This is one of those posts that I started to write several times.
I stopped several times, not for lack of material but for lack of purpose. What good would come of such a post? Something still compels me to "put it out there", maybe just to caution my readers to be prepared to hunker down at some point in the future.
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George Floyd had a Fentanyl serum (blood or urine) level of 11mg/kg. Please mindful that this is a concentration level meaning it is already adjusted for weight.
Due to ethical restraints, it is not possible to render a hard number for the lethal dose that will kill 50% of humans.
The LD50 in humans is unknown but a lethal dose for the average person is estimated to be 2 mg. Wikipedia
One must assume they intended to write 2.0 mg/kg because 2.0 mg of Fentanyl in a 60kg person indicates an LD50 of 0.03 mg/kg which suggests that Mr Floyd had 360 times the fatal dose of Fentanyl in his blood. Also, the therapeutic dose for Fentanyl for pain relief is on the order of 0.5 mg/kg which is much higher than the 0.03 mg/kg calculated from the amount reported by Wikipedia.
This report documents a burst of Fentanyl overdoses in Connecticut. Three of the patients with symptoms of overdosing had Fentanyl serum levels below 1.0 mg/kg or less than ten percent of what Mr Floyd had at the time of his death. Levels of 9.5, 11 and 13 were collected post-mortum. That is, the overdose killed the patient.
Another report, this one out of New Hampshire
Postmortem levels of fentanyl confirmed in our sample range widely from 0.75 to 113.00 ng/mL, with a mean of 9.96 (Note: ng/ml is the same concentration as ml/kg, e-06)
Unfortunately, the paper did not list the median value nor did it provide raw-data, both of which are useful for estimating LD50 numbers.
The problem with using the mean is that a small percentage of fliers can skew the results. For example imagine a population with eleven fatalities with a serum level of 1.0 and one with 110 ng/ml. The average is about 10 ng/ml but the fact is that more than 90% of the deaths resulted at levels below that average.
That same report also detailed comorbidity factors
Among the 189 decedents who had an autopsy, the pathologist identified 114 (60.3%) with a preexisting cardiovascular problem (e.g., arteriosclerotic heart disease, cardiomegaly, and valve disease) and 93 (49.2%) with preexisting liver pathology (e.g., hepatitis-C, steatosis, cirrhosis, and gall bladder disease). There were also 124 (65.6%) with identified pulmonary pathology.
The net result is that any competent lawyer should be able to create reasonable doubt among any jury-of-peers that Mr Floyd died of a self-induced drug overdose because, depending on the numbers you chose to use, he had between 550% and 110% of the Fentanyl required to kill an "average" person and he had conditions which predisposed him to a fatal overdose, that is, heart disease.
And then what is left of the cities will burn, even if Biden is President.
stay away from crowds. once this fire ignites it will consume all available fuel.
ReplyDeleteThe G Floyd news reporting strangely omitted "allegedly" with reference to murder by cop. They just simply stated he was murdered by the police as if the jury had already decided. My Pastor at the local church said the same, that G Floyd was murdered by a bad cop. Everybody who is anybody jumped on that bandwagon. Once you notice Floyd's special treatment in describing his death, makes you wonder what bad thing is going to happen next? And you suspect at the trial, the prostitution will do everything to get the Judge to not allow the drug overdose explanation to be even heard.
ReplyDeleteAlso worth a mention that the autopsy report and the body-cam videos from all of the officers involved were held by the prosecutor. The autopsy report was issued without any comment about a week after Floyd's death. The videos were only released last week, and they pretty clearly show abuse on the part of the police, quite the contrary in fact. All of the evidence tends toward exonerating the officers. Which makes one wonder why the prosecutor elevated the charges against the officers after the autopsy results came out, making conviction more unlikely. He had the videos all along to refer to. Makes it look like he prefers a failure to convict - and maybe whatever mayhem results from it.
ReplyDeleteAlso: How could George Floyd become unmanageably claustrophobic seated in a cop car, when he had just been removed from an enclosed car 5 minutes before? Also also: some of the recovered videos show Floyd dropping little while packets on the street as he's being walked from the car to the curb.
rats!: "Pretty clearly show NO abuse on the part of the police...."
DeleteAuto-corrupt does that to me too.
DeleteIt'd be a real damned shame if we went to race war over lies.
ReplyDelete