OxyContin Billionaire Patents Drug To Treat Opioid Addiction (cbsnews.com) 204
Richard Sackler, the billionaire businessman behind Purdue Pharma, has patented a new drug to help treat opioid addiction (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The news of the patented form of buprenorphine, a mild opioid that is used to ease withdrawal symptoms, comes as Colorado's attorney general is suing the OxyContin creator for profiting from opioid addictions. Some now believe that Sackler and his family, who owns Purdue Pharma, will be trying to profit from the antidote. The Washington Post reports: The lawsuit claims Purdue Pharma L.P. and Purdue Pharma Inc. deluded doctors and patients in Colorado about the potential for addiction with prescription opioids and continued to push the drugs. And it comes amid news that the company's former chairman and president, Richard Sackler, has patented a new drug to help wean addicts from opioids. "Purdue's habit-forming medications coupled with their reckless marketing have robbed children of their parents, families of their sons and daughters, and destroyed the lives of our friends, neighbors, and co-workers," Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman said Thursday in a statement. "While no amount of money can bring back loved ones, it can compensate for the enormous costs brought about by Purdue's intentional misconduct."
The lawsuit states that Purdue Pharma "downplayed the risk of addiction associated with opioids," "exaggerated the benefits" and "advised health care professionals that they were violating their Hippocratic Oath and failing their patients unless they treated pain symptoms with opioids," according to the statement from the Colorado attorney general's office. But Purdue Pharma "vigorously" denied the accusations Friday in a statement to The Washington Post, saying that although it shares "the state's concern about the opioid crisis," it did not mislead health-care providers about prescription opioids. "The state claims Purdue acted improperly by communicating with prescribers about scientific and medical information that FDA has expressly considered and continues to approve," a spokesman for Purdue Pharma said in the statement. "We believe it is inappropriate for the state to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA." The report makes note of the patent's description, which acknowledges the risk of addiction associated with opioids and states that the drug could be used both in drug replacement therapy and pain management.
The lawsuit states that Purdue Pharma "downplayed the risk of addiction associated with opioids," "exaggerated the benefits" and "advised health care professionals that they were violating their Hippocratic Oath and failing their patients unless they treated pain symptoms with opioids," according to the statement from the Colorado attorney general's office. But Purdue Pharma "vigorously" denied the accusations Friday in a statement to The Washington Post, saying that although it shares "the state's concern about the opioid crisis," it did not mislead health-care providers about prescription opioids. "The state claims Purdue acted improperly by communicating with prescribers about scientific and medical information that FDA has expressly considered and continues to approve," a spokesman for Purdue Pharma said in the statement. "We believe it is inappropriate for the state to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA." The report makes note of the patent's description, which acknowledges the risk of addiction associated with opioids and states that the drug could be used both in drug replacement therapy and pain management.
Drug lords... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a multi-billion drug lord, you are called "big pharma". If after a while your product (Heroin, Cocaine etc) is banned, you switch to something else and the "evil" drug lords that are not big enough to be called "big pharma" take over those products.
Getting rich by both getting your users addicted and also selling them treatment is a further step in this theatre of the absurd we live in...
Re: Drug lords... (Score:1)
Right we should ignore personal responsibility here and only blame the pushers. Everyone is a victim right?
Re: Drug lords... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup.
Meanwhile in Colorado, my wife had back surgery and the Dr. is so paranoid of being labeled a pusher that he tried to prescribe ibuprofen as her only post OP painkiller.
Re: Drug lords... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had something happen to me like this. I had some surgery last year that was notorious for being really goddamn painful. I agreed only on the condition that the doc implement a pain management plan. Essentially Oxycontin for 4 weeks followed by 2 weeks of tapering off. After the surgery, a hospital ADMINISTRATOR decided that they where going to block sending me home with the meds or a script for them due to controversies in the media. I ended up in stupid amounts of bleeding everywhere pain at my parents house, and fortunately my dad had some pills lying around to get me through the night and in the morning I went to the GP who was absolutely furious that they did THAT procedure on me without letting me have pain killer. In fact the GP told me his usual recomendation for that particular procedure is a week or two INPATIENT recovery on morphine and possibly Ketamine if the morphine isn't cutting it.
