Alex Warren

October 5th: Pain “Killer” Medication

October 5th, 1982, a Wednesday. The seven day investigation of the seven random deaths of people in Chicago. Their cause? Tylenol. I know what you’re thinking, I mean how could a helpful over-the-counter drug kill seven people? Well it’s simple really, the police discovered that a man, still unknown to this day, took 5 bottles of tylenol from local Chicago drug stores and tampered with the medicine. He took the capsules of tylenol out, and put cyanide in with the medicine, thus resulting in the death of those seven people. The so called Tylenol Murders, or TYMURS, for short led to many improvements in the packaging of drugs, the storing of them, and federal anti-tampering laws as well. The death of these people was horrible, although juxtaposed with the overall helpful effect. I like and dislike the event for the reasons of that it stiffened the laws on over-the-counter medication, but people died in the process.