SUMMON THE TROLL

TO SIT ON THE POLE

In a criminal justice context, an expert toxicologist's opinion is often in the form of whether the concentration in the blood is "consistent with a therapeutic range."

So, for a given medication, there will be studies that say something like (just some random numbers here) "this medication is usually dispensed in doses of 10mg once per day at the low end and 70mg once per day at the high end. People who take a 10mg dose typically have a blood concentration that peaks between X and 2X after approximately an hour, and people who take a 70mg dose typically have a blood concentration that peaks between 7X and 14X after an hour. The substance in the blood has a typical half-life of 8 to 12 hours. On a daily dose, baseline blood levels will stabilize at Y for 10mg daily and Z for 70mg daily."

So, let's say someone has 80X in their blood. A toxicologist will be able to say with confidence "that's not consistent with a therapeutic dose - this person ingested way more of the substance than a doctor would ever prescribe." So, either drug abuse or poisoning.

Now, say someone has 2X in their blood. A toxicologist can say "that's consistent with a therapeutic dose" - but not much more than that. It's quite possible that person took 10mg or 20mg an hour ago, and takes that every day - but they may have taken 70mg 16 to 24 hours ago as a one-off. Or they may have taken 40mg 12 hours ago, and every other day for the last month. Or they may have taken 1,000mg 48 hours ago.

So, that's some of the nuance: it's fairly easy to rule out certain dosage quantities/timelines, but it's much harder to say what actually did happen. A lot of the time, the first one's all that's needed.

Me too, used to go down and catch fish by the old Humpback Bridge. Am I making this up, or was that whole wall in the pic covered with ivy for a long time?

Carl Weathers, namesake of the Carl Weathers Ass Off Award

Am I correct that we're looking northward here, Broad Street just to the left, so basically the Wells Fargo Center is where JFK used to be, the Linc is off the right bottom of the screen, and CBP is off the right top of the screen (because the Vet home plate is in the parking lot)?