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JanD

"Mark Probert wrote:
JanD wrote:
vernon wrote:
Ilena wrote in message
...
P.net!53ab2750!not-for-mail
From: "VERACARE"

Why has the FDA concealed from the public 51 deaths from ADHD drugs
until
now?

51 out of around 100,000 per year of miss-prescribed and errors is
quite insignificant.

Instead of cutting and pasting, please attempt to address my comments:

You are mistaken in your interpretation of the numbers. The NY Times
reported that this was a study of five years of records, 1999 through
2003. The number of deaths is also incorrect.

So you say.

I take YOUR word for nothing.

"Twenty-five people died suddenly and 54 others suffered serious
unexplained heart problems while taking stimulant drugs like Ritalin from
1999 through 2003, according to reports sent to federal drug regulators."

Now, let's take a minute and analyze this. Twenty-five people died over
the course of 5 years. That averages to 5 deaths per year. The NYTimes
then reports that "...[a]bout 29 million prescriptions were written in
2004 for Ritalin, Adderall and similar drugs to treat attention deficit
disorder and hyperactivity, most of them for children."

Assume that the average prescription rate is *only* 25,000,000 per year.
Since these medications are Schedule II, which means that only a one
months supply can be written at a time, approximately 2,083,333 people per
month are, on average, being prescribed these medications.

Assume that all 5 deaths happened in the same month, and you wind up with
a rate of 2.4000003840000614400098304015729e-6.

Compare that with the odds of being struck by lightening:

No, I don't think so.

This is a diversion, trying to justify the deaths.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm

My younger son attends a special school for physically handicapped
students. In the past three years, two classmates have died for no
apparent reason, the last being in December 2005. One of the kids in my
neighborhood died from running the bases. His father is a DDS and was at
the school at the time. He is trained in using a defibrillator and could
not resuscitate his son.

I would classify this report and just this side of relatively meaningless.