Prescription Pain Killers Becomming Major Killers Themselves

Video Eyewitness News at 10

Prescription Pain Killers Becoming Major Killer
March 30th, 2006 @ 10:00pm

John Hollenhorst Reporting

If something you can buy at the store suddenly started killing 250 Utahns a year, you'd think there'd be a huge public outcry. You'd think, but there's been no public outcry at all. That's a real body count, with a trend that's getting drastically worse.
The killer is prescription pain-medicine. The victims are not drug abusers on the street, but average Utahns under the care of a doctor. Legally prescribed pain-killers came out of nowhere in the last six years to become a leading cause of death.
It's the miracle in a bottle and a potential death trap for people like Kay Brown. He suffered from chronic back pain so severe he says it was like nothing else in the world mattered. Then he got relief from Morphine, Methadone, Oxycodone.
Dr. M. Kay Brown, Pain Victim: "They don't really solve it. They ameliorate it. I can bear it. I can stand it. I can function both in my family and in my profession."
But Utah's Medical Examiner Todd Grey has noticed a severe side-effect, death, in growing numbers.
Dr. Todd Grey, Utah Medical Examiner: 'What I consider spectacular numbers now. Spectacularly bad."
Epidemiologist Christy Porucznik has been giving presentations on the rising death toll to pain doctors.
Christy Porucznik, Epidemiologist, Utah Dept. of Health: "I can just see their faces get white because they know they're prescribing these drugs pretty commonly."
Through the 1990's, a couple of dozen Utahns a year died from legally-prescribed pain-killers. In 1999 it turned steeply upward; 249 last year, who knows how many in 2006.
Dr. Todd Grey: "Quite frankly, I think it's an epidemic."
The deaths are thought not to be suicides. It's mostly accidental overdoses by people who are not chronic abusers.
Dr. Robert Finnegan, Univ. of Utah Pain Clinic: "We're talking about average folds, white collar workers, blue collar folks."
Pain doctors used to steer away from narcotics because of worries about addiction and abuse.
Dr. Robert Finnegan: "We didn't want to give much."
But the medical culture shifted as the benefit to pain patients like Kay Brown became clear.
Christy Prucznik: "Pain is managed much more aggressively, which is a good thing because we don't want people to be in pain. But at the same time, I think the pendulum might have swung a little bit too far."
Some pain victims simply use too much; they get relief and want more. Doctors sometimes prescribe multiple drugs that interact in poorly understood ways.
Christy Prucznik: "And so there's not going to be one easy solution."
Kay Brown worries that if the pendulum swings too far the other way, he'd be pushed back into his own personal Hell.
Dr. Kay Brown: "That's where I'd be, I'd be locked in that little dark room with no escape."
The same trend is beginning to get noticed in other states. Experts predict it will trigger serious re-thinking about the best way to control severe pain.

New Utah Census Form

*New Utah Census Form*
**1. _____________________ (Given name)
**2. _____________________ (SURNAME)

**3. Descendant of:
**A. Brigham Young _____
**B. Heber C. Kimball _____
**C. Laman and Lemuel _____
**D. Cain _____

**4. Tribe of Israel: _____________________

**5. Number of occupants residing in home in each category: (Listed inchronological order)
**A. Nursery _____
**B. Junior Primary _____
**C. Senior Primary _____
**D. Young Women's _____
**E. Young Men's _____
**F. Relief Society _____
**G. Elder _____
**H. Dearly Departed _____
**I. High Priest _____

**6. Occupation [Please select all that apply.]:
**A. Amway dealer _____
**B. Shaklee dealer _____
**C. Nonie juice dealer _____
**D. NuSkin dealer _____
**E. Melaleuca dealer _____

**7. Automobile:
**A. Station Wagon _____
**B. Van _____
**C. Suburban _____
**D. School Bus _____
**E. Double Decker _____

**8. Favorite place to eat the night before Fast Sunday:
**A. Chuck-A-Rama _____
**B. Hometown Buffet _____
**C. Sumo Sam's All You Can Eat Feeding Trough _____

**9. Favorite Hero:
**A. Nephi _____
**B. Abinadi _____
**C. Samuel the Lamanite_____
**D. Steve Young _____
**E. Johnny Lingo _____

**10. Which of the following do you bring to church [check all that apply.]:
**A. Scriptures _____
**B. Franklin Planner/ Daytimer _____
**C. Pen/Pencil _____
**D. Lifesavers/ Cheerios _____
**E. Tic Tacs _____
**F. Game Boy _____
**G. Big Gulp _____
**H. Cooler _____
**I. Sony Walkman _____
**J. TV Watch _____
**K. All of the above _____

**11. Do you prepare your church lessons:
**A. A month in advance _____
**B. A week in advance _____
**C. While in the bathtub _____
**D. While on the toilet _____
**E. During Sacrament Meeting _____
**F. During the closing prayer of Sacrament Meeting
**G. During the opening prayer of the class you're teaching _____
**H. Just wing it [according to the promptings of the Spirit] _____

**12. Do you think pews should be permanently equipped with Big Gulpholders?: yes___ no ___
**13. How many years has your family sat in the same place for SacramentMeeting:
**A. 10-20 years _____
**B. 20-30 years _____
**C. 30-40 years _____
**D. Over 3 generations _____

**14. How much time does it take for you to fall asleep during a high counciltalk:
**A. 1/100,000,000th of a second _____
**B. 1/999,999,999th of a second _____
**C. 1/999,999,998th of a second _____

**15. Which day of the month do you go home/visiting teaching:
**A. 31st ______
**B. 31st ______
**C. 31st ______
**D. 31st ______

**16. How many church basketball fights were you in last year:
**A. 1-10 _____
**B. 10-20 _____
**C. 20-30 _____
**D. You'll have to ask my lawyer _____

**17. Which of the following has been your most effective Family HomeEvening:
**A. Arguing about getting along
**B. Having an opening and closing prayer with dinner
**C. Gathering around the television to watch, "Everybody Loves Raymond?"

