How a painkiller may have caused lakhs of deaths in India

In 1993, India’s vulture population drastically declined due to the widespread use of the painkiller diclofenac in livestock. This collapse, revealed by researchers Eyal Frank and Anant Sudarshan, led to a 4% increase in human mortality, amounting to 104,386 additional deaths yearly from 2000 to 2005, largely due to the rise in scavenger populations and associated diseases.