Cynical Activities - P
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PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Every year, 1.5 million Americans have to be hospitalized due to adverse drug reactions, which can cause depression, hallucinations or psychoses, sexual dysfunction, dementia, falls and hip fractures, and automobile accidents; and seven thousand die as a result of "medication errors." "Prescribing errors" by doctors are often at fault: over a fourteen-year period, one medical center documented 20,966 such errors, notably involving antimicrobials, cardiovascular agents, gastrointestinal agents, analgesics, and hormonal agents. And this is your brain on prescription drugs... |
PRIEST, BEING A
A study in the U.K. found that priests in the Church of England are abused, assaulted, or murdered at rates only matched by police officers. Evidence suggests that the people who do the automated voices you get when you phone the electric company would be at the top of the list, if only we could get at them. |
PRINTER, BEING A
Printers often work with hydrocarbon solvents, so they're at heightened risk of developing Parkinson's disease. Back when type had to be set by hand, this led to a lot of interesting headlines. |
PROSTITUTE, BEING A
A study in the U.K. found that half of prostitutes working outdoors and more than one-fourth of those working indoors had suffered violence from clients in the previous six months. Gee, we always thought they went into the business because you get to meet such great people. |
PSYCHIATRIST, BEING A
A study in the U.K. found that nearly 20 percent of psychiatrists had been assaulted by their patients in the previous year. Somehow, it's hard to get too surprised about this. |
PUBLIC RELATIONS SPECIALIST, BEING A
Public relations specialists have an unusually high risk of dying from asthma. And we thought we were the only ones who choked on the things they said. |
PUMPKINS
Here's one for the Weird Statistics file: smokers who eat pumpkin increase their risk of lung cancer. Happy Thanksgiving! |
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