Depriving Patients Of OxyContin Is A Crime

The Hartford Courant ^ | December 26, 2001 | Alen J. Salerian

[Tyrannosaur]

As a psychiatrist, I have treated many desperately ill patients suffering from depression and other psychiatric problems as they struggle to cope with serious and often painful illnesses and injuries such as cancer, AIDS and gunshot wounds.

The drugs used to keep these patients alive and to control their pain are strong medicine - they have to be to work. But unfortunately, the very strength that makes these drugs so helpful to people who need them makes them harmful to people who don't need the medications but take them anyway to get high.

[strela]

Oh you mean like the druggie daughter who stole her mother's oxycontin and replaced them with aspirin.

Disgusting. If there ever were a candidate for the stocks and the ducking stool, that daughter is it.

What is even more disturbing (in a societal sense) is the socialistic attitude evinced by the author of the piece who essentially tells the drug companies "Since your capital and hard work resulted in the discovery of a product that effectively relieves my pain, it is a crime and you should go to jail if you STOP making said product or don't give me enough of it when I demand it." The fact that you have pain does not create an obligation on my part to relieve it; sounds cold but its the truth.

[Blade]

You have to be one sick SOB to deny medication people in horrible pain because of abuse by a handful of drugged out losers.

[NittanyLion]

YOU: What is even more disturbing (in a societal sense) is the socialistic attitude evinced by the author of the piece who essentially tells the drug companies "Since your capital and hard work resulted in the discovery of a product that effectively relieves my pain, it is a crime and you should go to jail if you STOP making said product or don't give me enough of it when I demand it." The fact that you have pain does not create an obligation on my part to relieve it; sounds cold but its the truth.

The Author: Knowing all this from my experience in treating patients, I was disturbed to read about members of Congress criticizing Purdue Pharma of Stamford - the maker of the pain medication OxyContin - for failing to do more to stop a relatively small number of abuse cases involving that drug.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect there. The author is taking Congress to task for attempting to force Purdue into enforcing the law.

[muir_redwoods]

Strela, this isn't directed at you but merely said in response to your comments. I'm watching my wife of 26 years make her way through metastatic cancer (breast cancer that moved to the bones)with Oxycontin. Without it she can't walk. With it, she can teach, drive and function. I try to be rational and reasonable and supportive. I grant my fellow human the right to any opinion

That being said, with my bare hands if necessary, I'll kill the SOB who tries to make Oxycontin unavailable by prescription to my wife. There, I hope that's clear to all

[strela]

Yea, it was great explaining (again) to a 7 year old that his mommy is dead and she wouldn't be around for any more Christmases.

I am genuinely sorry to hear that. I lost my mom almost a year ago around this time; she also died in great pain as the direct result of the negligence of the staff of a hospital. The lawsuit will doubtless be in the courts for years.

I have to wonder though if you told this child that an outside agency (the drug companies, the federal government, the "drug warriors," et al) was to blame for his mother's death.

[strela]

That being said, with my bare hands if necessary, I'll kill the SOB who tries to make Oxycontin unavailable by prescription to my wife.

Please accept my sincere condolences on your wife's condition. And I meant no personal slam on anyone who follows the law to attempt to relieve a loved one's pain. My beef is with the seeming attitude that because a drug company discovers a superior pain relief method, they are somehow obligated to provide that product to anyone who asks for it for whatever reason they asked for it.

[NittanyLion]

My beef is with the seeming attitude that because a drug company discovers a superior pain relief method, they are somehow obligated to provide that product to anyone who asks for it for whatever reason they asked for it.

strela, I believe you're misreading the author's contention.

[strela]

I think there's a bit of a disconnect there. The author is taking Congress to task for attempting to force Purdue into enforcing the law.

The title of the piece is "Depriving Patients of OxyContin is a Crime." That title is arguably untrue, misleading, and inflammatory, and that's what I took issue with.

