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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

#571

Post by [deleted] »

thegrimmest wrote: post #548
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop with the patronizing. Any transaction between consenting parties (backed by bankruptcy protection) should be allowed. Any? Can I sell my kidney? You are arguing an extreme minority opinion, consumer protection laws exist because it is not possible for an average consumer to understand all safety implications of vehicle design, house construction or a medical procedure.

> Can I sell my kidney? I don't see why not. Me saying you can't would imply that I have a stronger claim to your own kidney than you do. This is a pretty hard claim to substantiate. The majority can be, and often is, wrong.

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#573

Post by beaeglebeachedd »

Retric wrote: post #568
zer00eyz wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctors and the FDA etc were straight up lied to Oh please. Doctors, did not believe the preponderance of evidence that ulcers were caused by bacteria. The reason, the person who discovered it was a vet. They had to give the man a Nobel Prize to get Dr's to pry their heads out of their self aggrandizing asses and pay attention to reality. Opioids were addictive. They never stoped being that. Dr's were fiscally moti…

> Doctors, did not .. The reason, the person who discovered it was a vet. You’re wildly incorrect, nobody involved was a vet. Barry Marshall shared that Nobel and is a Doctor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall Robin Warren received his M.B.B.S. an undergraduate degree focused on medical research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Warren He worked at: “SA Pathology, (formerly the Institute of Medical and…

Chinese emporers were controlling opiates all the way back in the 1700s and the British were tied up in war for 20 years over the wreckage to the Chinese addicts.

The doctors, all college educated, some of our most studied and intelligent citizens, they knew about the history of opiates and im not talking about the dare campaign. I knew before the epidemic even got into force when I tossed the opiates I was prescribed in the trashcan.

The oxy marketing was just the wink and the nod everybody needed to convince themselves to parrot with a straight face, but they didn't actually really believe it.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#574

Post by Retric »

beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #573
Retric wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctors, did not .. The reason, the person who discovered it was a vet. You’re wildly incorrect, nobody involved was a vet. Barry Marshall shared that Nobel and is a Doctor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall Robin Warren received his M.B.B.S. an undergraduate degree focused on medical research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Warren He worked at: “SA Pathology, (formerly the Institute of Medical and…

Chinese emporers were controlling opiates all the way back in the 1700s and the British were tied up in war for 20 years over the wreckage to the Chinese addicts. The doctors, all college educated, some of our most studied and intelligent citizens, they knew about the history of opiates and im not talking about the dare campaign. I knew before the epidemic even got into force when I tossed the opiates I was prescribe…

This wasn’t just marketing, this was drug labeling approved by the FDA and new guidelines for pain management they where teaching in med schools.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#575

Post by beaeglebeachedd »

Retric wrote: post #574
beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese emporers were controlling opiates all the way back in the 1700s and the British were tied up in war for 20 years over the wreckage to the Chinese addicts. The doctors, all college educated, some of our most studied and intelligent citizens, they knew about the history of opiates and im not talking about the dare campaign. I knew before the epidemic even got into force when I tossed the opiates I was prescribe…

This wasn’t just marketing, this was drug labeling approved by the FDA and new guidelines for pain management they where teaching in med schools.

It's a valid point. Another valid point is at that time it was known the FDA had a history of approving addictive drugs. It is not evidence based to trust FDA over hundreds of years of history countering otherwise. I knew LOTS of people who turned down or tossed opiate scripts during that time because the long history was obvious to anyone with half a brain.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#576

Post by freetanga »

pembrook wrote: post #561
api wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget McKinsey: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids...

I always cringe whenever I see people giving McKinsey credit for stuff (good or bad). It's a powerpoint factory of 20-somethings with zero experience executing anything. To suggest the virtuous, humble Purdue management could never have figured out how to sell oxycontin and bend regulators--without the insight of a few powerpoint slides--gives me a chuckle. It's not like Purdue, a drug company, had any experience mar…

You might be partially right, but McKinsey Senior Partners have a very long list of friends to call, many of them former McKinseys in positions of power. So while the shitty PowerPoint might seem as the product, the actual product might be trafficking influences and coordinating favors, getting insider information from a competitor, etc.

In this case in particular, if memory serves, they were advising the FDA in parallel, and leaking information to the Purdues. No brain-dead 24yo Harvard grad did that.

I would not give them any slack.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#577

Post by walterbell »

lenerdenator wrote: post #551
janalsncm wrote: post #398

Pound for pound, the Sacklers probably did more damage to America than any other drug dealers in history. More damage than any serial killer or mass shooter. In my mind they should be considered public enemies 1 through N. I sincerely hope they face civil and criminal liabilities for what they’ve done.

I like to think about it this way: I cannot name another family that helped introduce a nationwide need for a completely new type of first aid, that being naloxone. It's not just ambulances; it's in police cars, pharmacies, libraries, schools, and workplaces. A complete deployment throughout the third-largest society in the world, in less than ten years, because of the frequency of overdose. Just consider that for a…

Gabapentoids (e.g. pregabalin, gabapentin) need similar scrutiny, as they are routinely prescribed to millions of elderly people, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7265598/

> gabapentinoids are increasingly being used for off-label conditions despite the lack of evidence. Prescription rates for off-label conditions have overtaken that for on-label use. Similarly, the use of gabapentinoids in the perioperative period is now embedded in clinical practice despite conflicting evidence. This article summarises the risks associated with this increasing use. There is increasing evidence of the potential to cause harm in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and increasing prevalence of abuse. The risk of respiratory depression in combination with opioids is of particular concern in the context of the current opioid crisis.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#578

Post by rallison »

Retric wrote: post #570
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where was the FDA? Were the doctors all innocent? Is stupidity a good criminal defense? They should be all in the same cell.

