Prescription Drug Deaths on the Rise--and Not Just Celebrities Are Dying

Corey Haim may be the most recent celebrity victim of prescription overdose, but there have been others before him, such as Health Ledger. Long before either of these men the king of Rock, Elvis Presley, succumbed to prescription medication. Considering all the press attention these deaths received, and little or nothing of recent date about the general population, one might think the prescription medication misuse problem was relagated only to the rich and famous.

Dr. Jeffrey H. Coben and his team of researchers at the West Virginia University School of Medicine recently completed a study that will be published in the May 2010 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine which exposes the prescription drug use problem among all Americans.

The West Virginia University research team's study involved gathering the data from all hospital admissions in the U.S. from 1999-2006; this involved combing through 8 million hospital admissions each of those years. From there the researchers examined diagnosis codes (ICD-9 codes) to determine what caused the hospital admission--in their case, looking for injury or death due to misuse of prescription drugs--and whether those admissions were from intentional or unintentional misuse.

What the researchers discovered was astounding: a 65 percent increase of unintentional injury or death due to prescription misuse during the 1999-2006 time period and a 37 percent increase of intentional injury or death due to prescription medication misuse.


While these numbers alone a breath-taking, an additional sad statistic helps to put these numbers into perspective: Unintentional poisoning now surpasses unintentional injury death by auto accidents in the 35-54 year-old age group.

The medications involved in the research study were opiates, tranquilizers, and sedatives.

Further reading: Science Daily  2010, April
                        Science Daily   2006
                        Science Daily   2009, December
                        Associated Content

More Than A Tragedy...A Horror Story

So many things are legendary about Black Friday in America--that day after Thanksgiving when retail stores offer bargains on just about everything to entice shoppers to part with their "green" to launch the official Christmas gift-buying season. Until yesterday, I was unsure as to why the day was referred to as "black," but after the animal-like behavior of November 27, 2008 in Long Island, New York, I fully understand and agree with the adjective.

A 34-year-old man whose job it was that day to unlock the doors at Wal-Mart to the crowd that had been gathering overnight, was trampled to death by shoppers who couldn't get inside the store fast enough. Although this happened at a Wal-Mart, it could have happened at any retail store that participates in the Black Friday "festivities."

It was so important to the people bent on not missing out on one single bargain that they walked over a human being lying on the floor, breaking the door on their way. These were not people famished from days of not eating who just wanted a loaf of bread, or even people ill with a deadly disease whose only cure lay beyond the doors of the store. These were people who just had to have a flat screen TV or Talking Elmo, or one of any other bargains of the day. They wanted these material things so badly that the bodily welfare of another human being meant nothing to them.

The senseless loss of life, such as in the terrorist standoff in Mumbai, India or the suicide bombings that occur almost daily in the Middle East--those are tragedies. Even though most of us don't agree with the motivation of the people who instigate such violence, somewhere in our minds we do understand that the folks who perpetrate such acts do it based on strongly-held beliefs. That doesn't condone their activities, but it does at least rationally explain them.

The Black Friday horror story of a man trampled to death by bargain hunters is just raw and inhuman. I don't know how any of the people involved in this senseless death are feeling a day later, but I would wager next month's wages that not just a few of them are defending their actions by "everyone else was doing it."

A man died doing his job. When a soldier, policeman, or fire fighter--people who took on their jobs understanding the inherent danger of the positions--lose their lives, towns and cities mourn--as they should. This man could not possibly have perceived the danger he faced that morning, and no matter how the story gets spun--that maybe some actions of the man might have contributed to the incident--he was NOT responsible for his death. The people who knocked him down and walked over him like so much rubble are; I wonder how fulfilling their shopping bargains seem now.