The national newspaper recently published a guest essay that finally got the opioid story straight – something it previously has been unwilling, or unable, to do. The chilling essay was written by a pain management specialist who was unable to get pain meds for her dying mother-in-law, because of the takeover of medicine by the runaway DEA. The Times may have finally gotten it right (but it's worth noting that here at ACSH, we've been doing so for more than a decade).
opioid phobia
This body is trying to require all physicians to force-taper Oregon patients on prescribed opioids to less than 90 MME per day, or transition them to Buprenorphine. The Board should resign or be fired.
When government, politicians, and law enforcement take control of the practice of medicine this is what we get: Cruelty and incompetence. The next time you're given Tylenol for a broken leg or post-surgical pain you'll understand. Drs. Jeffrey Singer and Josh Bloom in USA Today.
Today is Veteran's Day. Although the thoroughly misguided "War on Painkillers," has done more than enough to the American public veterans who are injured suffer even worse. Yet they are told to try "non-pharmacologic" methods before trying even Advil let alone Vicodin. This disgusting practice is hardly the way to honor our veterans.
Will we ever run out of "alternative therapies" to force on people who just need a little Valium or some extra morphine following surgery? Hard to say, but take a sniff of this one.
The Veteran Administration's "Opioid Safety Initiative" – as fine an example of doublespeak as you'll see – succeeded in reducing opioid prescriptions by 64% in less than a decade. That's just fine if you're prepared to accept the accompanying 75% increase in rural veteran suicides. Drs. Jeffrey Singer and Josh Bloom are not. Here's their opinion piece in The Virginian-Pilot.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer (pictured) is one of the brave physicians on the front line in the battle against anti-opioid madness. He graciously gave us permission to reprint his recent Cato Institute blog post. It speaks directly to the role of government in determining who gets what pain medicine, and how much. Dr. Singer addresses just this as he explains why Sen. Robert Portman (R-OH) went way off the deep end, proposing a national three-day limit on opioid prescriptions following surgery -- evidence be damned.
Opioid hysteria is not confined to the U.S. or Canada. A British group writing for the BBC manages to get all the usual stuff -- and then some -- wrong. So here's a deal: We keep baseball, they keep cricket, and we both stop writing idiotic, misleading papers on the phony "opioid crisis." Jolly good idea if you ask us!
Just what we don't need: Another anti-opioid (pro-pain) zealot spreading the false gospel. But we have one anyhow and his name is Jerome Adams, M.D, the U.S. Surgeon General. Adams cites a 2015 paper -- from an emergency department in Tehran, Iran as evidence! -- that IV Tylenol works as well as morphine. Too bad the paper doesn't say that. Or anything else either.
U.S. Senator Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) has officially announced her plans to run for president in 2020. Part of her platform is women's health. Yet, her recently announced (and totally misguided) plans for "solving" the "opioid crisis" will disproportionately hurt women, an irony that Gillibrand obviously missed.
Bad headlines are ... bad. Sometimes they're bad enough that they screw up the story to the point where the headline says one thing and the paper, study or story says another. The folks at the Hospital For Special Surgery in New York did just that, by issuing a press release which suggested that Tylenol is useful for pain following hip replacement. But the study says no such thing. In fact, another study says it's useless.