The war on pain patients and the doctors who treat them continues, the latest volley being fired by Congress. Cato Institute's Dr. Jeffrey Singer tells us about how the DEA, with the backing of lawmakers, is able to continue its ridiculous campaign that makes opioid prescribing even more difficult for physicians.
Policy & Ethics
It appears to defy logic that naloxone, the antidote for opioid overdoses, isn't available on demand. After all, it's a lifesaving drug with no potential for abuse. But it's not so simple, as Dr. Jeffrey Singer explains.
Everett Koop was a man of morals. A religious man who read the bible. He was also a man of science. He got his job through politics. Yet he knew how to keep these forces separate. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his pushback against political pressures to oppose abortion on health grounds and to educate the populace on AIDS and against tobacco use.
The Washington Post just published a sweeping 6000-word investigative article about multiple aspects of the fentanyl epidemic. Although the piece gives a very thorough account of multiple facets of our losing battle with illicit fentanyl, it is unfortunate that the authors could not spare a few words to discuss the root cause of the fentanyl plague – the relentless war on prescription painkillers—a perfect example of the Iron Law of Prohibition.
Those who are not researchers may have wondered how human research is regulated, how research subjects are protected, and how we ensure research is done correctly. Those who do human research know only too well: the Institutional Review Board.
The recipe for good public health policy is like a souffle- simple ingredients combined in a complex manner. Done well - it’s a delight. Heavy-handed, using sour (outdated) ingredients – it’s a mess, even toxic.
The death penalty is controversial enough on its own, but when you look at some of the dreadful methods used, mostly due to ignorance and incompetence, there is no way that these executions pass the "cruel and unusual punishment" test that the Supreme Court used in its 2008 decision on lethal injections. They are torture, plain and simple.
Those who run the CDC and DEA have blood on their hands. No reasonable person can deny that the catastrophic crackdown on medical opioids has resulted in far more deaths than it saved. That’s because both patients and addicts are forced to turn to street drugs, and they end up dying from illicit fentanyl. But as ACSH Advisor Dr. Jeffrey Singer writes in Reason Magazine, there’s another harm that’s barely discussed: Suicides by those denied pain medications are becoming increasingly common.
There’s another “study” of the war on opioids for acute surgical pain. It turns out that the spouses of patients may be the ones filling those prescriptions. Oh my! Are these spouses diverting the opioids? Are physicians unethically prescribing them? How many are becoming addicted? The insanity of our drug laws.
Animal research’s benefits are clear – but public awareness of what it involves is not.
Medice, cura te ipsum. Physician, heal thyself. That is just what the CDC is beginning to do based on a recently published in-house structural review. Leave aside the shame and blame game of amnesty. What does the CDC believe it did wrong and could do better?
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently wrote a summary of what you actually get when you enroll in a Medicare Advantage (Part C) program.