Canthook

The lethal dose (LD50) of codeine for an adult is 800 mg. There's 30 mg of codeine in a Tylenol 3. That means if a group of 100 adults each took 27 Tylenol 3 pills, half of them would survive.

The average prescription of Tylenol 3 is 12 pills.

Have you ever tried swallowing a handful of pills? Tylenol 3 pills are large and you'd be talking 3 handsful.

You can get codeine in some states in over-the-counter medications. Generally, the pills have at least 3 medications in them, and there's no more than 8 mg of codeine in them. That means you'd have to swallow 100 pills in order to have a 50/50 chance of dying.

That's a lot of swallowing.

I don't suggest that it's impossible for Bruce Ivins to have committed suicide. I simply suggest that it isn't really likely.

The news reports say that a friend claimed that Ivins had discussed suicide with his therapist. That doesn't sound right. The therapist is legally prohibited from revealing that, even after the death of his patient, and if a patient threatens to harm himself or others, a therapist is legally required to get the patient locked up so he cannot carry out the actions.

The news reports indicate that the anthrax-contaminated letters were mailed 198 miles from Ivins' family home - a 3.5 hour drive. That makes it a 7-hour round trip. Could you take repeated seven hour round-trips without anyone noticing?

Nobody seems to have any motive for Ivins' pulling the anthrax mailings.

If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit. This story doesn't make sense.

The Fredericks News-Post found some interesting information available via Freedom of Information requests. We haven't gotten this story in other main stream media.

This afternoon, Ivins’ attorneys at Venable, Paul F. Kemp and Thomas M. DeGonia, released the following statement:
For more than a year, we have been privileged to represent Dr. Bruce Ivins during the investigation of the anthrax deaths of September and October of 2001. For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with that investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him. He was a world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years with the Department of the Army. We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law. We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial. The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins’ case, it led to his untimely death....

I don't know what's going on, but I'd bet it's not the simple story that's being reported in the main stream media. And I wouldn't hire Venable for anything, either.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
anthrax - Dr Bruce Ivins - suicide - Tylenol 3