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OxyContin's 12-hour problem

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Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#121
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wildly off base to the point that you seem like a shill. Learn about tort law and the first amendment. Besides it not being injurious or necessarily false, It involves a public official so good luck proving actual malice.

Your response seems unnecessarirly harsh. Please be more civil (HN strives for civility) and understand that HN has a global audience with differing laws (the parent could use this same perspective that HN is global).

> Your response seems unnecessarirly harsh. Please be more civil (HN strives for civility) and understand that HN has a global audience with differing laws (the parent could use this same perspective that HN is global).

If HN is American, the poster is American, and the subject of conversation is American, I'm not sure why we should give a damn that some other country has oppressive and censorious libel laws.

In Thailand, it's a crime to speak ill of the king. In Saudi Arabia, being gay is a capital offense. I hope you're not going to defend those just because they're laws that exist somewhere.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#122
post #113

The problems derive from the prohibition, which takes several forms. The forms add up for big profits and bad incentives, for which the consumer pays. FDA approval is the first layer of prohibition. Very expensive, this keeps a lot of competitors out. Lots of market (read: pricing) power is conferred to the winners. Great incentive is provided for regulatory capture. The second layer is patent protection. Again, comp…

Can you explain more how competition, availability, and legality will stop the more addiction-prone (low-income, chronic pain among other health problem) parts of society in America from doing drugs and becoming addicted? If I read your argument correctly, it's that the pharma firms will not market it as much and not profit as much. In my mind that's not enough reasoning that people who simply have a bad situation wo…

Addiction can be managed, it's only a catastrophic problem for the patient in limited circumstances: the dosage is too strong or you can't get it.

Where are you getting the goal of fewer people taking it, and why is the number of people taking it a concern at all? Pain management is the issue at hand.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#123

The problems derive from the prohibition, which takes several forms. The forms add up for big profits and bad incentives, for which the consumer pays. FDA approval is the first layer of prohibition. Very expensive, this keeps a lot of competitors out. Lots of market (read: pricing) power is conferred to the winners. Great incentive is provided for regulatory capture. The second layer is patent protection. Again, comp…

> Third is scheduling it as a prescription drug. The incentives of the drug company are now to influence doctors, in ways that may be more or less overt. Docs get a cut of the outsize profits, de facto. Hi! I'm a non-trad physician, with a history in health policy and managed care before moving onto the provider side. Please, tell me more about this, in a way that is more nuanced than the urban myth of "free golf tri…

Urban myth? This probably varies from place to place, but certainly all the physicians I'm close to are treated to very good food every day, and will accept occasional invitations to attend fun events with sales reps. Drug companies do their best to create an informal quid pro quo atmosphere. Many drug companies are involved, so they are clearly seeing returns from their physician influence.

More overtly, drug companies pay for fancy physician association dinners, and a rep will give a presentation on their drug and hand out business cards and brochures.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#124

Just to be clear, Maher has an extreme distrust of modern medicine, to the point that it led me to almost totally abandon his show. For example, he gave the fraud Sam Chachoua an inordinate amount of airtime for someone claiming he can cure HIV with goat's milk. As far as I know Maher is still an antivaxxer, as well. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bill_Maher#Medicine Anyways, I've realized to take Maher's views and end…

Maher doesn't say that vaccines are bad. He's saying that not all vaccines are good, and that Merck has discovered that it's a new stream of profits by convincing doctors that everyone should take vaccines for low-risk diseases.

So there's a difference, and I agree with him. I vaccinated my kids, and I even take the flu shot because my kids are still young. But given the fact that the flu vaccines is sometimes less than 50% effective some years especially in the years when it's a new strain, it's mostly an enormous waste of money that is going into the pockets of the drug companies. They have marketed the idea and created vaccine militants when practically it's not effective. If you even dare to say you don't want to take a flu-shot, you're labeled as an anti-vaxxer kook, basically exactly what you did.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#125

> it appears they offered a cushy job to a > government official in exchange for favorable > regulatory treatment I suspect that that sentence is legally actionable as slander, as well as being an (apparently) completely baseless claim of illegal activity.

"It appears" means it's an opinion, thus not legally actionable in the US.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#126

Really the duration can vary quite a lot. I was put under on fentanyl for having my wisdom teeth taken out and woke up in the middle of the operation in extreme pain as someone was digging my teeth out with a metal instrument. I moaned at him, through a mouth stuffed with gauze pads, to get the fuck off me and let me out of there if he wasn't giving me more meds. He proceeded to angrily accuse me of taking dope, whic…

Meanwhile, 4mg of codeine will make me drowsy and seriously impair my rationality; 8mg will send me right to sleep.

Human bodies are not even vaguely consistent in their response to medications.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#127
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain more how competition, availability, and legality will stop the more addiction-prone (low-income, chronic pain among other health problem) parts of society in America from doing drugs and becoming addicted? If I read your argument correctly, it's that the pharma firms will not market it as much and not profit as much. In my mind that's not enough reasoning that people who simply have a bad situation wo…

Addiction can be managed, it's only a catastrophic problem for the patient in limited circumstances: the dosage is too strong or you can't get it . Where are you getting the goal of fewer people taking it, and why is the number of people taking it a concern at all? Pain management is the issue at hand.

It's often used inappropriately, which is one reason to use less of it and use other better alternative.

It's a significant cause of death in suicide so that's another reason to use less of it. It accounts for a lot of accidental death, so that's yet another reason to use less of it.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#128
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many other countries, pain is treated without highly addictive opioids. Only in the US are they available at that scale.

Well, yes. But that is a completely different thing than "don't do drugs".

No it's not.

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#129

Another problem is all the anti abuse so called safeguards like timed release so the pills can't be crushed. That means you can't take half the pill and a few hours later the other half which is what some people did to get around the false 12hr relief advertising before the DEA and other government meddlers got involved. As for the FDA guy materializing at Perdue this is par for the course of all gov positions. A cab…

The timed release portion wasn't for anti-abuse, it was the whole point of the drug. It is supposed to meter out the opiate so you get an even dose, instead of peaks and valleys. If it worked, this would be great. They don't go into the mechanism in the article, but my assumption is that some peoples bodies dissolve the costing more quickly than others, and those people get the dose in a shortened time period.

Parent is referring to the anti-crushing design that was later introduced. It's in the article, grep for "crush".

Re: OxyContin's 12-hour problem

#130

Just to be clear, Maher has an extreme distrust of modern medicine, to the point that it led me to almost totally abandon his show. For example, he gave the fraud Sam Chachoua an inordinate amount of airtime for someone claiming he can cure HIV with goat's milk. As far as I know Maher is still an antivaxxer, as well. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bill_Maher#Medicine Anyways, I've realized to take Maher's views and end…

Maher doesn't say that vaccines are bad. He's saying that not all vaccines are good, and that Merck has discovered that it's a new stream of profits by convincing doctors that everyone should take vaccines for low-risk diseases. So there's a difference, and I agree with him. I vaccinated my kids, and I even take the flu shot because my kids are still young. But given the fact that the flu vaccines is sometimes less t…

If I misconstrued his position on vaccines that is my fault, but my point was that I don't trust his views on medical science one bit.
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