141–150 of 376 posts
Ibuprofen is surprisingly effective for many types of pain, I don't see why doctors immediately prescribe something as dangerous as OxyContin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then what should chronic pain sufferers take? Opiates may not be ideal, but it is one of the best options available. Personally I do not believe that GP's should prescribe pain killers. They either under prescribe (fearing everyone will become an addict) or over prescribing (often the wrong drugs). Pain is a very complex subject (people of different thresholds and biological responses), it should be left to specialis…
Chronic pain sufferers should try Cannabinoids
They are not substitutes. Just options that may work for patients depending on just what manifests the pain and how they need to manage or cope with it.
One significant consideration is how well a person can function in a cognitive sense on both options. This varies extremely widely among people, and it's not simple to understand what will work for who.
They (opiates) are effective, but do require education and management. I am short on time, but one thing near completely ignored in this discussion is the pain trigger for medication and how that differs from other triggers and addiction.
Secondly, there are natural and effective addiction treatments out there that can work extremely well to get people off opiates. We don't talk about these because money and morals...
I have got myself off them, right along with a dozen others. The tolerance, once understood, and combined with things that work to marginalize withdrawl, is a solvable problem for most people.
Frankly, I've been asked to publish by medical practitioners and so far have not for fear of a legal option being scheduled away for profit.
Just know this dialog is not inclusive. There are powerful interests aligned against making this all workable.
The oxy manufacturers want to sell. The moral authority don't want people to get high, and cannot differentiate that from legit pain management.
Both do not want to face remedies and education needed to keep people out of trouble, and society contributes with an irrational dialog about these things.
In the 90's, I ended up there, did research, solved it for myself and to date, many others.
The dialog is broken. We can manage this to a net benefit for the vast majority of problem cases today. That we don't have THAT discussion is the problem, not the drug.
BTW, it has a 4 hour effective life, not 12. This is widely known. The whole 12 hour relief line of discussion is avoidance. True. 4 hour relief being bad is also avoidance, given there are meaningful, workable options out there today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is the appearance of impropriety, straight out of any corporate anti-bribery ethics training. In this case, it appears they offered a cushy job to a government official in exchange for favorable regulatory treatment, leading a very lucrative business. It appears dirty but maybe can't be proven.
Another way to look at it was in working with Purdue, he was able to demonstrate his ability to define and walk around FDA approvals by understanding and guiding product language to get approval. This is a valuable skill. Purdue probably wanted someone like that on their product development team who could influence drug design early on which would make it less costly and more efficient to get drugs approved in the fu…
If the FDA is approving drugs based on their advertising budget or methodology, then they're worthless.
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…
can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure how the mechanism works to prevent splitting the pill in two. (I'm not sure how the mechanism works at all, really.)
I found this article: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/science-un-cru...
edit: read through it, splitting should still be possible.
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…
Depends on what you mean by "low-risk disease." If you mean diseases that are rarely seen, then I think you need to re-examine your stance. The reason a lot of those diseases are low-risk is because the population has herd-immunity from decades of vaccination. This is a good thing. But if people stop vaccinating against those diseases, they will become higher risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As does "lb.", the abbreviation for pound.
No, "lb." comes from "libra" meaning scales or balance, not "liber". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)#Roman_libra
I guess "lb." and French "livre" (meaning pound) aren't necessarily related. More likely: wiktionary could be full of shit, meaning I was wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
I don’t think legalization will reduce addiction (though would defer to empirical studies here). It would make the economic cost of addiction lower for the individual – one problem instead of two. More importantly, it would make doctors (and regulators) more honest participants. If a doctor wants to recommend opiates, it would largely remove their economic incentives for doing so. We don’t think of doctors having muc…
From the New York Times: "Actually, Prohibition Was a Success By Mark H. Moore; Mark H. Moore is professor of criminal justice at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government."
"... Second, alcohol consumption declined dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.
Arrests for public drunkennness and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.
Third, violent crime did not increase dramatically during Prohibition. Homicide rates rose dramatically from 1900 to 1910 but remained roughly constant during Prohibition's 14 year rule. Organized crime may have become more visible and lurid during Prohibition, but it existed before and after. ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...
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…
These things provide not only prohibition and costs, but also many essential services, a matter of life and death in some cases. The free market is a useful tool, but not the solution to every situation; not every issue is a nail for the free market hammer. I don't want to see how many of my neighbors die from a drug before I decide whether or not to take it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is the appearance of impropriety, straight out of any corporate anti-bribery ethics training. In this case, it appears they offered a cushy job to a government official in exchange for favorable regulatory treatment, leading a very lucrative business. It appears dirty but maybe can't be proven.
Another way to look at it was in working with Purdue, he was able to demonstrate his ability to define and walk around FDA approvals by understanding and guiding product language to get approval. This is a valuable skill. Purdue probably wanted someone like that on their product development team who could influence drug design early on which would make it less costly and more efficient to get drugs approved in the fu…
Well, he was working for the FDA at that point. So that would have been a fail.