I was incredibly tempted to ask my lawyer to file suit against the hospital. My surgical consent was ONLY given on the condition of adequate pain relief, and some fuck-head business suit decided to override the anaesthesiologists judgement. Worst of all Insurance threatened not to cover it, because in their view that particular procedure is irregular without adequate pain relief. Fortunately the Hospital itself smoothed that nonsense out for me.
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Oh jesus, so large amounts of parecetomol?
Paracetomol is the absolute worst thing in the world for overdoses. A nurse friend told me the worst tragedy she's seen, and seen it more than once, is teenage girls brought in after a massive overdose of paracetomol. No, they don't die in the emergency ward, in fact they rarely seem sick at all (Generally they've oassed out from the codeine in the paracetomol, not the paracetomol itself which is non drowsy).
But if they don;'t get to it in time, that paracetomol WIL
Re: Drug lords... (Score:4, Informative)
More likely, you are the shill. Doctors are feeling increasing pressure (again) not to prescribe opiates even where they are clearly called for.
Go away popo, you're neither qualified nor licensed to make this decision.
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Medicine is still art as well as science and doctors are far from perfect. But I do know that cops who have never even met your loved one and legislators who show no sign of ever having felt pain worse than a paper cut (neither apparently care if people scream in agony for a week) are not remotely qualified to make the decision.
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That is generally the problem with other people mandating what you can or can not do.
--
Just a little pinprick.
There'll be no more ah!
- Pink Floyd
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Actually they had to introduce a new, or at least hardly known, word when they banned hemp, namely marijuana, as people would never have stood for banning such a useful plant. Fiber was part of it, and with a new machine to automate separating the fiber from the bast, the pulp paper industry was heavily threatened, and led by a newspaper tycoon who could publish lots of fake news about the evil weed (as well as getting his son-in-law in charge of the anti-drug department). It is also quite surprising how mu
Re: Drug lords... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a crock of shit. Doctors are so afraid of prescribing opiates, that the pain clinic I goto is now shutting down. The wait for a new pain clinic another 85km away(the one I went to was 30km away), the waiting list for the 1st appointment is now 17 months. That left me in one hell of a spot, because my neurologist handed my pain treatment off to them while she continued to monitor my spine damage(broke my back in two spots about a decade back now). Let me make it clear, testicular torsion rated at a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale in my book when I was a teen. That's when my nut swelled up to the size of an apple. The two shattered vertebra that sliced into my spine, is a 9 or 10 out of 10 nearly all the time. The damage is bad enough I have a baclofen pump [webmd.com] to reduce the muscle spasms, cramps, and loss of motor control. Luckily my neurologist had no problems picking up the prescriptions I was on, or replacing the ampules every 2-3 months.
I'm not alone in this. It's absolutely rife in Canada and the US over junkies causing those of us with long-term pain control use problems. The whole "opioid epidemic" is hurting those of us the most, who need pain management. The ONLY way I function is by having something that will suppress the pain enough that I can work(even then I take a long term pill, and a short-term pill for breakthrough pain), and I'd rather work then not even being able to get out of bed, being on welfare/disability and other forms of social assistance. Read this article. [nationalpost.com] Chronic pain patients are the ones being most fucked over by all the hand wringing of habitual drug abusers popping themselves off with illicit drugs, laced with heavier drugs.
The people I know who have serious chronic pain? The ones that are using opiates so they can just function day-to-day? There's an awful lot of "well if they cut me off, what's the easiest way to commit suicide" going around. Those are people who suffer from chronic migraines(I have those too), to the people who've had serious spine injuries, or other issues related to diseases or complications like diabetics that have severe nerve damage to their feet/hands due to poor blood circulation. Again, read that article. The people who are saying "you don't need those drugs" are the ones who don't know what constant, unbearable pain is like. They simply think "you'll get over it."
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I didn't even know it was sciatica, just figured I'd pulled a muscle or something so tried 'deep heat' and other muscle rubs. After a week or so,
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It's been coming to boil for a while, but it's now the new fashionable moral panic in the U.S.
It sounds like your doctor totally missed your diagnosis. Depending on the pain, a doctor might prescribe a moderate dose of opiates for breakthrough pain (especially if the pain is interfering with sleep), but would mostly focus on the exercises, a cane if needed, and NSAIDS.
