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Seeing her baby, previously full of life, suddenly in hospital on a breathing tube seemed wrong. But there was something else that just did not fit, Bree Whitelegg thought.

“This condition is really rare, isn’t it?” Whitelegg asked Professor Jim Buttery, one of the doctors looking after her son Lucas.

Buttery nodded. Infant botulism is very dangerous and, thankfully, ultra-rare in Australia.

“Then how come I know two other people in my area who have had it?” Whitelegg replied.

“That … does not make sense,” said Buttery. “We’ll take a look.”

There were just 12 cases of infant botulism in Vi

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