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Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

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Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#61

Post by arkades »

sofixa wrote: post #60
savant_penguin wrote: post #58

Should you be free to use whatever drug you want? Do doctors hold any responsibility over getting you addicted by drugs they prescribe? (Aren't doctors the experts?) Now that marijuana is legal, should you sue the legal stores if you get addicted?

> Do doctors hold any responsibility over getting you addicted by drugs they prescribe? (Aren't doctors the experts? In this case doctors wrongly prescribed ( when it wasn't necessary or in too high doses) a drug for personal profit. They're guilty, and so is the company that paid them to do that and kept bullshit marketing reassuring doctors and patients everything is ok.

I keep hearing this, but there is no mechanism I am aware of for a doctor to see a cent related to prescription of outpatient medication. What’s the purported mechanism by which docs were making money on this?

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#62

Post by HeyZuess »

323 wrote: post #46

Quoted post unavailable.

> On one hand, HN in general advocates for legalization of all drug usage, one argument being that if they were legal they would be very high purity and free of contamination (deliberate or accidental).

> On another hand, HN demands extreme punishment against a pharma company which produced opioids.

I am not a fan of legalization, I am a fan of decriminalization. But I think the problem here for many is that this was not a legalized drug trade, this was manipulation of the health care system for profit.

Any legalized drug industry would also have a legal framework and those breaking that framework would/should be punished for it. Purdue mislead patients, doctors, and paid illegal kickbacks, failed to act in good faith to limit the illegal supply of their drugs etc etc.

This wasn't like some guy buying weed to get high, many of the victims were regular people who took this medicine on the advice of their doctors.

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#64

Post by ceejayoz »

i000 wrote: post #55
ceejayoz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they can be safe and effective for treating some conditions if used cautiously. Not every opiate has the issues OxyContin does.

OxyContin is not significantly more (or less) addictive or dangerous than other opiates. The problem with it is that it has been marketed by Purdue as 'safe', and that it is over-prescribed. I recommend the book Pharma by Gerald Posner, which goes into this in excruciating detail - but well worth a read.

In its original formulation, the extended release oxycontin could be easily crushed without losing much potency. Other opiates have long had measures to combat this; fentanyl, for example, is frequently prescribed in patch form; extended-release morphine turns to an unusable gel if you crush it.

Purdue's sales practices are important, yes, but the impact all this has had on pain patients is severe; attitudes like "why is fentanyl legal" and the comment that started this thread are hurting people with real medical needs.

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#65

Post by drekk »

arkades wrote: post #61
sofixa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do doctors hold any responsibility over getting you addicted by drugs they prescribe? (Aren't doctors the experts? In this case doctors wrongly prescribed ( when it wasn't necessary or in too high doses) a drug for personal profit. They're guilty, and so is the company that paid them to do that and kept bullshit marketing reassuring doctors and patients everything is ok.

I keep hearing this, but there is no mechanism I am aware of for a doctor to see a cent related to prescription of outpatient medication. What’s the purported mechanism by which docs were making money on this?

Purdue would give them kickbacks, vacations, etc. as part of their marketing outreach. It's not like the doctors made commission on every pill

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#66

Post by ethanbond »

323 wrote: post #46

Quoted post unavailable.

Do some more reading on what Purdue actually did. The point of legalization is to have high quality drugs and high quality information about those drugs. Purdue created drugs, sure, and then they launched what can only be described as information warfare on our country.

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#67

Post by DaftDank »

rand_r wrote: post #24
tialaramex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was never that they don't work the problem was that they're addictive . So since they do work this means it remains appropriate to prescribe them, it just isn't appropriate to give them to everybody to pop one every day before work and say it's "non-addictive". Drugs that work but have a terrible reputation are almost always still available. For example Thalidomide works, but it causes birth defects. Well…

The idea that opioids are addictive is a myth. People taking them are treating “pain” that isn’t diagnosed in the medical system. For example, joblessness. It’s an easy scapegoat for politicians to let them avoid dealing with harder structural problems.

I'm not following. I feel like you are trying to tell me the Sun isn't warm, and is in fact, cold. Opioids are most definitely addicting by any definition of the word.

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#68

Post by kriro »

dstick wrote: post #16

Good. For those that haven't watched them yet, there are 3 John Oliver segments on the subject that will back up the "Good." statement: Opioids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pdPrQFjo2o Opioids II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qCKR6wy94U Opioids III (this one focuses 100% on the Sacklers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaCaIhfETsM

Just watched part 3 and I've gotta say, I love the website stuff. "You gotta buy the .com"

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#69

Post by sofixa »

arkades wrote: post #61
sofixa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do doctors hold any responsibility over getting you addicted by drugs they prescribe? (Aren't doctors the experts? In this case doctors wrongly prescribed ( when it wasn't necessary or in too high doses) a drug for personal profit. They're guilty, and so is the company that paid them to do that and kept bullshit marketing reassuring doctors and patients everything is ok.

I keep hearing this, but there is no mechanism I am aware of for a doctor to see a cent related to prescription of outpatient medication. What’s the purported mechanism by which docs were making money on this?

If you keep hearing this, maybe take a look at all the despicable bullshit that Purdue have been caught in. If you like the video format, you can start with John Oliver's "Opiods" episodes.

Re: Judge rejects Purdue Pharma's $4.5B opioid settlement

#70

Post by HeyZuess »

savant_penguin wrote: post #58

Should you be free to use whatever drug you want? Do doctors hold any responsibility over getting you addicted by drugs they prescribe? (Aren't doctors the experts?) Now that marijuana is legal, should you sue the legal stores if you get addicted?

> Should you be free to use whatever drug you want?

Your body, your choice? There are many ways to answer this, and no matter how it is answered there will always be a group of people who disagree. This is why as a society we have a framework for making those decisions which sometimes gets it right and sometimes gets it wrong.

If we legalized all drugs and let people do what they want, do we stop a 10 year old from taking meth, after all it their choice. I think it would be absurd to have 0 restrictions, but that would go against the concept of being able to make free choices.

> Do doctors hold any responsibility over getting you addicted by drugs they prescribe? (Aren't doctors the experts?)

If they prescribed them outside of the boundaries of their professional framework, then yes.

> Now that marijuana is legal, should you sue the legal stores if you get addicted?

You buying marijuana intentionally is a little different from being under the mindset that a licensed medical professional (and health system) is acting within your best interest. Part of this problem also is Purdue mislead people on the addictiveness of their product.

However in saying the above, there is a lot more to this than just supplying a drug. They broke other laws such as the anti kickback.

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