As winter rolls into spring, we here at ACSH are springing ahead with our pro-science agenda. (Did you see what we did there?) From Fox Business to the Financial Times, here are the places we appeared in recent days.
opioids
A recent bus crash reminds us that all episodes of impaired driving are not due to overdose.
There's bad press coverage ... and then there's (expletive) press coverage. ABC's Milwaukee affiliate most certainly provided the latter, after reporting that less-addictive, over-the-counter drugs -- like Advil and Tylenol -- are three times more effective than some opioid counterparts. This is dead wrong. And neither Advil nor Tylenol is the slightest bit addicting. Aside from that ... way to nail the story WISN!
Treating addiction first requires that we understand it. As it turns out most people know little about what addiction actually is, and even less about what causes it. An expert breaks down the issue, so we can better understand what we're seeing unfold around the country.
The Oregon Democrat recently wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, claiming that his Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force, formed in 2016, was corrupted by big pharma money. The task force was charged with reforming the CDC's disastrous 2016 opioid guidelines. Sen. Wyden claims that two respected physicians in the group had conflicts of interest. Instead, perhaps it's time for the lawmaker to look in the mirror.
Just as you've been toiling away in preparation for your upcoming feast, we have been toiling away teaching the world about science. Last week, we appeared on the wildly popular Coast to Coast AM and more!
Surgeons are frequently the first to prescribe opioids to patients. Of course, surgery usually hurts. After a year of government agencies and legislators practicing "medicine," it's time to hear from the actual physicians. They have practical solutions we can use today.
Chronic pain is a major public health challenge. The reason is that the treatment of chronic pain has become, in part, a political issue. And that's to the detriment of 20 million high-impact chronic patients, who are disproportionately women or poor people.
Self-injury mortality, albeit by suicide or lethal intoxication, spans a continuum that represents two sides of the same coin.
In a trend described as shocking, people desperate to obtain narcotics are intentionally injuring their pets to divert and abuse the veterinarian’s painkiller prescriptions. While terribly sad this is no surprise: After all, this is addiction.
The strategy that our government is employing is ridiculous; we are fighting the wrong enemy. Pain medications, like Percocet and Vicodin, on their own, kill few relatively few people while illicit fentanyl and its monster analogs like carfentanil are responsible for the carnage we see daily on the news.
Can the FDA's tactics – to impact the current opioid problem – also predict its successor? The goal is to head off escalation before problems are crises, and the move is a departure from the status-quo, reactive nature of prior policies.