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It's been coming to boil for a while, but it's now the new fashionable moral panic in the U.S.
You mean it's a fashionable moral panic in most western countries, and was led by a person who has no business in being involved with it. That of course was a quack chiropractor.
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Why? He's not in office!
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In cases where the victim received every assurance from a certified medical professional that it would be just fine, yes.
Especially when we have law enforcement practicing medicine without a license and refusing to allow the resulting addictions to be treated as a complication to be treated medically.
Re:Drug lords... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Drug lords... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditch big pharma, fund drug development at the fed tap managed by a private non-profit with a board of medical researchers and with all staff researchers paid 250k/yr(adjusted over time to keep them in the 1%) and outsource the actual production of medications to anyone and everyone who wants to do it with FDA oversight of quality control much like food production but not on distribution or consumption.
Breaks big pharma and leaves plenty of incentive in the field, just not the get rich screwing people kind or the slow to size of government kind.
Your strategy is noble, but flawed (Score:2)
Ditch big pharma, fund drug development at the fed tap managed by a private non-profit with a board of medical researchers
The structure you describe discourages risk-taking & disruption, and encourages groupthink. History has taught us that the engine of progress is decentralized innovation. As soon as you have some sort of central authority planning where innovation where come from then progress stagnates.
Capitalism isn't necessarily the only way to get there, but it's an extremely powerful way to harness human greed & status-seeking behavior. It's foolish to disregard that.
Re:Your strategy is noble, but flawed (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly the opposite. Big pharma is anything but decentralized. Big pharma is also failing to produce anything earthshattering and new that revolutionizes medicine. Stop and think about it, how many miracle drugs have you seen in the last 30 years? Not new surgeries or cancer busting treatments but actual medications? Not many. For the most part you see new drugs that are minor variations on old drugs so the patents are new and doctors given heavy incentives to prescribe them. If we tried a new structure existing medications wouldn't disappear and it is unlikely to do worse. There is actually more medical innovation coming out of Europe than the US these days and they are completely socialized.
This would allow anyone with the qualification to do so to individually jump right in and develop drugs which will hit the market at rates we pay for generics now. You don't need a handful of people to have a chance of winning the lottery to motivate, a top 1% salary is plenty of economic motivation to go into the field and everyone, wealthy or not, has a shared interest in offering that incentive.
"Capitalism isn't necessarily the only way to get there, but it's an extremely powerful way to harness human greed & status-seeking behavior. It's foolish to disregard that."
Big Pharma isn't capitalism at all, it is exactly the opposite. People are right to not want government controlled healthcare because our government will do a terrible job of it. But it is also true that market economics work poorly for healthcare and research. There is no real limit to what you can squeeze from a person for good health and there is a greater profit to be made if you can make someone continue to pay for treatment rather than cure them.
When it comes to the health of citizens that is unacceptable and a non-profit (although there is nothing to say there can't be more than one to compete) run by actual experts solves both problems, the staff will be well compensated for the work they are doing but also will have to convince their peers they are in fact doing valuable work and progressing medicine without any attempt to halt and maximize the monetary benefit of a discovered medication before going on to the next beyond the minimum necessary to break even. By taking funds from the fed tap, it's a loan, there is still interest to be paid back and so still pressure and that interest varies with the economic state of the country we will just be investing these funds into medical progress rather than banks. And of course we will still be privatizing the production, distribution, and sales of the drugs produced with FDA control only on quality and purity to make sure nobody is cheating or ignorantly producing poison.
This has an excellent side effect. You'll certainly want to see your doctor to figure out which medication you should take or if you should be taking any at all but it will eliminate 90% of the repeat visits which are just to get a new prescription you already know you need. This frees up doctors offices to treat more patients and/or provide more attention and care to those they see.
It's very simple, human greed in medicine conflicts with the interest of every other human when it comes to producing medication. Status-seeking behavior and wealth is only one form of status, you can seek status in a non-profit environment. On the other hand, so long as you have controls that prevent cheating, human greed can work just fine on production and distribution where for-profit competitors all have access to the same medications and compete for the profits to be had on manufacturing them and getting them into the hands of those who need them. Small company? Great, make your profits on the medications needed by a smaller number of people that are going to be higher cost. Big company? Great, use your ability to invest in mass prod
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You can make similar arrangements with manufacturers
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When buying politicians stops working, all bets are off though.
