As of 9 AM Eastern on May 11, most of the U.S. media seemed to be ignoring a very important medical story from the Netherlands.

Only UPI, according to Google News, had written it up.

The story is that some very common drugs have been implicated in sudden death from heart attack. The study was done at the Erasmus Medical College and published in Europe's leading journal on cardiology. A press release on behalf of the journal was released in Washington.

The drugs examined were:

• Cisapride, aka Propulsid, prescribed for severe nightime heartburn, which was removed form the market last week by Janssen Labs, according to the FDA;
• Domperidone, sometimes called Motilium, a drug for nausea which the FDA warned against last year as a treatment for breastfeeding difficulties;
• Chlorpromazine, the anti-psychotic best known as Thorazine;
• Haloperidol, or Haldol, an anti-psychotic sometimes prescribed for hyperactivity;
• Pimozide, or Orap , an anti-psychotic known as a major tranquilizer;
• Erythromycin, a common antibiotic sometimes prescribed in cream form to treat acne as (among other names) Theremycin-Z , and
• Clarithomycin, or Biaxin, a common antibiotic used for pneumonia and bronchitis, among other conditions.

Why the U.S. press is ignoring this story is a great mystery to me. Certainly the FDA isn't ignoring all aspects of it -- one of the drugs in question has been pulled because of its potential link to sudden heart attack.

And these drugs aren't obscure, either. Thorazine, Therymycin-Z, and Biaxin may be in your medical cabinet right now. The BBC story says the drugs may be responsible for as many as 15,000 sudden deaths per year in Europe and the U.S.

So what gives?