THE PERFECT MURDER?

“Some patients taking this medicine have performed certain activities while they were not fully awake. These have included sleep-driving, making and eating food, making phone calls and having sex. Patients often do not remember these events after they happen." While I have always had trouble sleeping, I have never taken sleeping pills for fear of addiction; but when I came home from the hospital last month my recovery was being severely hampered by my lack of sleep. It became such a problem that I decided to follow my doctor’s advice and take something. I don’t remember the order of the prescriptions, but each one he gave me made me feel loopy and I only took for one night each. The last prescription was for Zaleplon. While in the elevator coming home from Walgreen’s, I decided to read the “Cautions” section of the pamphlet. When I saw the section quoted at the start of the blog, I did not take the pill; I was too scared. The sex and phone calls part did not scare me it was that I might wake up and find myself surrounded by piles of wrappers from 100 calorie snack pack cookies! I have since discovered that the FDA requires that most sleeping pills have that warning.

David Sorin, the son of John and Bette Sorin died on August 11, 2008. The parents have filed a prejudicial genocide fit in Cook County Circuit Court for his wrongful death. This is the same charge Michael Jackson’s father Joe has filed against Dr. Conrad Murray. According to court papers, their son “ingested the recommended amount of sleep-inducing prescription drug called Ambien in order to help him fall asleep for the night.” The suit further says that David “was induced into a sleep walking episode, and consequently suffered a fatal fall while trying to gain entry to his residence by climbing into his apartment window from the roof of the building.”

The suit is not filed against the manufacturer of Ambien, but their daughter-in-law, Dava Grundhoefer. She is the doctor who prescribed the medicine for her husband and she is an anesthesiologist based in Evanston. According to the Sun Times, the parents” contend that even though Grundhoefer knew that sleepwalking is a possible, albeit rare side effect from taking Ambien, and that her husband had been in a car wreck as a result of a previous sleepwalking incident, she continued to prescribe the prescription drug to him to help him fall asleep.”

Dava and David Sorin had only been married for 6 weeks. Dava’s attorney, David Novoselsky, says, ““The allegations are simply not true. I haven’t heard this is anything other than an accident.”

In Michael Jackson’s case, Dr. Murray prescribed hundreds of pills that Jackson was taking; in this suit there is no allegation of over prescribing and states that Sorin took the recommended dosage. Sorin was certainly aware of his own previous sleep walking incident and should have been aware of the side effects of Ambien. How should he have known? His father, who filed the suit, is also a doctor! No story that I read on this law suit mentioned that. I discovered it when I found a condolence story on David’s death on page 113 of a 2008 issue of Saddle and Briddle magazine.

So if the widow Dava committed the perfect murder by prescribing a medicine that led to her husband’s death, couldn’t his own Father, a doctor, be counted as an accomplice if he knew his son was taking the Ambien? Something to think about.