Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Caffeine Overdose?

A story making the rounds of the media this week concerns a 14 year old girl who died from cardiac arrhythmia recently. The girl had an underlying cardiac condition, mitral valve prolapse, which contributed to her death. Her death certificate stated that the cause of death was due to caffeine toxicity. She consumed two 24-ounce Monster energy drinks on the day before her death. Predictably, the maker of Monster energy drinks is now being sued by the girl’s family.


How much caffeine is too much?

According to the Mayo clinic, Monster drinks contain 10 mg of caffeine per ounce. This is a little over three times what Coca-Cola contains. A 12-ounce can of Coke has 35 mg of caffeine total. By drinking two 24-ounce cans of Monster, the girl imbibed 480 mg of caffeine. Four cans of Coke would have given her 140 mg of caffeine.

Now let’s compare that to coffee. Brewed coffee contains between 95 and 200 mg of caffeine per 8-ounce cup. McDonalds is on the low end of the range, Starbucks is on the high end. If we choose the average, 24 ounces of coffee would give you a caffeine dose of 450 mg, comparable to what the girl got from twice as much Monster drink.

We are left with the proposition that the equivalent of three cups of strong coffee induced caffeine toxicity in a fourteen year old. This seems a bit of a stretch for anyone except a trial lawyer to claim.

As a result of the widespread media attention, the shares of Monster’s parent company dropped 10% this week.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

What I Want for Christmas


Remember the “You can hear a pin drop” commercials?

When Sprint was installing their fiber optic network in the ‘90’s, the company ran a series of ads where engineers in one city would drop a pin on a table, and another engineer in a different city would exclaim “Really?  That was a pin?”  The point was how Sprint’s network gave unusual clarity of sound.  That was back when everybody used landlines.

Nowadays an increasing number of people do not have landlines, only cell phones.  Now, instead of commenting on how clearly you can hear what is happening on the other end of the line, a phone conversation is more likely to have shouted comments like “What?  Can you say that again?  Wait a second, you’re breaking up.”

I blame a lot of that on the device design.  The old desk phones were designed for clarity of transmission and durability.  You could drop them on the floor (repeatedly) and the sound quality was still good.  The design of a cell phone is optimized for size and weight.  The antenna, microphone, and speaker are all miniaturized.  Sound quality is a secondary consideration.

Still, even though the sound quality is not good, the number of households with cell phones only is increasing.  At some point in the future the phone companies will begin to drop landline service as unprofitably to maintain.

I have an idea of how to combine the quality of a landline with the convenience of a cell phone.  What I envision is a docking station for your phone that will have three functions: a) recharge the cell, b) give the cell better reception through a larger antenna, and c) have a handset with a better speaker and microphone.  This is not much different than my current cordless phones, which is what gave me the idea.

Developing this device should not be much of an extension on current Bluetooth technology.  On the other hand, I don’t know anything about Bluetooth technology, or phone technology in general, which is why I’m not trying to find investors to develop this on my own.

So I’m just throwing the idea out there, and maybe in a year or two I’ll find one of these gizmos under my tree at Christmas.

iPhone compatible, please.

Friday, October 12, 2012

New England Compunding Center

A tragedy is a story where no one wins.


We have a tragedy unfolding with the current fungal meningitis outbreak. So far fourteen people have died as a result of contaminated steroid injections, and over a hundred have contracted the disease. This is clearly a tragedy for them.

The source of the meningitis has been traced back to New England Compounding Center, a pharmacy in Massachusetts that specialized in compounding. Compounding medications is the process of either mixing together multiple drugs, or changing the form of a drug. For example, if you crush a pill into a powder, then dissolve the powder in a liquid to make a syrup, that is compounding. In the case of NECC, they were taking a powdered medicine and converting it into an injectible liquid.

The meningitis outbreak is a tragedy for the owners and employees of New England Compounding Center as well. It is not a big company, and they just announced a recall of all of their products back to the beginning of the year. It is a pretty safe bet that they have ceased operations, and a pretty safe bet that they will not be restarting. Everybody who works there has just lost their job, and the owners have lost their investment in the company. Worse yet, they can all look forward to being called into depositions for years to come.

Now, the people at NECC certainly didn’t intend to start a meningitis outbreak. But due to somebody’s mistake, they could lose everything they have. All of them, including the ones who were off sick that day. I call that a tragedy for them as well.

The doctors and clinics that purchased from NECC are going to get sucked into this mess as well. After the owners of NECC are crushed by the litigation machine that is just starting to warm up, the doctors and hospitals who purchased the steroids are the nearest deep pocket around. They get to look forward to spending years fighting claims on their assets, over half of which will go to the attorneys.

The attorneys are the only ones who will profit from this situation.

I started out saying that a tragedy is a story where no one wins. I might have to refine that definition.