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Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#121
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote "force to trust". That's highly different from what you are writing now.

If someone doesn't trust the vaccine providers they shouldn't be forced to take it. You could have figured that out by analysing the specific meanings that the words have. That position on the topic of vaccines is neither rare nor subtle. And the sentence still looks fine to me, I don't know why you think that phrase isn't kosher.

As trust is fundamentally a voluntary act. Trust involves choosing to rely on or have confidence in someone or something. By its very nature, trust cannot be forced.

1. Trust is a personal choice: It's a decision made by an individual based on their own judgment, experiences, and perceptions.

2. Trust requires vulnerability: When we trust, we willingly make ourselves vulnerable, believing the other party will not take advantage of that vulnerability.

3. Trust is built over time: It's typically developed through consistent positive interactions and experiences, not through coercion.

4.Forced compliance is not trust: If someone is compelled to act as if they trust something, it's not genuine trust but rather obedience under duress.

5. Trust can be withdrawn: Because trust is given voluntarily, it can also be taken away by the person who gave it. No one else can remove your ability to trust or distrust.

Sorry, but it makes no sense at all.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#122

> WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday blew up the massive bankruptcy reorganization of opioid maker Purdue Pharma, finding that the settlement inappropriately included legal protections for the Sackler family, meaning that billions of dollars secured for victims is now threatened. Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss for the victims?

"is now threatened" is not characterizing this as a loss for the victims. It's characterizing this as opening up the possibility of a loss for the victims, relative to what had been settled. That characterization seems accurate and relevant.

(This ruling also brings a certainty of delay for compensation, since negotiations for a settlement have to start anew, and with lower chances of success.)

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#123

> WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday blew up the massive bankruptcy reorganization of opioid maker Purdue Pharma, finding that the settlement inappropriately included legal protections for the Sackler family, meaning that billions of dollars secured for victims is now threatened. Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss for the victims?

> Does anyone find it strange that this is described as a loss for the victims?

Pay attention to the ads appearing on NBC, I guess... (cf. Manufacturing Consent)

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#124
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will just annotate that with the observation that at the equivalent point (~4 years) into oxycodone's history I doubt it was well known to be addictive. Wiki suggests it was a "Miracle Drug of the 1930s" and they didn't get nervous about it until the 1970s [0]. And I doubt OxyContin came with the liability waivers that I seem to recall the COVID vaccines having. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone#History

I can say with a pretty high level of confidence that we aren’t going to be a seeing an epidemic of vaccine addiction in the coming years.

That is a fairly safe base case - but would you have seen the opioid epidemic coming that resulted in this Supreme Court lawsuit? These things are being proscribed by reasonable doctors as painkillers and appear to have done more rather serious damage.

I will cheekily note that you wouldn't have been following the science if you did, these things were safe, effective, FDA approved and administered by the experts.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#125
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because physicians don't get much if any training in evaluating evidence and research, they generally believe what they're told by scientists. Which is a shame, they should be taught critical evaluation of literature They also don't have time because of the artificial limits of physicians graduating every year, combined with more bureaucracy being pushed on them day by day

"trust the science" edit: it's meant in sarcasm, mostly.

We can trust the process of science but we need to be mindful of how to critically examine a body of literature. When I see most lay people examine literature all they do is cherry pick what they like and discard the rest and ignore any analysis or methodological concerns

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#126
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to overlook that OxyContin was very effective. Even a doctor acting in good faith was likely to prescribe the drug— because it worked well. It really did help people struggling with pain management. The downside, of course, was that Purdue pharma was knowingly misleading doctors on the addictiveness of the drug. Also the amount of doctors that were willing to turn a blind eye to the clear signs of addiction…

> Also the amount of doctors that were willing to turn a blind eye to the clear signs of addiction is very worrying. No disagreement, but I think it's worth considering how stigmatized addiction is in our society. I expect many patients would hide any signs of addiction from their doctors - especially since it might result in losing their supply of OxyContin, or worse, their career.

Yes, whole heartedly agree. The social impact of addiction and the ostracism of those suffering with addiction has undoubtedly only made this situation worse. I was more leaning towards doctors/pharmacies that were operating as pill mills - I.e. the handful of regions in the Appalachias where there were more scripts for Oxy than there were people in the county

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are doctors so easy to manipulate? They learn about addiction in medical school. Why would they believe a pharmaceutical company saying "...oh but this opioid is not addictive..."

It seems that in the US there has been a trend to "de-regulate" or let businesses regulate themselves. It works for a while, but eventually it seems to go south. I think "regulatory capture" is the term. I think of Boeing being allowed to inspect there own planes.. I think drug manufactures submit there own studies, as the FDA doesn't have a budget to test all the things themselves. The opiod manufactures are organiz…

De-regulation and regulatory capture are almost opposite things. De-regulation is a solution to the problem of regulatory capture.

Regulatory capture is a central problem in America today. The big powerful entities- major corporations, large unions, special interest groups, etc have the time, resources and incentives to lobby for laws (regulations) to be written in their favor.

The result is the American public is very heavily regulated, but in ways that are beneficial primarily to the powerful incumbents. This spans everything from copyright law favoring big hollywood studios to USDA regulations favoring the handful of major meat producer corporations to medicine, manufacturing, retail, real estate, etc.

Regulatory capture is also why the divide between leftists saying more regulation and rightists saying less regulation are both often missing the real problem. The US already has millions of lines of text for regulation, the problem is that so much of the regulation is bad and written to favor whoever donated or could sway votes to whichever representative crafted the language.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#128

This is a more complex case than I thought, and the dissent argument is actually very powerful and convincing: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-124_8nk0.pdf Basically, the original judge did a good job - the settlement plan was reasonable and widely popular. And the Sackler family being released from liability by putting billions of personal dollars into the payment fund meant more victims would get mor…

> victims have to pursue a much harder and more expensive set of lawsuits to get money from the Sackler family

They also have to litigate away a 2004 indemnification agreement extended by Purdue to the Sacklers in 2004, which could result in litigation and liability draining the pot before pay-outs can begin.

Definitely more complicated than I first appreciated.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#130
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what your personal views are here. If you wanted the outcome of the case to be at least some money going towards opioid treatment, then this decision could jeopardize that outcome. However, if you thought that the Sackler family being able to escape any personal liability despite the myriad of evidence of many of their involvement in stoking the opioid epidemic— and they still got to keep a very sizeabl…

They should have their wages garnished until the end of time.

Many of the most high profile names involved in Purdue Pharma or the Sackler family have retired or have passed away, so garnishment wouldn’t be as impactful as asset seizure (directly or from the estate of those that died)
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