Further, its not clear to me how Congress is "forcing" the drug company to do anything. The exact quote from the piece is "... I was disturbed to read about members of Congress criticizing Purdue Pharma of Stamford - the maker of the pain medication OxyContin - for failing to do more to stop a relatively small number of abuse cases involving that drug."

Mere criticism isn't "force." Force is force.

Further, the drug is powerful and subject to abuse, therefore making its manufacture and distribution subject to strict regulation in the US. Seems to me that Congress is simply trying to ensure that the drug company comply with the law.

[WindMinstrel]

Whoa whoah whoah! Think you got the wrong person there, my fuzzy white compadre. I agree with you completely. I'm still puzzling over why legislators are trying to play doctor. The very idea is ludicrous.

[strela]

I believe you're misreading the author's contention.

The title of the piece, "Depriving Patients of OxyContin is a Crime," was misleading. If the author wished to make his contention more clear, he should have used a more accurate title and not buried his point halfway inside the story.

[xJones]

The doctor found that the woman's daughter was substituting aspirin for the narcotic and taking the pain killers herself.

I would have said this was unbelievable, but I remember when my father was in his last days, dying of lung cancer. He wanted to die at home and we had hospice care and 24 hour nurses. The truly wonderful hospice nurses brought a dropper bottle of liquid morphine in the last week. But each time they came, they would check with the nurse and then hold the amber-colored bottle up to a light. I finally asked why they did that and they said that in some cases, someone in the family stole the pain-killer and so they always checked. I could not believe that someone could take pain medication from a dying relative.

[harpseal]

Please accept my apologies. My first wife died from cancer quite a few years ago and I helped care for my father-in-law when he died of cancer more recently. he was in our home when he died. There was one other relative who spent their last two months in our home for want of anyplace better to be cared for. She was not old enough to qualify for medicare and medicaid was not an option due to the long slow paperwork process.

Of them all only my father-in-law recieved adequate pain management medication during his illness and at that he still suffered at the end.

Stay well - Stay safe- Stay armed - Yorktown

[texasreb]

Thorugh my physical problems I recieved while in the Army, I was given Oxy-Codone (sp?). When VA was ordered to stop giving this medication, I was given Morphine, which works of course, but which I don't like because of side effects. Oxy-Codone at least doesn't give me problems that Morphine does. The "Company" ( our Government) knows I don't abuse this stuff but all the Vets I talk with that are in the same spot, feel the same way. I do have pain meds that work, which I am very grateful for, but----. P.S. I hope the people that do the asprin commercials and tell how well they control pain, I hope have nothing but asprin to help them with their pain.(I don't really but I hate those adds.)God Bless y'all for the rest of this year and for the New Year that hopefully will see us and our country turn more to Him and His direction and less to the worldly garbage we are told is so necessary for our happiness. KennyBob

[Lurker]

Believe me strela, when he is old enough to handle such concepts I intend to explain a lot of things to him.

L

[Chapita]

When my father was dying of bone cancer, he was in great pain all the time. The Navy doctors at Jax gave him a bottle of 900 dilaudid.

I think an in-law sold them after he replaced them with something similar.

I heard he got five bucks a piece on the street.

[harpseal]

I think an in-law sold them after he replaced them with something similar.

Said in-law should have been given several major fractures so that he/she got to learn what it meant to scream in pain.

I heard he got five bucks a piece on the street.

Those who sell the pain medication of a relative should suffer agonies that it is not fint to put on paper but the pains of bone cancer without medication would be sufficent to state what they should suffer. perhaps a live and conscious dissection would suffice also.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[NittanyLion]

The title of the piece, "Depriving Patients of OxyContin is a Crime," was misleading. If the author wished to make his contention more clear, he should have used a more accurate title and not buried his point halfway inside the story.

Very true. I can see how the title could lead one to construe the wrong message (assuming the author's message is indeed what I believe it to be - otherwise I got the wrong message...)

[DAnconia55]

You would have made an excellent Russian Commissar.

Your ability to twist and distort, in an attempt to use propaganda to confuse the reader is extraordinary.

[Kevin Curry]

Creating new victim groups: a liberal and libertarian specialty.