Re:Drug lords... (Score:4, Interesting)
Tell that to the families of those lost in Kentucky and West Virginia from Opoid addiction?
Better yet tell that to the families of those who died due to denied treatment from the lack of insurance thanks to big pharma endless needing profits?
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Drugs in general, and opiods in particular, are not the problem. Drug abuse is a symptom of deeper issues like isolation, depression, and hopelessness. It's literally self-medicating. This is not an epidemic among healthy, well-adjusted adults with stable incomes and functional social support networks. There is some of that, to be sure, but not an epidemic. It's impoverished areas of the country among people who have given up and feel left behind that are hardest hit. And again, drug abuse is a sympto
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c) it's a much more difficult problem to solve.
This is by far the biggest issue. Basically the only thing that will happen is those people will die. Natural selection will work its way through. Sad but true.
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I'm not a fan of making drugs illegal at all, but I'll take "big pharma" over the drug cartels..
You do realize the reason we have the drug cartels is because the drugs they provide are illegal, right? Without the criminalization of these drugs, you would have legitimate business with legitimate employees, not gun toting, necktie creating thugs.
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The whole idea is that when the drug would be free to be made by "small pharma" the "big pharma" has it declared illegal or no longer prescribed, preferably just outright illegal, which leads to the drug cartels.
Then there's less competition on the open market and big pharma can have the government fight their competition.
why do you think they come up with a new opioid every x years?
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It's great when we can have ${evil_actor_with_catchy_name} to blame. But rather remember that each of those banned substances represented some of the best medication available to us at the time. Medicine abuse isn't the fault of ${evil_actor_with_catchy_name} but rather a long list of groups within the Medical Industrial Complex.
If this is theater then buy me another ticket. Lift would be quite a bit worse without "big pharma".
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If the manufacturers and developers had been honest with prescribers, making it clear to the prescribers and in turn the potential patients that addiction is a real possibility and must be managed as carefully as the originating pain condition, then the whole discussion would have been far different. Opiates are a powerful tool but have important downsides which ${evil_actor_with_catchy_name} worked diligently and to a large extent, successfully, to hide.
Life would be quite a bit better if "big pharma" were
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If the manufacturers and developers had been honest with prescribers, making it clear to the prescribers
Implying that a) it was known, and b) that the outcome is any different.
We have a whole world of pharmaceuticals even relatively new ones where the addictive effects are known and that hasn't changed the fact that addiction is happening and that a black market has also been developed for them.
Opiates are a powerful tool but have important downsides which ${evil_actor_with_catchy_name} worked diligently and to a large extent, successfully, to hide.
Another 2 things. For my own interest: source? And secondly to what extent would the outcome have been any different? We know drugs are addictive and yet successfully get more and more people addicted, often helped by
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The jails and prison will have it for free tax pay (Score:2)
The jails and prison will have it for free tax payers will foot the big bill
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Gold mine... (Score:5, Insightful)
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All true but you forgot the part where they TAKE YOUR GUNS!!!
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6. Get talking heads to scream at the patients and voters that any effort to control cost or reform the system is SOCIALISM and we'll all be "eating rats" as in VENEZUELA
Your rant is interesting, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter, but ... it literally is socialism that turned Venezuela into the $%^hole that is it today.
Opioids and withdrawal (Score:5, Insightful)
After a relatively serious motorcycle accident (36 years ago, it's all good since...), I received a prescription for percodan. I resisted the temptation to try it for a while, but one night I caved and took the pill.
*Never Again.*
I don't know whether it was a reaction to the drug, or a small taste of withdrawal. But every cubic millimeter of my body was uncontrollably itchy, for about a day and a half. EVERYTHING was itchy. Inside and out.
Pain is nothing compared to that experience.
That said... A guy making billions peddling that shit, then patenting a drug to treat the consequences of having taken the original known-addicting drug is magically, cosmically evil.
Some bullshit slashdot commenter talking about "personal responsibility" is almost as evil. I remember the Scientific American article written about opioids back in the '90's, in which the authors declared that opioids are not really addictive for patients in real pain. I don't remember whether there were any disclaimers. Now we know they were lying. Now we know that these "trusted sources" with money to be made were fucking over their customers.
