As for the statistics themselves, they don’t really say much about the dangers of insomnia. As we say in science, the statistics amount to a steaming pile of questionability. Travelodge likes to commission its surveys from an outfit named OnePoll, whose media-savvy experts, it assures potential clients on its Web site, will “draw up poll questions in a way that will maximise potential story hooks” and “trigger high impact media coverage.”
In one year, the number of sleepwalking adults in the U.K. grew sixfold, to 3 million.
There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, when you’re talking about light-hearted surveys such as the one I myself completed on the site, inquiring into the details of my seduction habits (if I win the £200 cash prize, I’ll give it to charity, possibly). But entrusting OnePoll with serious questions of public health is quite another matter.
Then there’s the National Sleep Foundation. Perhaps it was the name, or the prevalence of quotes and statistics from the group in the mainstream press, or its self-description as an “independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving public health and safety.” Somehow from this I had gotten the impression that “independent” meant it was an organization funded by the government or some philanthropy, as opposed to one with ties to drug companies looking to market their products by alerting the public to the dangers of insomnia.
Of the $2,836,088 in “direct public support” the NSF received in 2005 (the most recent IRS disclosure I could find), it seems that $470,000 came from Pfizer, which in 2005 was primping for the debut of the sleep-aid drug Indiplon, which it has since dropped; $299,000 came from GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Sominex; $152,000 from King Pharmaceuticals (Sonata); $596,670 from Sanofi Aventis (Ambien); $471,800 from Takeda Pharmaceuticals (Rozerem); $133,183 from Sepracor (Lunesta); $100,000 from the hepcats over at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, who make the narcolepsy drug Xyrem; and $100,000 from Cephalon, maker of another drug used for narcolepsy, Provigil. That’s a total of $2,322,653.
Where did the money go? In 2005 the NSF spent $2,043,956 on “public education”—in other words, on crusades like its current campaign against drowsy driving. It’s a real enough problem, but still... One poster for the campaign features the smiling face of a blonde, athletic, and heartbreakingly beautiful 18-year-old who was killed after falling asleep at the wheel. She “had everything going for her…” the Pfizer- and Glaxo-funded NSF tells you in giant letters—and let’s pause to savor the tasteful drumroll of that ellipsis; oh, wait, here comes another: “…except enough SLEEP.” Whoever dreamed up that poster, I’ll take whatever he’s using to sleep through the night.
Which leaves only those poor insomniac zebrafish, for whom I bear tidings that should have church bells ringing from one end of Zebrafish Land to the other immediately upon their receipt: Apparently, fish don’t just get insomnia.
If you actually read the paper that launched a thousand offbeat tidbits, by one Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University, you discover that those “mutant” zebrafish with the defective genes were engineered to be mutants, in bulk, purely for the purpose of research. Fish were not “found” to have insomnia. Fish were “made” to have insomnia.
Mignot’s work was published in the journal Public Library of Science—Biology. And somehow, within a day of publication, U.S. News & World Report was reporting Mignot’s findings thus: “They may not toss and turn, but even fish can get insomnia, according to new research that could help sleepless humans.”
Contrary to my paranoid suspicions, Mignot’s study was funded not by drug companies but by two upstanding behemoths of American philanthropy, the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute and the McKnight Foundation. Yet my paranoia lingers: I can’t help wondering if the agents of Big Sleep didn’t encourage Mignot’s paper to be misinterpreted into an item of quirky news, thereby rubbing the word insomnia across the public’s eyeballs. It bears further investigation.
In the meantime, please, nobody panic. The insomnia “epidemic” really isn’t worth losing sleep over.
