On a day the White House planned to bask in good economic news, President Clinton instead exploited in anger at reporters' questions...Within an hour of his comments, Clinton summoned the reporter...Bill Plante of CBS News, to apologize for losing his temper.

Sound familiar? Quickly losing your temper despite the fact that things are going well? Well, Clinton said he hadn't been sleeping much since the July 17 crash of TWA Flight 800.

Can you adapt to minimal sleep without feeling drowsy and experiencing a decline in mood and performance?

High school and college students are among the most sleep deprived people in our population. 60% are sleepy during the day and 30% fall asleep in class at least once a week.

31% of all drivers have fallen asleep at the wheel at least once in their lifetime. The National Sleep Foundation reports that at least 100,000 accidents and 1,500 fatalities are due to falling asleep at the wheel. The actual annual figures could be as high as 200,000 accidents and 5,000 fatalities. In addition to the tragic loss of lives, these accidents cost American society more than $30 billion annually!

The transportation industry is being hit hard by ravages of sleep deprivation on the highways, the rails, at sea, and in the air. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, "Fatigue is the No. 1 factor the detrimentally impacts the ability of pilots."

Even airline passengers are not exempt from the effects of sleep deprivation. Job demands are forcing business executives and government officials to operate well beyond the design specifications of the human brain and body. They undertake exhausting schedules, across multiple time zones, and work long days. Often suffering from the debilitating effects of jet lag, these people's health and performance are put in jeopardy.

20% of all employees work at night and suffer disproportionately from drowsiness, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular problems, infertility, depression, and accidents. 56% of shift workers fall sleep on the job at least once a week. The Wall Street Journal reported that $70 billion is lost per year in productivity, accidents, and health costs as a result of workers' inability to adjust to late-night work schedules. Two of the three top NASA managers had had less than 3 hours of sleep for the 3 consecutive nights prior to the deadly Challenger mission

Medical residents and interns are among the most severely sleep-deprived individuals. Many work more than 130 hours per week in shifts of 12-60 hours' duration, and every other night they are on call. They may be responsible for the care of 40-60 patients. Sometimes mistakes are made. Fatal mistakes.

"On November 25, 1991, when President George Bush spoke at an Ohio high school, 'At least a third of the high school students were clearly asleep in the overheated auditorium...' If these students cannot stay awake for the President, it's no wonder teachers cannot keep them awake."

"In 1990 a high school student in New Hampshire who had been named America's Safest teen Driver fell asleep at the wheel around 5p.m., Drifting over the yellow line into oncoming traffic. He killed himself and the nineteen-year-old female driver of another car. According to his father, 'Safe driving was an obsession with him. The question of why he didn't recognize the fatigue and respond to it is something we will never know.'"

In the PBS television documentary "Sleep Alert," a Boeing 747 captain noted: "It is not unusual for me to fall asleep in the cockpit, wake up twenty minutes later and find the other two crew members totally sleep." In another report, "A Boeing 757 captain told how his forehead hit the control column on his approach to New York's Kennedy airport as the need for sleep became overwhelming." Pilot Video

The launch of the shuttle Columbia on January 6, 1986 almost resulted in a tragedy because of operator fatigue. Technicians had been working 12 hour night shifts for 3 consecutive days. In a sleep-deprived state, one operator inadvertently drained 4,000 pounds of liquid oxygen from the shuttle tank just minutes prior to the scheduled launch! Luckily the mission was aborted 31 seconds before lift off but not because the oxygen loss was detected. The crew of the Challenger was not so lucky. Insufficient sleep and irregular hours of NASA managers involved a poor fatal decision.

An 18 year old woman died "after a night of inattentive care by fatigues and inexperienced residents in one of New York's major teaching hospitals...A Manhattan grand jury concluded that the patient had received 'woefully inadequate' care and had suffered repeated mistakes by the first-year interns and second year residents who had had little sleep." It is 5:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C., but [Bush] has already put in a long day in Tokyo. Suddenly, under the unforgiving eye of the TV cameras, he vomits. collapses, and slides under the table at a banquet with the Japanese Prime Minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, where bush is the guest of honor...His biological clock was still set somewhere in mid-Pacific and had not yet joined him in Japan. He became just one more victim of the human drive to reach beyond our physiological capacities.