Milk Of Amnesia

Propofol or as its being blared in the news, Diprivan, is a general anesthetic. So little is known about this powerful sedative that the experts in sedative medicine do not have a clue on how it works.

That by itself is enough to scare most people away including notable physicians who warn against the fatal effects that this drug can have even under the most careful clinical and operating room procedures.

Return with us now to 1846, to an operating amphitheatre on the top floor of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Bullfinch Building, one of medicines greatest gifts was demonstrated. This was over 150 years ago. It was a Boston dentist, William T.G. Morton, who applied the ether to be used in surgery. Before that time surgery resulted in terrible and unbearable pain under the surgeon’s scalpel or saw as he cut into flesh and bone.

An ether-soaked sponge under a uniquely designed container was used to administer the ether to the patient, Gilbert Abbot. He was a printer with a vascular tumor on his jaw. As soon as Abbot became unconscious in a few minutes, John Collins Warren, MD, surgically removed the vascular tumor with great success and no apparent suffering from the unconscious patient. Warren was a well-known and respected surgeon in Boston. Abbot awakened after the operation and informed the group that he had felt no pain at all as he exited the operating theater.

The onlookers in the operating theater were amazed and Warren offered a spectacular endorsement of how effective anesthesia would be to surgery, “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.”

From then on major advances would be made in the field of anesthesiology right up to the present day with Diprivan or the “milk of amnesia”. Diprivan is actually diisopropyl intravenous anesthetic, which is manufactured by AstraZeneca. The drug of choice used to be sodium pentothal for inducing general anesthesia for children and adults. Diprivan has superseded that drug. It is administered intravenously. This sedative is so powerful that the patient must be under continuous monitoring and even with that monitoring people have died.

Michael Jackson

Police investigating the death of Michael Jackson on June 24, 2009 found Diprivan in his home and some suspect it may have been the cause of his death as reported by the press and bloggers. This is all speculation and the answer may lie in the results of the toxicology analysis and report.