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Reflections on medical policy, DEA permits, and the fentanyl crisisEdwin Leap is a board-certified emergency physician who has been practicing for 30 years since finishing residency. He currently works as an emergency physician for WVU Hospitals in Princeton, West Virginia. Follow When I was in my residency training, from 1990 to 1993, we were in the nascent phase of the "pain is a vital sign" madness. We were told, over and over, that we should treat pain aggressively and should not be afraid to give narcotics to patients in pain. Who were we to judge someone's pain, after all? The...

The nagging nanny of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is at it again, engaging in his favorite activity, telling his citizens what they can consume. This time, the Mayor is targeting prescription painkillers in the city’s emergency rooms. By mayoral edict, he will reduce the supply of certain pain medication in the emergency rooms owned by the city.

Americans consume 80 percent of the world's supply of painkillers -- more than 110 tons of pure, addictive opiates every year -- as the country's prescription drug abuse epidemic explodes. That's enough drugs to give every single American 64 Percocets or Vicodin. And pain pill prescriptions continue to surge, up 600 percent in ten year, thanks to doctors who are more and more willing to hand out drugs to patients who are suffering. As more people get their hands on these potentially-dangerous drugs, more are taking them to get high. Their drug abuse leads to 14,800 deaths a year --...

"Soldiers haunted by scenes of war and victims scarred by violence may wish they could wipe the memories from their minds. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University say that may someday be possible. A commercial drug remains far off — and its use would be subject to many ethical and practical questions. But scientists have laid a foundation with their discovery that proteins can be removed from the brain's fear center to erase memories forever."

Remember back in June 2009 when Jane Sturm asked President Barack Obama if his health care reform plans would allow spirit-based exceptions to be made for people like her 100-year-old mother? In dodging a direct answer, the president replied, "“I don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit," and added, "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking a pain pill." Here's the video of that moment.

After all these years, I have finally come up with the definition of a liberal wimp. It's someone who feels sorry for Rush Limbaugh. Here is a man who has kept 20 million dittoheads on a closed loop of right-wing rhetoric for three hours a day, five days a week, for 15 years. Here is a man for whom the word "bombastic" was invented. Imagine what he would say about some "feminazi" caught popping 30 illegal pills a day. Imagine how forgiving he would be to an "environmental wacko" scoring OxyContin while tree-hugging. Or any liberal who had to be...