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A comment on When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed.

Re:When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by mikeash on Thursday May 10, 2012 @12:52PM (#3954485)
The US death rate is about 2.5 million/year. Seems like somebody would have noticed a 20% jump due to a single drug. Can this 500,000 deaths/year number really be close to correct?

Edit: duh, not per year. Oh well, there may still be some little nugget of validity in there somewhere.

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Re:When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by RandallBrown on Thursday May 10, 2012 @01:04PM (#3954575)
it was 100,000 per year for five years.

The article mentions that people did notice when it was dropped down, but doesn't mention anything about when deaths/year went up.

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Re:When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by gruseom on Thursday May 10, 2012 @01:07PM (#3954594)
"We find the largest rise in American mortality rates occurred in 1999, the year Vioxx was introduced, while the largest drop occurred in 2004, the year it was withdrawn"

Moreover:

"Vioxx was almost entirely marketed to the elderly, and these substantial changes in the national death-rate were completely concentrated within the 65-plus population."

And:

"The FDA studies had proven that use of Vioxx led to deaths from cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes, and these were exactly the factors driving the changes in national mortality rates."

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Re:When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by RandallBrown on Thursday May 10, 2012 @01:40PM (#3954805)
yes, but those were noticed years later. As far as I know, no "Mysterious death spike" articles were published in 2000 because of the extra deaths in 1999.
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Re:When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by Retric on Thursday May 10, 2012 @02:53PM (#3955244)
The drug did not gain widespread adoption in a single year.
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Re:When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by haberdasher on Thursday May 10, 2012 @12:56PM (#3954509)
It's 500,000 in total, not per year.
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