**18. How many times a year do you make:
**A. Green Jell-O salad _____
**B. Funeral potatoes _____
**C. Cabbage and Top Ramen salad _____
**D. Turkey, cashews and grape-stuffed croissants_____

**19. How many water-filled two-liter bottles do you own:
**A. 1-2 thousand _____
**B. 2-3 thousand _____
**C. 3-4 thousand _____
**D. Enough to fill the Great Salt Lake _____

**20. Which of the following do you feel is the most secure facility in thenation:
**A. Alcatraz
**B. Fort Knox
**C. Ward Libraries

**21. How many structural engineers do you hire annually to insure you'll winthe pinewood derby: _________

**22. Keeping the Word of Wisdom in mind, how much of the following do youconsume:
**A. Chocolate:___pounds daily X 365 days annually =3D ____
**B. Cola: ____gallons daily X 365 days annually =3D ____

**23. If you had to choose between witnessing the Second Coming or attendinga BYU/UofU football game, which would you choose?
**A. Second Coming _____
**B. Football game _____
**AMEN!*

Would You Have Invested Your Money?

Check the guy in the lower left......... that's Bill Gates.
Paul Allen, the owner of the Seattle Seahawks with a net worth around $20 billion is on the far right, lower corner!!

I grew up in Seattle and started my own software company in 1980. Our Offices were on 116th in Bellevue. At that time Microsoft had some leased office space down the road. We were looking for Office space to rent and actually looked at space in the same building. I had met Bill Gates on several occasions at computer shows, and was never impressed. If I could only go back in time and had based my software on Microsoft, not CPM/MPM and Novell. Who would have guessed?

Gay Unions open can of worms: Polygamy

Best article on the subject yet. This is my official position on the subject.

By Charles Krauthammer


WASHINGTON — And now, polygamy. With the sweetly titled HBO series "Big Love," polygamy comes out of the closet. Under the headline "Polygamists, Unite!" Newsweek informs us of "polygamy activists emerging in the wake of the gay-marriage movement." Says one evangelical Christian big lover: "Polygamy rights is the next civil-rights battle." Polygamy used to be stereotyped as the province of secretive Mormons, primitive Africans and profligate Arabs. With "Big Love" it moves to suburbia as a mere alternative lifestyle. As Newsweek notes, these stirrings for the mainstreaming of polygamy (or, more accurately, polyamory) have their roots in the increasing legitimization of gay marriage. In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as gay marriage advocates insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice. This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I'm not the one who put them there. Their argument does. Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan, who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy, has called this the "polygamy diversion," arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere "activity" while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that "occupies a deeper level of human consciousness." But this distinction between higher and lower orders of love is precisely what gay rights activists so vigorously protest when the general culture "privileges" (as they say in the English departments) heterosexual unions over homosexual ones. Was "Jules et Jim" (and Jeanne Moreau), the classic Truffaut film involving two dear friends in love with the same woman, about an "activity" or about the most intrinsic of human emotions? To simplify the logic, take out the complicating factor of gender mixing. Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression? On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two? What is historically odd is that as gay marriage is gaining acceptance, the resistance to polygamy is much more powerful. Yet until this generation, gay marriage had been sanctioned by no society that we know of, anywhere at any time in history. On the other hand, polygamy had been sanctioned, indeed common, in large parts of the world through large swaths of history, most notably the biblical Middle East and through much of the Islamic world. I'm not one of those who see gay marriage or polygamy as a threat to or assault on traditional marriage. The assault came from within. Marriage has needed no help in managing its own long slow suicide, thank you. Astronomical rates of divorce and of single parenthood (the deliberate creation of fatherless families) existed before there was a single gay marriage or any talk of sanctioning polygamy. The minting of these new forms of marriage is a symptom of our culture's contemporary radical individualism — as is the decline of traditional marriage — and not its cause. As for gay marriage, I've come to a studied ambivalence. I think it a mistake for society to make this ultimate declaration of indifference between gay and straight life, if only for reasons of pedagogy. On the other hand, I have enough gay friends and feel the pain of their inability to have the same level of social approbation and confirmation of their relationship with a loved one that I'm not about to go to anyone's barricade to deny them that. It is critical, however, that any such fundamental change in the very definition of marriage be enacted democratically and not (as in the disastrous case of abortion) by judicial fiat. Call me agnostic. But don't tell me that we can make one radical change in the one-man, one-woman rule and not be open to the claim of others that their reformation be given equal respect.
Charles Krauthammer's e-mail address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com. Washington Post Writers Group