And now we have shitheads commenting with such glibness about personal responsibility. To which I reply: Piss off boy. If you are lucky enough never to have experienced it, or possibly lucky enough to have experienced it and gotten past it, that's all fine. You are the exception. But that does not give you the privilege of dismissing the effects of such executive lying on other people who for one reason or another fell victim to the Royal Scam.
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You took one pill 30 years ago, had what obviously is an adverse reaction to the drug, and now feel like you're some kind of authority on drug withdrawal and addiction. Okie dokie.
Re:Opioids and withdrawal (Score:4, Informative)
You misunderstood him/her. That anecdote was an introduction to the topic, and an explanation of a narrow escape. It was not a claim of expertise.
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I for damn sure do not claim high ground whether it was an allergic reaction of a bit of withdrawal. I was describing a small "taste" of the challenges people could face. Based on that experience, I grant some room for difficulties to those who experience the real thing, particularly recognizing that "personal responsibility" turns to bullshit when the patient is experiencing the real challenges of withdrawal.
Saying "personal responsibility" is so much easier than Doing personal responsibility. Particularly
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That wasn't withdrawal you experienced, Grandpa. That was an allergic reaction. Withdrawal is a tremendous craving. As if you're thirsty in the desert, but instead of water you need opiates. Moreover you have to use the drug for a period of time before you get physically addicted. You took it once? Jeez louise, Grandpa.
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OK, apparently it was not MY "withdrawal", I can accept that. I'll stay the hell off that shit because my own side effects include the itchiness.
I stand by the basic analogy though: Opiates were prescribed too frequently based on willfully inadequate warnings. It's still irresponsible to label the patients as irresponsible who as often as not, start down the road while in recovery from accidents, or operations, or whatever distracting experiences caused the pain in the first place. Imagine someone who was g
Re:Opioids and withdrawal (Score:4, Informative)
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You're a doctor over the internet?
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Some commenters upthread think I may have been an allergic reaction, which is a good point. It is also the case that I am nearly pathologically cynical about drugs and one bad experience was plenty to turn me off of them, so I believe I was lucky. (I'm also lucky in being less emotionally affected by pain than most...) The point I wanted to make in the original comment is that opioids are way more negatively powerful than the industry portrayed them as being, and under the assumption that my reaction gave m
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Except the only way to find out who shouldn't be given opoids is to give them opoids. Kinda like the cashier at the grocery store doesn't KNOW he's selling matches to an arsonist, especially one who is about to offend for the first time.
What's really despicable is that tapering an addicted patient off of opiates is legally risky for a doctor. They're supposed to cut them off cold turkey so they can be driven to a street dealer if that often ineffective "treatment" doesn't work.
There is no special virtue in
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Here's the problem with personal responsibility: you can't do it without your brain. When you're talking about drugs which derange the reward systems of the brain, getting over addiction is not a matter of virtue.
It's basic cybernetics: behavior is controlled by various kinds of feedback loops; break those loops and the system becomes unstable.
When the system goes haywire, it needs support from the outside.
Now it's true that people who have a propensity for risky behavior have a higher risk of addiction.
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That said... A guy making billions peddling that shit, then patenting a drug to treat the consequences of having taken the original known-addicting drug is magically, cosmically evil.
Recently I've been thinking that a decent logical case could be made that a being like Satan is in control of the universe. Things may seem random and chaotic, but if you look closely there seems to be a strong bias for evil. War criminals retire in comfort to die peacefully of old age while good people die slowly of horrible diseases or as a result of tragic circumstances, often in a way that benefits terrible people. Terrible destructive monsters like this guy are hyper-rich while people who actually impr
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Interesting ideas, but I''m OK with simple boring self-centeredness carried to extremes by people with too much power and not enough accountability.
Then again, there are days where rationality seems to be in such short supply that maybe supernatural forces might be a useful explanation... :-)
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Whatever evil being is supernaturally controlling the world hates us and wants to maximize injustice and suffering while benefiting the useful monsters who do its bidding
But what if he is the leader of the Executive Branch?
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Similarly, I had a tooth removed after a bad root canal attempt. It only took one of the pills I was prescribed to scare the fuck out of me. It felt WAY too good.
