Coherent Rage

[andrewducker]

Jesus Fucking Christ the newspapers are annoying me today.

Two people died yesterday. They were on a cocktail of mephedrone, alcohol and methadone. Some of their friends were also checked out in the hospital, but were fine.

Now, an awful lot of people are taking mephedrone without it causing them any serious damage*, but these two friends die at the same time. What's the difference here?

Were they (a)taking ridiculously large amounts? (b)eating a bad batch of it or (c) could it be that mixing methadone and alcohol is a really fucking bad idea that's known to cause respitatory failure?

And the answer is - we don't know yet! The toxicology results are going to take days (or weeks) to come back - so the actual cause of death is currently _unknown_.

What do the newspaper jump on? "Two killed by Mephedrone!"

Which makes me, frankly, want to find the people that wrote half the articles I read today and smack them around the head repeatedly with a baseball bat.

*Obviously, insofar as we can tell - the jury is out on long-term effects

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The first meeting of Westminster Skeptics featured former Government drugs advisor Dr David Nutt, just after he had been forced to resign for, um, insisting on evidence-based policy making. He described a survey on the likelihood that newspapers would report a particular death as depending on the substance associated: for alcohol (thousands of deaths a year) it was tiny but by the time you got to MDMA/Ecstasy (a handful of deaths a year) it was virtually certain.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I am filled with a similar rage just about every time I read any newspaper article concerning medicine or science.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Exactly the same happened with the reporting around that girl who died in Brighton recently.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

_Post hoc, ergo propter hoc_ -- as long as it agrees with some popular ideology, yes... that seems to be typical of modern newspaper/pop. media journalism. *sigh*

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

Wait... where has it been saying that they were taking methadone too?

I read the BBC news article reporting their deaths earlier and it didn't say anything about them being on methadone, it only mentioned methadone to clarify to people that it was a completely different drug.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

Which makes me, frankly, want to find the people that wrote half the articles I read today and smack them around the head repeatedly with a baseball bat.

"Mephedrone causes violence!"

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Andy said he read somewhere that they were using methodone for the comedown.

[andrewducker]

Didn't she turn out to have pneumonia or something in the end?

[andrewducker]

It's causing it in my head right now! It must be banned! Thoughtcrime! Thoughtcrime!

[andrewducker]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/17/calls-ban-mephedrone-teenage-deaths
"Oliver said postmortem examinations were to be carried out this afternoon but the toxicology reports, which would give a better indication of the extent to which mephedrone, methadone and alcohol contributed to the deaths, would not be known for several weeks."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/8573051.stm
"Police believe they had been drinking and had also taken another drug, the heroin substitute methadone."

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're right, I just found it in the Times article- it took loads of hunting though, there was no mention of it in at least 10 other articles I read!

"Toxicology reports will not be available for two weeks, but police believe they may have consumed alcohol, mephedrone and the heroin-substitute methadone."

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

I like this quote from the police officer too (also from the Times article)...

"Detective Chief Inspector Mark Oliver said: “A mixture of any type of drug increases the likelihood of people coming to harm. It is not clear how much of a contributory factor M-CAT has actually made to these deaths.”"

...but, you know, mephedrone has been in the news lots recently and people are convinced youngsters are only taking it because it's legal (because we all know how no one ever takes illegal substances!), so why not blame that, right?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

YES. THANK YOU.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Are you reading Drugmonkey on ScienceBlogs? He tends to have good discussions about the science behind the toxicology.

[andrewducker]

Exactly! I am filled with RAGE!

[andrewducker]

Not been - but I'll take a look!

[mooism.livejournal.com]

The NHS behind the news blog is usually quite good about clarifying the truth behind the headlines --- usually stories about medical research that the papers exaggerate or get the wrong end of the stick about.

Their report on this (http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/03March/Pages/legal-high-drug-meow-mephedrone-death.aspx/methadone/) doesn't mention that alcohol or methadone were used in these cases, and frankly sounds a bit too much like Home Office propaganda. Which is disappointing. But then they don't have a specific scientific paper to refer to and are clearly out of their comfort zone.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

What angers me is if people took a load of paracetamol and got drunk, they could die too. We don't immediately see a knee jerk reaction to ban paracetamol.

I know they're used for different things, but if we're afraid of harm, well grhjgem!

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

I stopped listening when the parents of one were quoted as saying that their son wouldn't have taken this evil substance if it had the govt had done what it should and made it illegal already. Hmm.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

You might find this a rather less enraging read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/17/mephedrone-class-d-solution-criminalise

[andrewducker]

Yes, I did - got it bookmarked, so it'll be on the list at 11:00 :->

Thanks!

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Never mind Paracetamol, people die every day from just drinking alcohol. More people in fact than from all other illegal drugs combined. Yet nobody would dare to suggest banning that.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Don't buy newspapers and hopefully they'll go away.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

But I don't want them to go away ... I want them to *improve*. :-)

[broin.livejournal.com]

That *would* be nice. =)

At the moment, the vast majority are terrified and casting about for solutions. Shame they don't just ask what readers want.

[in-thy-bounty.livejournal.com]

Well clearly they were only taking a potentially lethal cocktail because MUSIC TOLD THEM TO! BAN THE G MAJOR CHORD!! etc