the study "tried to control" for sleep disturbance as the link to cancer, as opposed to sleeping meds.

I'd have to read the study to see how they did this. The main question, though, is whether the control group was people who had similar sleep issues NOT taking these meds, as opposed to people in the general population or people with less severe sleep disturbance. If they DID control for sleep disturbance, then this is a very troubling study indeed. The problem would be making a proper diagnosis of the underlying sleep issue, which is terrifically difficult. For instance, people with disturbed sleep due to depression are different from people with disturbed sleep due to fibromyalgia or other physical pain issues. For the study to be truly valid, it would need to control for all these variables.

Note: I self deleted because my original post assumed they hadn't controlled for sleep disturbance. Reading the entire article I see at least some attempt to do so was made. My bad.

The study was a bad one because it failed to use typically sleep deprived people as a control and it also failed to differentiate between psychiatric use of these drugs versus their use as simple sleep aids.

Sleep deprivation is likely the reason for the increased deaths among sleeping pill users, even those who typically tough it out and only resort to the pills a few times a year. Of course the death rate is going to be higher, if only for the effects of chronic sleep deprivation contributing to a global range of illnesses, not to mention inattentiveness and proneness to accident.

Even the bottom line of the study was that the number of deaths overall was very small.

As dangerous as cigarettes? This headline writer needs to be sued for malpractice.

to be held accountable for their actions if the study is found to be flawed due to hysterical researches, premature information, profit motivations, etc., etc. There seems to be too much of this going around now. Now it seems the only control point is peer review.

as it is most likely the sleep deprivation and not the remedy for it that is the source of the increased deaths.

...so it would follow that 'unnatural' sleep, such as drug induced loss of conciousness, would detract from this quality.

Of course, in the fast paced corporate world, having enough sleep to avoid nodding off in mid-sentence, is usually enough.

.

in mid-sentence, is usually enough."

Association is not causality. People with sleep disorders such as OSA take sleeping pills. OSA causes diabetes, heart attack, stroke and premature death. Sleeping pills mask the sypmptoms of OSA and can make hypoxia worse. But the sleeping pill is not the cause. It is the breathing disorder.

Unfortunately, it is cheap to ask folks "Do you take sleeping pills?" and it is expensive ($2000) to do a sleep study. So we get "research" like this---which is as valuable as saying "Because men who buy large shoe sizes are tall, buying large shoes helps you grow."

Can't wait for the TV ads "Do you or someone you know take sleeping pills? Have you had a stroke or heart attack? Call this number to find out how you can get compensation..."

find a lot of detail that comes out in the wash, so to say. Yeah, as you say, next will be the legal hounds moving in to try to make a buck.