I'm thankful that I flushed that bottle down the toilet.
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By the way, the suggestion that any licensed physician wouldn't know that a full agonist opioid is as addictive as any other full agonist opioid, is laughable. As is the suggestion you'd feel withdrawal from a single tiny dose (you had an allergic reaction, oral oxycodone, unl
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I was young, money was very tight and the feeling of riding through the curves of southeastern Ohio (and other places) was wonderful then...
I gave up on the powered kind. I still benefit from the muscle-powered kind, from which I still receive major health benefits.
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...That's an interesting idea, so I did a quick search. That produced this link:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
It looks like the itching is a common side effect (good to know, I didn't know that before looking it up), and the researchers are working to *reduce* it not *cause* it.
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Morphine was promoted as treating opium addiction.
Heroin was promoted as treating morphine addiction.
https://www.therecoveryvillage... [therecoveryvillage.com]
Nothing new unfortunately
Like giving an alcoholic a drink to cure them? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is just a repeat of all their former drugs.
The government should issue the patent at great cost ($1B), then ban the specific drug in question. And use the money for addiction counseling.
But of course $$$ are more important than human life in this country.
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In Europe AA programs are a not a end all drinking forever. It is to ween the addict off alcohol slowly. Many former alcholics can drink a glass of wine fine after a while.
When taking anti depressants that fuck with your head it is the same process. If you are on a high dose of Prozac or any SSRI or SNRI and just quite it can be very serious and bad! You need to take apart the capsole and count the pills after weening off the lowest dose over a month.
It takes awhile for brains to adjust to rapid changes in
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I don't know about europe, but that is completely contrary to what american AA teaches
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I got my exwife to quit smoking this way. You just need to have your brain not fight you. She smoked cigarettes regularly for 1 week and wrote down each time she smoked. She cut back 15% the next week. 15% the next and so on. It was easier than expected.
Yes she still craved a cigarette but was able to quit without the shakes.
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Lemme just take one guess here... (Score:2)
This pill to combat the addiction to the previous pills... it's addictive too, isn't it?
Re:Lemme just take one guess here... (Score:5, Funny)
That's where the third pill comes in....
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Sure. And you can bet they discarded any alternatives that were not (or far less so) in the search process. They have to ensure the cash keeps piling up, after all.
There's nothing like... (Score:2)
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Probably what the Roman Empire looked like towards the end....
Frustrated Incorporated (Score:3)
We could build a factory and make misery We'll create the cure; we made the disease [youtube.com]
What's supposed to be the alternative to opioids? (Score:4, Informative)
After a recent operation the first thing they did in the recovery room is shoot me full of opioids and I'm in commie Europe. When I went home I got a small number of oxycodone tablets for if things went off the deep end and the NSAIDs became useless (as they tend to do for serious pain). What's supposed to be the alternative?
Re:What's supposed to be the alternative to opioid (Score:5, Informative)
After a recent operation the first thing they did in the recovery room is shoot me full of opioids and I'm in commie Europe. When I went home I got a small number of oxycodone tablets for if things went off the deep end and the NSAIDs became useless (as they tend to do for serious pain). What's supposed to be the alternative?
CBD. Cannabidiol. People primarily associate marijuana with THC, which is the euphoria-inducing drug, but the other piece of marijuana is CBD, which is one, if not the most effective and non-addictive painkiller available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That's where medical marijuana is finding its niche. People who need pain relief get CBD; you can get patches, ointments, tinctures, sublingual drops, pills, or vape pens. People who want to replicate opiods get CBD with a bit of THC. People with panic attacks, PTSD, mental disorders, etc get THC. The ratio of the chemical formulation provided depends on your symptoms.
Its no surprise that anti-marijuana research and lobbying is primarily funded by big pharma - its competition.
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I half wonder if the people that claim it helps aren't just making this shit up to sell it.
They're not. It's either hit or miss, that's why say a person with migraines can be treated easily with stuff like Fiorinal c(asprin/barbiturates/codine/caffine) in one mix. And other people are on everything from sandomigraine to gabapentin and still have problems. It's why lyrica works for some people with nerve damage, and for others it increases the pain, or doesn't work at all. Why some people can get away with simply using tramadol for their pain, while others require oxycontin.
