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Below are two articles ran about Karen Carpenter's
death. The
first one was ran in The Washington Post the day after her
passing. The second, goes more into details about Ipecac
and it's dangers dated, May 13, 1985. One thing to keep
in mind. No one truly knows whether Ipecac was in play
here for Karen's death. One thing that is certain is
Karen's death was due to the years of strain on her body
caused by anorexia nervosa. Her body just could not
go on even while showing her desire for recovery.
For more information on anorexia nervosa
and associated disorders,
visit the link below.
http://www.eatingdisordersonline.com
February 5, 1983
DOWNEY, Calif. -Pop singer Karen Carpenter, 32, who recorded a string of romantic
love songs including "Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun" with
her brother Richard as The Carpenters, died at Downey Community Hospital
Friday. The cause of death apparently was cardiac arrest.
Press agent Paul Bloch said
Miss Carpenter was stricken at the home of her parents
here. She was accompanied to the hospital by her parents
and her brother. Bloch said the body had been turned over
to the coroner.
Miss Carpenter, who married
Los Angeles industrialist Thomas Burris in 1980 and was
divorced last year, lived alone in a Century City high-rise
apartment.
The Carpenters finished
their last album, "Made In America," in 1981
and planned to record an album later this month.
The brother-sister combination,
with Miss Carpenter playing the drums and singing lead
vocals and Richard playing the piano, became one of the
most popular acts of the 1970s with their wholesome American
image and velvety harmonization.
The duo won three Grammy's,
and recorded eight gold albums and 10 gold singles. Their
hits also included "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Yesterday
Once More" and a remake of "Please Mr. Postman."
Born in New Haven, Conn.,
the Carpenters moved with their family to Downey, a Los
Angeles suburb, in 1963. As children, they were influenced
by their father's interest in popular music and his extensive
record collection.
Source:
THE WASHINGTON POST
KAREN
CARPENTER WAS KILLED BY AN OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUG SOME
DOCTORS SAY MAY BE KILLING MANY OTHERS
by Gioia Diliberto May 13, 1985
When Karen Carpenter collapsed
at 32 from heart failure in a wardrobe closet of her parents'
Downey, California home two years ago, the acting Los Angeles
coroner, Dr. Ronald N. Kornbum, said she died of complications
from anorexia nervosa, specifically "cardio toxicity" brought
on by the chemical emetine. What he did not specify was
how the emetine got there. Experts now agree there
was only one way possible: She had misused a common, over-the-counter
drug called ipecac.
A foul-smelling, amber-colored
drug, syrup of ipecac has been sold in drugstores for years
to induce vomiting in poison victims. General practitioners
have long recommended having a bottle in the medicine chest
as a cheap antidote; a one-ounce bottle costs only about
$2. But the fact is that ipecac, in large dose, may cause
irreversible damage to the heart, and if taken repeatedly,
is a lethal poison. One month after Carpenter's death,
Deborah Mae Mellon, 32, a mother of two, died of emetine
poisoning. Two Philadelphia lawyers, Thomas E. Mellon Jr.,
Mrs. Mellon's brother-in-law, and Michael B.L. Hepps, have
filed a lawsuit charging the numerous manufactures of ipecac
with failure to warn the public about the drug's toxic
dangers. The suit, initiated on behalf of Mrs. Mellon's
estate, seeks $5 million in compensatory damages and $10
million in punitive damages. "No one can know from
looking at this poison antidote that it is a poison itself," says
Mellon. "Like Karen Carpenter, Debbie thought ipecac
was harmless. She was a happy, healthy woman who
simply was desperate to lose weight." Mellon says
if the cause of Karen's death had been revealed immediately,
it might have saved Debbie's life. "And it would have
stopped other women from taking ipecac, too. They would
have said to themselves, 'This is what killed Karen Carpenter.
I'm not going to take it.'"
Now some doctors fear an
epidemic of ipecac misuse among an estimated 150,000 anorectics
and two million patients who suffer from bulimia, binge
eating and purging. A group of psychotherapists who specialize
in treating the two illnesses has decided to publicize
the true cause of Karen's death. Chief among them is Steven
Levenkron, a psychotherapist and author. It was Levenkron
who treated Carpenter for anorexia-- successfully, he thought--for
almost a year before her death. "Just as Karen slipped
through our fingers, so are many other women," he
says now. At a hearing later this spring in Washington,
D.C., Levenkron and his colleagues will ask the FDA to
declare ipecac a prescription drug. "Ipecac should
not be readily available," he says.
"It should be controlled immediately."
When she died, Karen had
been suffering from anorexia for eight years--apparently
since reading a passing reference to her chubbiness in
a review. After seeing several therapists in California,
she moved to Manhattan to begin working with Levenkron.
