Since I’m at work, I’ll keep this brief. Here is a link to the article: MSNBC News - Breaking News and News Today | Latest News
What can we DO about this? WHO do we write? Congress? FDA? WHO?!?! Also, where can I find studies showing the number of deaths and "reactions" to aspirin or any other common OTC medication?
Congress. Call or write them and tell them just how dangerous OTC products like aspirin are.
Jeremy: There are three things going against an effective campaign. 1) Ephedra is in somebody’s political “crosshairs” which usually means doom. 2)The media has “fueled the fire” of “public outcry” for a substance that, if used as directed, is VERY safe. And 3) There will be periodic “sacrificial lambs” by the politicians that support the NON-governmental regulation of dietary supplements. Ephedra may be the one. We’ll see…
I did some research (ok…ok… so I went to google.com and typed asprin related deaths). Well it turns out that aspirin like medicines are linked to 7600 deaths per year. Prescription drugs are associated with 32000 deaths per year. here the link it looks legit (complete with references). Causes of Death in the United States | Drug Policy Facts
My only other question is how many TOTAL people use ephedrine each year and how many TOTAL people use aspirin each year. This way one oculd figure out what percentage of users die from use of the substance. (I think aspirin will compare much worse to ephedrine, but the data would be nice to prove it to people trying to ban ephedra). Ignorance.
-Jason
I don’t know if you’d be able to find reliable stats on the number of users of said products, but you should be able to find out the volume of product sold. That might provide a usable statistic.