mr Blair, the then President was forced to miss a session on Africa because he was ill.
Mrs Bush had noted several high profile staff becoming ill and asked White House security to look into the matter, but investigations did not turn up evidence of a plot.
In her book Mrs Bush writes: 'We never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one.'
At the time of the incident Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, said Mr Bush was dressed and ready for the meeting when he began to feel sick and that his condition was likely a 'stomach virus, a light touch of food poisoning or something else'.
Mr Bush carried out a much-anticipated first meeting with Mr Sarkozy, but it was behind closed doors.
Memories of what happened to his father may have been one of the reasons he stayed out of sight.
In 1992 on a visit to Japan, President George HW Bush was filmed by TV crews collapsing and falling off his chair before vomiting.
Mrs Bush also told of her heartache after killing schoolmate Michael Douglas when she was 17.
The popular athlete, who driving another vehicle, died when she ran a stop sign on a small road in Midland, Texas, and smashed into his car in 1963.
She and a girlfriend were hurrying to a drive-in cinema, driving her father's car on a dark country road, when the accident happened.
Nobody was ever charged and there was no evidence that either driver had been drinking.
She concedes she was chatting to her passenger and regrets not trying to contact the victim's parents or going to the funeral.
'I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years,' she writes.
'It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard.
'My begging, to my 17-year- old mind, had made no difference.
'The only answer was the sound of Mrs Douglas's sobs on the other side of that thin emergency room curtain.'
Mrs Bush said the couple and several members of their staff fell ill under mysterious circumstances at the summit in Germany in 2007.
Her husband was bedridden for part of the trip but an investigation by the Secret Service was inconclusive and doctors concluded that they could have contracted a virus.
The former First Lady made the poisoning claim in her book Spoken From The Heart, which is due out in the U.S. in May.
She has also used the book to speak in detail for the first time of how she crashed her car at the age of 17, killing a schoolmate.
She tells vividly how the death has haunted her for most of her adult life and caused her to lose her faith in God.
The supposed poisoning took place at the 33rd G8 meeting in Mecklenburg in Germany which included Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who was then still Chancellor, among the attendees.
Other world leaders present were German chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian president Vladimir Putin and French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The summit's big achievement, a non-binding communique on climate change, was overshadowed by a video of President Sarkozy apparently drunk.
But Mrs Bush's claims point to potentially more serious events going on behind closed doors.
The morning after sharing a laugh and a beer with Mr Blair, the then President was forced to miss a session on Africa because he was ill.
Mrs Bush had noted several high profile staff becoming ill and asked White House security to look into the matter, but investigations did not turn up evidence of a plot.
In her book Mrs Bush writes: 'We never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one.'
At the time of the incident Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, said Mr Bush was dressed and ready for the meeting when he began to feel sick and that his condition was likely a 'stomach virus, a light touch of food poisoning or something else'.
Mr Bush carried out a much-anticipated first meeting with Mr Sarkozy, but it was behind closed doors.
Memories of what happened to his father may have been one of the reasons he stayed out of sight.
In 1992 on a visit to Japan, President George HW Bush was filmed by TV crews collapsing and falling off his chair before vomiting.
Mrs Bush also told of her heartache after killing schoolmate Michael Douglas when she was 17.
The popular athlete, who driving another vehicle, died when she ran a stop sign on a small road in Midland, Texas, and smashed into his car in 1963.
She and a girlfriend were hurrying to a drive-in cinema, driving her father's car on a dark country road, when the accident happened.
Nobody was ever charged and there was no evidence that either driver had been drinking.
She concedes she was chatting to her passenger and regrets not trying to contact the victim's parents or going to the funeral.
'I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years,' she writes.
'It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard.
'My begging, to my 17-year- old mind, had made no difference.
'The only answer was the sound of Mrs Douglas's sobs on the other side of that thin emergency room curtain.'
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