Posted on 07/13/2019 5:27:23 AM PDT by GailA
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Mike Braun (R-IN) are still trying to address the fentanyl and heroin overdose crisis—soon to be joined by a methamphetamine and cocaine overdose crisis—by denying chronic pain patients access to pain relief. They have just introduced a bill they call The FDA Opioid Labeling Accuracy Act, which would “prohibit the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from allowing opioids to be labeled for intended use of ‘around-the-clock, long-term opioid treatment’ until a study can be completed on the long-term use of opioids.”
Set aside the fact that most pain specialists agree that, in some cases, long-term opioid therapy is all that works for some chronic pain patients. The 2016 guidelines on opioid prescribing put forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have already been misinterpreted and misapplied by legislators and regulators, leading to forced and rapid tapering off of opioids in many chronic pain patients, causing many to resume lives immobilized by pain, and in many cases, seek relief in the black market or by suicide. It has gotten so bad that the CDC recently issued a “clarification” in April, reminding regulators that the guidelines were only meant to be suggestive, not prescriptive, and did not in any way mean to encourage the rapid tapering of patients on chronic opioids for pain management. Johns Hopkins bioethicist Travis Rieder, PhD delves deeply into this subject and relates his own experiences in his book, In Pain.
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
My brother is in hospice in the terminal stage of cancer and without the pain meds would be screaming until he loses his voice.
Joe Manchin should be recusing himself from any legislation dealing with pharmaceuticals instead of sponsoring it since his own daughter, Heather Bresch, is the CEO of Mylan, a major manufacturer.
What is this, a drug pusher full employment act? Do cancer patients need to go to the bad parts of town to find a local dealer?
All the big chains, Walmart, Walgreen’s CVS limit CANCER patients to 60 MG when their Oncologist write 90 Mg. 92% of Cancer patients are sent home on Standard dose 325 mg Tylenol.
It’s plain out Torture on the Level of the Hanoi Hilton, Japan and Nazi did.
Hip replacement surgery patients are getting standard 2 tabs 325 MG Tylenol.
Heart Attack deaths and Suicides are on the rise from Veterans who were hit first, then the civilian population.
FDA had to force the CDC to recant the FAKE numbers they used, and all they did was say we may have over exaggerated and our “GUIDELINES were MISAPPLIED by all 50 states.
Tennessee has 64 pain clinics, for an entire state. Over 300 shut down in 1 day, left 65. 1 more has since closed. Leaving 64 and the are concentrated around large cities not Rural areas.
For some with chronic pain, ‘life isn’t worth living’
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/for-some-with-chronic-pain-in-b-c-life-isnt-worth-living?fbclid=IwAR0H8e4e3moZWvFwFLsg2sYIchrBJdvq-BV5ELBx9g01zRvssGzqsrD_3f0
Manchin and his political ilk are immune from legal and ethical constraints don’t you know. Recusals are as rare as the truth in Washington.
Gotta wonder if CDC staff are on trial lawyer payrolls.
How can a long term clinical study on opioids be done if there are no doctors able to prescribe long term opiates because the FDA won’t allow it? I guess a couple thousand people in special University studies after 5-10 years? That’s prohibition.
Insane. I just pray that one of these fools gets an intractable painful condition and suffers immensely as they make their way to Hell.
Prescriptions for opioid are down, opioid deaths are up. More doctors in prison than ever and drug dealers and DEA have more money and business than ever.
Disgusting.
As a young intern I learned from a Chief Resident that you never prescribe narcotics for chronic pain. It was a lesson that served me well for my 35 years. At the same time I will say that mankind has been “getting high” since the beginning. There have been found canabis incense burners that are 5,000 years old, IIRC. What has happened is that our laws have restricted a number of euphoriants to transfer only on the order of one of us, physicians. So because of these laws my experience was some days up; to a third of the patients one dealt with were simply seeking to get high. Which was a total waste of time for both of us.
There is no one currently unable to find these drugs if they desire them. So our laws are accomplishing nothing but further driving up the cost of real healthcare. Further keeping the profits from the sale high. What is needed is a strong FDA to insure quality but keep the doctors out of the getting high business. If people want these drugs let them have them. The War on Drugs has been an unmitigated disaster from Day #1 (Harry Anslinger).
Here is a distinction that may help you. Terminal Illness is NOT “chronic pain”. 90 mg of OxyContin a day for chronic Low Back Pain is malpractice.
If they do, they’ll be dead of a fentanyl overdose in a few months. This is the problem. Anyone buying this stuff on the streets is a walking corpse if they keep it up. And soon.
As a resident I encountered a book written in the 60s by the Chairman of Neurosurgery at Mass General (IIRC). As I recall the title was Pain and the Neurosurgeon. It is huge. It describes something like 400 different operations for the relief of chronic pain. Again, if you treat chronic pain with opiates you will achieve only one thing. You create a desperate addict. In a society where his addiction makes him a criminal. I disagree with the model that would insist he has a “disease”. An addict is just someone, like the rest of us, who has found a way he desires to pass his time. Most of us have goals, dreams, ambitions and so are much more resistant to the allure of simply “artificially feeling good” all the time and prefer to feel good accomplishing something. Why do we allow politicians to burden us with the exorbitant cost of criminalizing these people? Should we also criminalize people who waste their lives in mom’s basement playing vidya? Seriously. To be consistent we should criminalize anyone who is “wasting their life”, shouldn’t we? Who gets to decide? Because I can think of a bunch of people who are wasting lives. Maxine Waters. Sheila Jackson Lee. I could go on and on.
Don’t doubt it. They are on Pharma’s, as are majority of congress. Antibiotics is their next target, you are taking 2 pills to many. Idiots who write Antibiotic scripts are ignorant of the need to add 30-40 Billion Probiotics 2 hrs after each dose to prevent Thrush mouth or vaginal yeast infections. I’ve known that for 3 decades, and didn’t go to med school. Yogurt won’t work to little Probiotics.
For how long did you suffer? (Since you used the past tense.). Did you have surgery? For how long did you take opiates?
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