The medical examiner's office is all dragging its heels and waiting for "the results of blood and tissue tests" or whatever before announcing how Heath Ledger died, but bloggers with various science degrees have figured the whole thing out and posted the truth to the Internet while procrastinating on their life-saving research. Let's start with the "NIH-funded biomedical research scientist" who writes, "[Was] this the result of an addiction to drugs[?] Gasp. Of course it was. Or so suspects the drug abuse scientist anyway." His name is DrugMonkey and he's awesome:

Citing quotes from Ledger friends like the one who said, "the definition of substance abuse is really up to one's perspective," DrugMonkey writes, "Now if that isn't a backhanded way of saying 'Yeah, he takes some recreational drugs but not too much', I don't know what it is." He also says the evidence is "not inconsistent" with fatal relapse from a hypnotics addiction and that his buddies were too quick to say he wasn't a drug addict:

Any of you who have actually known, say even an alcoholic, realize that they are really. good. at. hiding. their. drug. intake!



When a 28-yr old guy dies mysteriously in his bedroom there are only so many likely hypotheses to pursue. Congenital defect in heart or brain vasculature leading to cardiac arrest or some sort of intracerebral vascular accident (stroke, etc). Foul play (no evidence apparently). Drug overdose. And there is plenty of evidence for this latter ...

DrugMonkey's full post is here and is actually well argued, at least from the perspective of, uh, a media blogger with no science credential (*cough*).

Then there's a grad student chemist called Kyle Finchsigmate, who writes at his Chem Blog that it's "painfully difficult" to OD on the drugs found with Ledger, so maybe DrugMonkey is just way off base.

Oh, except all bets are off when alcohol is involved. And also Kyle believes Ambien (found with Ledger) to be "horribly dangerous." In fact? This one time? In college?

During undergrad, I had some an awful sunburn and was unable to sleep, so I got a script for Ambien (all legit, I'm sXe and all). The next morning I woke up, face down in my livingroom with my (very nice and expensive) cashmere overcoat lying in a melted pint of ice cream… I did not have a pint of ice cream in my house before I took the Ambien… I've never figured out where it came from. Fucked up shit. Bad juju. Avoid at all costs.

Wired, which assembled this brain trust of science bloggers, finds the mainstream media doing the lamest Web story on the topic, "Did Heath Ledger Dream Before He Died?" at Slate. Wired's own science blog post on the topic (prior link) asks the pressing question of "how medical examiners will test the dead actor's bodily fluids for medications and controlled substances. My best guess: they will use Gas or Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry — which is pretty much the gold standard for toxicology labs."

Nerd!