on a totally different note, today i did a file review of the "70's" records for a county in the state. i have a site in which we suspect a landfill on a property and we have been denied access. to be thorough, i wanted to make sure we weren't missing any of the old records (like a map) or something that would indicate where this old landfill may have been located. i did not find anything helpful regarding that landfill. i did, however, have a good account of when the epa was established and when the people realized that these dumps needed to be regulated, and when counties started to keep records of their dump sites - and to get to my point, there was a bill for one of the dump sites in which the county had ordered and paid for some mass quantity of warfarin rat bait for vector control.
when i saw that, i thought to myself "hey, that sounds like what dad takes." dad had a blood clot in his kidney a few years ago and he's been taking a blood thinner ever since. so, at dinner tonight, i asked him what he took. sure enough, he takes warfarin. my father in law probably also takes it too.
i did a quick search online and this stuff was developed back in the early 1900s from a moldy sweet clover [plant] to kill rats. it works by causing them to bleed to death (internal bleeding); basically their capillaries explode, and it takes days for them to die so they never put two and two together (that the "bait" is causing the "sick" - who ever said rats were smart anyway?). around 1950, a sailor tried to overdose from it but it didn't work. (why would someone intentionally consume rat poison???) anyway, there seems to be plenty of accidental (and intentional) deaths from people consuming medicines tainted with it.
who volunteered to take rat poison to treat things like strokes or atrial fibrillation or blood clots? i know that i hate having migraines but if someone told me that taking arsenic-lead supplement would help, well, i'm not so sure i'd volunteer for that trial. it just amazes me how "they" come up with drugs.
warfarin is rat bait. and my dad(s) takes it every day.
When I heard the name, I knew that I'd heard it before, and also that someone I was related to seemed to be taking it... I looked it up on Wikipedia to see if it had any other common names or uses (you didn't mention that it was indeed Coumadin, although now I feel like it was obvious to figure out...), and also learned this interesting tidbit: the name "warfarin" has nothing to do with "warfare", but rather, points to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, (WARF), who funded the research... Srue does sound like a drug of war/destruction, though, and drugs like warfarin/coumadin, where you basically are never supposed to get off of them, always bother me...
ReplyDeleteSorry if this counts as a "blogjack"... To finish my story, not only does one relative (my granny) take it, but it seems like just about 50% of all my relatives over the age of 65 (and therefore, by my extension, probably 50% of the GP?) take it for various blood-thinning reasons... Heck, I know at least 10 - 20% of my SWP workgroup takes it...
And, they have to monitor the levels of this stuff in your system so tightly... I also don't like drugs that have a "window" of effectiveness... I mean "too much is bad, and too little is almost as bad, and the in between is not very broad... With food, at least you can just "get rid of" the excess/surplus... (Which is also why I am not really a big fan of vitamin supplements...) Can't people just eat moldy clover, and let their body figure out the right dosage? (J/k, I know I've taken my argument too far...)