How Many People Must Die From Addiction Before the FDA Requires Action?The sudden death of Michael Jackson, supposedly hooked on painkillers for 20 years, reluctantly emphasizes the urgency where the FDA should address the problems surrounding this nation's lax prescribing regulations, easy availability, and widespread abuse of opioid painkillers such as OxyContin. It has been estimated that over ten thousand Americans are enduring in the grasp of OxyContin addiction.
Early reports of the pop star dying less than an hour after having an injection of pethidine, or Demerol online, as it is better known, have since been denied. Whether true or false, a lot of instances of sudden cardiac arrest have been traced to"nitric oxide", a sudden, overwhelming and poisonous excess of serotonin activity that can result in failure of the central nervous system, which can advance to sudden cardiac arrest.Serotonin toxicity or syndrome may be brought on by dozens of drugs, including prescription drugs, over-the-counter treatments, and even popular herbal preparations. Whether employed therapeutically or recreationally, such herbs and drugs may bring about a deadly toxicity directly or inadvertently through connections with other herbs or drugs.
Jackson family members, friends and co-workers have been quoted in the media about Jackson's long-term prescription drug use. Some have alluded to dependence and even dependence, particularly to opioid painkillers such as OxyContin. The celebrity's prescription drug use, allegedly to help relieve chronic back and leg pain caused by dancing injuries, was seemingly prodigious.The Associated Press reported back in January that the singer owed a Beverly Hills drugstore $101,926 for prescriptions for just a two-year period, 2005 and 2006. The invoices had remained outstanding until Jackson finally settled a suit with the pharmacy in 2007. The dollar amount was for prescription drugs covering approximately a two-year span -- a yearly average of over $50,000. The typical older person with chronic conditions from the U.S. spent a mean of $1,912 for prescriptions in 2005, the AP said.
Spiritual adviser Dr. Deepak Chopra, friends with Jackson for many years, told Canada's CTV News last weekend that the pop star sought and found supplies of narcotics by a range of doctors. Chopra said his suspicions which the singer was hooked were aroused in 2005 when Jackson asked him to get medication. Chopra says he denied, but later learned that Jackson was"able to locate enabling physicians who co-operated together with him. That's something which people that are addicted are extremely good at."Many questions remain about the exact cause of Jackson's death. Toxicology screens will take four to six weeks, according to the Los Angeles medical examiner's office. Should it be demonstrated that the contributor died from cardiac arrest, as has already been stated, it is going to be no surprise to learn that serotonin syndrome or some different kind of collapse of this singer's central nervous system directly attributed to prescription medication was the villain.
The most famous serotonin syndrome death happened in New York in 2003, when the daughter of a prominent New York family, Libby Zion, died of cardiac arrest following treatment with pethidine (Demerol) by weary, overworked physicians who neglected to first ascertain whether or not Libby was taking any other drugs. It was she was, resulting in a deadly drug interaction. The end result was new state legislation, dubbed"the Libby Zion law", regulating the number of hours that doctors can stay on post in New York State hospitals.Pethidine acts exactly like morphine in some ways, impacting the very same receptors in the mind. In most countries of the world, including Australia, using pethidine was severely restricted or banned entirely. The FDA should provide at least as good protection against fatal opioid painkillers for American taxpayers.
Deaths across the nation have jumped dramatically in the last couple of years from pharmaceutical opioids, with OxyContin the most flagrantly abused and deadly. Deaths, widespread addiction and destroyed lives and families from OxyContin dwarf those associated with any other opioid painkiller. Pharmacological, the energetic element of OxyContin, known as oxycodone, has been proven to be even more likely to cause dangerous drug interactions than Demerol and other opioid painkillers.
For all these reasons, an online petition calling on the FDA to ban OxyContin is being sponsored by a concerned pharmacist and a medication detox specialist, both of whom habitually see the worst that OxyContin abuse can perform. The petition, at www.banoxycontin.com, has attracted almost 3,000 signatures already.If you would like to see a stop to the OxyContin passing pandemic, please sign the petition -- and you'll be able to sign it as"anonymous" if you want. While you're visiting the banoxycontin web site, be sure to peruse the hundreds of comments from petitioners in their own personal OxyContin tragedies.
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