He eventually put her in the hospital, where she raised
her weight from a skeletal 83 to 108 and overcame her addiction
to laxatives. In November 1982 Karen decided that she was
able to go home. Soon after, according to Levenkron's reconstruction
of her final months, she must have begun swallowing several
teaspoons of ipecac every night after dinner and eventually
increased her intake to a bottle or two. The drug, which
causes sharp cramps followed by violent vomiting, gradually
weakened her and led, on February 4, to her sudden death.
Levenkron says he was shocked
to learn that his patient had died from ipecac poisoning. "I
thought I knew everything about her." During phone
conversations, he recalls, he had asked her, "Are
you losing weight? Are you taking laxatives?" and
she had always answered, "No."
"Ipecac was something that never occurred to me to ask
her about," he says. "I assume Karen thought this
was a harmless thing to do," to eat regularly yet maintain
her weight at 108.
In a press release for his
autopsy report on Karen, the L.A. coroner failed to mention
ipecac.
The release in fact stated that "laboratory tests had
ruled out drug or medication overdose as a cause of death." Says
Dr. Kornblum now, "It never occurred to me to mention
ipecac. In my mind, emetine and ipecac are the same thing."
Since Karen died, Deborah
Mellon's has been the only reported death from ipecac poisoning. But
some observers suspect that many diet-obsessed girls may
have died from overusing the drug. "We think
that many anorectics and bulimics who've died of mysterious
heart failures may have actually died of ipecac abuse," says
Levenkron. Dr. Alan Adlier, a Philadelphia physician who
in 1980 treated the first reported victim of ipecac, most
physicians aren't aware that it's cardio toxic, and to
my knowledge only one lab in the country tests for emetine
poisoning."
Ipecac comes from the root
of the ipecacuanha plant, a shrub that grows in South America.
It is the only non-prescription drug known to contain emetine.
Until the late '70s, when studies of ipecac poisoning started
showing up in medical journals, many doctors never considered
that ipecac might be misused.
"None of us had taken the trouble to investigate this
drug,"
says Levenkron, "because who would abuse a drug that
produces horrible pains, nausea and vomiting?" Dr. John
Adams Atchley, a Manhattan psychiatrist who is president
of American Anorexia/Bulimia Association Inc., answers the
question: "If you heard [bulimics] talk about the great
joy they get in cleaning themselves out, you'd understand
why they're willing to take ipecac. They'll put up with all
kinds of things to get the almost spiritual high.
Anorexia is self-starvation
resulting from a disturbed sense of one's own eating, followed
by self-induced vomiting or purging by laxatives and diuretics.
Bulimics are perfectionists and obsessive-compulsives,
with high standards and low self-esteem; they are fleshier
than anorectics, whose wasted look marks them as victims
of a bizarre disease, and their numbers is growing. "In
eight years I saw meetings in Jew Jersey change from groups
of emaciated young women to groups of field hockey types
who were bingeing their heads off, taking laxatives and
throwing it up," says Dr. Atchley. But on closer look
there are telltale signs: puffiness around the eyes and
a swelling of the glands on the sides of the jaws. Chronic
vomiters sometimes have facial rashes, damaged teeth and
premature cheek wrinkles--like rows of parentheses on the
sides of their faces.
Although bulimics seem sturdier
that anorectics, they are often actually less robust. Bingeing
itself can be fatal. Recently a 23-year-old model, who
had starved herself down to 84 pounds, died in London after
gaining 19 pounds during one binge. According to a letter
in the British medical journal, Lancet, the woman's fatal
intake consisted of liver, kidneys, steaks, eggs, cheese,
bread, mushrooms, carrots, a whole cauliflower, 10 peaches,
four pears, two apples, four bananas, two pounds of grapes
and two glasses of milk.
Some vomiters end their
binges with several bottles of diet soda. This makes the
food float to the top of their stomachs and sparks the
gag reflex. Some simply will themselves to throw up. Others--300,000
by some estimates--take ipecac.
Despite the tragedy of Karen
Carpenter, not everyone agrees that ipecac should be made
a prescription drug. Dr. John Schiegel, president of the
American Pharmaceutical Association, suggests that instead, "We
endorse labeling changes on the product that will more
adequately warn consumers about the potential dangers of
using ipecac incorrectly." Says Ron Williams, APha's
director of professional affairs, "Every year ipecac
saves 150,000 lives. Everyone should have a bottle in the
medicine chest in case of accidental poisonings." to
counteract certain poisons, ipecac must be taken within
a half hour.
Dr. Atchley argues that
requiring a prescription won't jeopardize poison victims. "A
mother could ask her pediatrician for a prescription and
keep a bottle in the medicine chest," he says. His
position is seconded by former users of the drug. One of
Levenkron's patients, a 14-year-old girl, said she bought
ipecac at a drugstore after reading about it in a book
about Bulimia. She took it several times even though it
made her vomit blood and bile. "Would you have used
it even if it had a skull and crossbones on the label?" Levenkron
asked the girl. "Yes," she said, she would have.
"Karen wouldn't knowingly
have done something that would kill her," says her
therapist. Her grave is in Forest Lawn.
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