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After a recent operation the first thing they did in the recovery room is shoot me full of opioids and I'm in commie Europe. When I went home I got a small number of oxycodone tablets for if things went off the deep end and the NSAIDs became useless (as they tend to do for serious pain). What's supposed to be the alternative?
The alternative?
Why indignation of course! At "big pharma"!
Well, OK, it won't kill pain, but it might distract you some ...
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What's supposed to be the alternative?
Suffering. Pain will not kill you. If you ask some people, they say that pain is life. Suffering is not a problem for those who are merely watching the suffering.
This has been going on for some time. (Score:2)
After the great opiod boom got rolling in the 90s, pharmaceutical companies developed new medications to combat the side effects, like nausea.
Now it's not that that anti-nausea medications for people who legitimately need to take opioids, but pharmaceutical companies aren't humanitarian organizations. They were doing this to push more oipioids, which they knew damn well were being overprescribed on a horrific scale.
Reminds me of a song I know... (Score:3)
We'll create the cure; we made the disease.
-- Soul Asylum; Misery, 1995.
They say socialism is evil and kills lives (Score:2)
I say this article is true of the exact opposite. For those non Americans who know the difference between socialism/socialist democracies vs communism.
Restore faith in big pharma (Score:2)
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He'll solve the opioid problem. It really won't be that hard. He's got some great ideas on how to solve it, very great. He's got the best people working on it, very good people. And Mexico will pay for it, believe me.
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[...] chronic use of prescription opioid drugs was correlated with support for the Republican candidate in the 2016 US presidential election.
And now there's a cure for that? Wow, what a world we live in.
Oh, wait:
Individual and county-level socioeconomic measures explained much of the association between the presidential vote and opioid use.
So, there's an association. No doubt causation is more complicated.
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PopeRatzo, I'm on your side. My post was tongue-in-cheek.
Trump certainly appears to be causing racists to become emboldened, but I don't think taking drugs causes people to vote for Trump, or vice-versa.
At a recent rally, Obama said that Trump was a symptom of our current political situation, not the cause. And I'm inclined to agree: Trump swept into power by exploiting a Republican base that was over-ripe for a populist takeover, plus disaffected working-class voters in the rust belt that Clinton failed to
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Obama was spot on. Trump is a symptom of our current political situation, but let's remember that Trump's populism is lagging behind other countries because they were doing it first. Especially in European countries. Trump didn't sweep to power by exploiting a republican base. He swept to power by exploiting the people that both parties ignored, and were absolutely tired of it. The republicans with the "rinos" who are more like democrats, or pawns of special interests. They had their mini-revolution wi
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So using that reasoning, people vote for Democrats and Hillary, mainly because they live in large cities. Which have higher levels of lead and mercury in the water, and surface contamination from cadmium and other heavy metals. This of course explains why so many people vote for Democrats, they're mentally retarded and easily influenced because of heavy metal poisoning.
But let's make actual sense of what is being said: People who are prescribed medications for chronic pain, are the same people who've wor
Re:Meanwhile, the FDA continues its war on Kratom (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the problems with modern capitalism is we have removed all responsibility from the equation. This mother fucker, and mother fuckers like him, can line their pockets at the expense of the health of people. This mother fucker should be sitting in a prison cell some where. But instead he gets to hide behind a corporation and count his money.
The capitalist system is the best economic system we have come up with. But we have freed to many people from responsibility of their actions.
Re: Meanwhile, the FDA continues its war on Kratom (Score:2, Insightful)
Capitalism was great, up until we started protecting corporations from the law for no apparant reason.
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As opposed to the safe as candy opoids.
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Prove it. A doctor saying Kratom alkaloids were present in the bloodstream, therefore the death was caused by Kratom is a long way from proving that it was even likely as the causative agent. And the typical doctor has next to no knowledge of the pharmacology or toxicology of mitragyine or hydroxymitragynine.
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Research those 44 supposed kratom-related deaths. I have. They were all very tenous conclusions at best. My favorite was the attribution of kratom as the cause of death when the decedent coincidentally also had just gotten a gunshot wound to the chest.
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You are exactly the sort of person who is sure all paraplegics are just lazy and could stand up if they set their minds to it.
Re: Understatement (Score:2)
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