FDA has some culpability, but the fraud was so effective Medical Schools where teaching students to prescribe more opioids. Perdue Pharma effectively hacked the medical system. I think the real takeaway is there’s likely more of this going on than we realize. The common decongestant phenylephrine being no more effective than placebo comes to mind. Without the mass deaths there’s apparently little to stop modern snake…

There is a phenomenal article in Scientific American talking about the phenylephrine/pseudoephedrine debacle: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-two-pharmacis...

It's sort of a different class of failure than with opioids, but it is a notable area of weakness. Basically, for OTC drugs that were initially approved before 1962, many are still on the market despite sometimes having weak efficacy data. While the FDA has been making some progress in reevaluating these older drugs, we're still far from where we should be.

A few quotes from the conclusion of the article (but the entire piece I linked in SA is worth a read!):

> In 2023, 16 external experts on the second Nonprescription Drug Advisory Committee looked at all the evidence compiled by FDA staff, heard manufacturers' arguments in favor of oral phenylephrine's efficacy, and heard from experts like me who argued that oral phenylephrine is ineffective. In the end, they concluded that oral phenylephrine is not GRASE. A final ruling on whether decongestants containing the drug can still be sold will take time. We hope science will prevail.

> From this experience we've learned that the monograph process for OTC drugs approved before 1962 needs to be reexamined. Systematic reviews of the available evidence indicate that other nonprescription drugs such as guaifenesin (sold in Mucinex and Robitussin), dextromethorphan (sold in Robitussin DM) and antihistamines marketed for colds (for instance, chlorpheniramine) probably don't help with coughs and colds. They are usually not dangerous, but their effects are likely to be the result of a placebo response; more modern research is needed.

> The outcome for oral phenylephrine shows that the FDA needs more funding to look at old drugs. We need public funds to support independent researchers who want to examine these products objectively. The government should be able to spend millions to save consumers billions on ineffective products. Companies that market these products have no incentive to prove they don't work. Nonprescription drugs must be effective, not just safe.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#579

Post by 0x00_NULL »

beaeglebeachedd wrote: post #538
0x00_NULL wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s gotta be the most ignorant opinion I’ve heard on the subject. This clearly is coming from someone who has had the benefit of good health, or hasn’t had the misfortune of a critical ER visit. When I got addicted to opioids, the doctors didn’t ask me what I wanted in the ER. I got Dilauded as they prepped the OR. I wasn’t lucid enough or cognizant enough to give informed consent. During my recovery, there wasn’t…

I've worked in the ER, held a license to work there, and spend everyday with licensed providers in addiction medicine. I assure you I have more familiarity here than even most addicts. But you win the victim totempole height contest I guess.

That doesn’t clarify anything about your knowledge. The specialized hospital cleaning crews are in the ER every day and dozens of hours per week in the OR, but that doesn’t allow them to practice medicine or perform surgery. Proximity is not the same as practice.

The medical practice (until a few years ago) was profoundly and intentionally misinformed about the addictiveness of Oxycodone and Oxycontin. You brought up a question about why people didn't learn from the Opioid Wars, but your flippant question could just as easily be applied to the MDs who wrote the prescriptions.

Medical doctors are smart; they MUST know about the Opioid Wars and the horror the opium wrecked on Chinese society for centuries. Why would they prescribe such a dangerously addictive compound to injured and vulnerable people having the worst day of their lives?

Instead, you blame patients with little choice (or capacity to evaluate choices) in a terrible situation. And, if you talked to any addicts, you'd sure find that the top of the "victim totempole" is actually really crowded with people who got there the exact same way. That is no coincidence.

The fact of the matter is that Purdue intentionally misinformed everyone - doctors, patients, caregivers, and family. They used marketing, propaganda, bribes, recognition, and myriad other tools to convince everyone that their product was different. Doctors, knowing full well about the Opium Wars, wholeheartedly believed the propaganda. I wasn't the first patient to be discharged from the hospital with a multi-month supply of opioids. This was a common practice.

The worst part is for someone who claims to be around addicts, you think I am somehow unique in my story. My story is so mundanely typical that it should be nauseating. Medical treatment is, by far, the most common way addicts start with opioids. 75% of all heroin users whose addictions started in the 2000s reported that it began with prescriptions from their doctors.

https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/prescript...

I genuinely suggest you spend some time talking to the addicts around you rather than judging them. You'd quickly come to regret the flippancy of your statement and probably have some empathy for their situation. These were regular people with jobs, families, lives, hopes, and dreams. In a crisis, they entrusted medical doctors to make the best medical decision for them, and the price they paid was their future.

Re: Supreme Court blocks controversial Purdue Pharma opioid settlement

#580

Post by pdonis »

chasil wrote: post #445
csdreamer7 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In a brief filed on behalf of the relatives of Mortimer Sackler, most of whom are based overseas, lawyers warned of “significant litigation costs and risks” in seeking to enforce any foreign court judgments against the family if the settlement were thrown out." I understand your point, but basically they are saying: "We hid all our assets to evade the law. Give us immunity from criminal money laundering evasion an…

Consider a few issues: - the foremost among the perpetrators are dead - the rest of the family is culpable, but less so - the settlement money will now be entirely repurposed for legal defense - meanwhile the victims get nothing Does justice demand punishment or compensation?

That's basically the argument made in the dissenting opinion. I find the split among the justices here very interesting as it is not along party lines, as such splits usually are.
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