I'm have my Doctorate of Pharmacy. I was in the field at the time the opioid pandemicwas occurring. We all saw it. I personally, on my off days, went to Doctor's offices to tell them about the doses they were prescribing and how it needed to drop. They didn't stop. They were following the "guidelines."
I'm have my Doctorate of Pharmacy. I was in the field at the time the opioid pandemicwas occurring. We all saw it. I personally, on my off days, went to Doctor's offices to tell them about the doses they were prescribing and how it needed to drop. They didn't stop. They were following the "guidelines."
All of us practicing saw it. But we were silent. We saw this on the grounds first, and now it's just coming into the mainstream narrative.
This is why I'm so vocal about the pandemic and the measures we took. Sure we were trusting the science, but what I learned from the first pandemic (the opioid pandemic) is that they're two sciences. There's the science that's hidden (aka this stuff is destroying homes), then there's the science that's the guidelines (trust the science)
We need to learn from the opioid pandemic and apply those same lessons to all pandemics. Here are a few articles I've written from the medical aspect of things:
Good for you for trying. I was personally affected by this epidemic from the patient side. I had injured my neck and my Dr would not approve an MRI. I was in serious pain. Ended up seeing several neurologists and each time I was given more narcotics and stronger ones. That was it. I finally got my PC to authorize an MRI by being really pissed off. Ended up w a herniated disc that required surgery. The worst part of this whole Sh show was when I no longer needed the pain meds, and lucky for me I couldn't wait to stop taking them, I went thru severe withdrawal. Not one dr. warned me of the addictive nature of this medicine. This happened back in 98/99. I got thru it, thank God but it wasn't easy.
Speaking as someone who had (technically still have) a pharma company, the sociopaths from MBA programs have turned it into a system with scientists who are mostly working hard to do great things, against sociopaths for whom money is the only thing. Thos causes routine shutdown of firms with products that threaten cash cows. 💸 💰 🤑 💲 💵
You've collided with a growing reality of the last 30 years: there's science (the real thing done by knowledgeable people who work at it hands-on every day) and then there's Official Science, shaped by needs of Authority and The Powers That Be.
It's devastating to compare the behavior of the Boomer generation, since the 1990s, and its addiction to appeals to authority and mystification and constant caving into "activists" -- the opposite of science -- to the war generation's scientists that you get a glimpse of in Oppenheimer. The latter understood that, while they had detailed and abstruse scientific knowledge that others lacked, they were not the Authorities. They respected the openness of science and the need to educate the politicians (the elected authorities) and general public as fellow citizens, about all things nuclear. (All of them were supporters of nuclear power, for example, because nuclear power is not nuclear weapons.) I knew a few of them, and they had a healthy anti-authoritarian streak. (See Feynman's famous "cargo cult science" commencement speech from the 1970s, a speech that would probably be canceled today.) The comparison nauseates me.
The new "ideal" is Fauci -- not a public health doctor (although he enjoys being wrongly labeled as such), rather a laboratory research scientist who long ago left behind scientific work to climb the bureaucratic ladder. (See Fauci's failed 1990s push for AIDS vaccines, helping to stall antiviral treatments that actually are effective.) Universities now are overwhelmingly dominated by the same administrative-bureaucratic types.
The problem started in the 1960s with the rise of television and chuckleheaded media. The first of these pseudo-experts was Paul R. Ehrlich and his 1968 book, The Population Explosion. Not a demographer, or a historian, or an economist, he knew nothing about the history of human population and how it relates to economic development. For decades afterward, experts had to constantly clear their throats to correct the fallacies that Ehrlich and others like him dropped on society. You still hear echoes of it today.
I will never understand how medical doctors are the gatekeepers to controlled substances but are not trained therein. Nor apparently willing to regard the input of those who are.
Much like what happens with the Gender Affirmation and with Covid, doctors were swamped with recommendations and guidelines from so-called experts about how opioids could be used safely. Remember "Pain the 5th Vital Sign"? See below:
Hoping that someday similar miniseries and/or documentaries come out about Pfizer, PFauci, and the thousands of other credentialed criminals in and out of our government who perpetrated the COVID profiteering scheme that wrought havoc in the US and around the globe. I’m not optimistic that any will be served adequate or any justice at all. Those with the most money and power win in the end. So much for the “no one is above the law” bullshit the ‘above the law’ lie through their rotten teeth to us plebes about.
Would like to see the horrific trans scientific/medical community exposed for it’s corruption as well.
Why do you not mention how Big Pharma starts recruiting 'relationships' with young doctors while they are still in school? The vacations, perks, parties and cash involved? That is a scandal and abomination of the practice of medicine that needs to end.
That's a thing of the past. That was changed years ago. Those things were fun but they never got me to prescribe a drug that was not appropriate . But some of the people whining about that have no problem getting wined and dined on their jobs. Only Doctors were taken to task . I found it insulting that a free meal would get me to change my prescribing habits. It never did.
That is admirable that you did not. At Purdue, the drug company that pushed Oxycontin, they were very successful in pushing "pill mills" and rewarded their top "pushers". But the reality of the "just give me a pill" mindset is easily seen across the American landscape and in the cost of "healthcare". Even if you did not succumb to a form of bribery, all doctors have succumbed to the "just subscribe a pill" mentality of health. At 60, I take nothing. Am in perfect health. It took years of eliminating foods from my diet and finding proper supplementation to deal with my chronic digestive problems and severe eczema. I use food to treat myself, along with the herbs and plants that keep people healthy. As to the "pill" mentality, the damage was still done in that the doctors I have seen, (many) do not appreciate the body's ability to heal itself through proper nutrition as much as they do the lazy man's way of just take a pill. I know it is a complicated issue, but there is a huge monetary incentive to keep people sick and the overall health of Americans certainly shows it.
It goes so much deeper than most are aware of. It’s not even remotely just pharma - it’s any company that sells anything in the industry. Med devices are huge $$$ but also equipment and diagnostics (lab tests) and services, all the way down to your companies that sell bandaids. I managed a division of sales reps for a diagnostics company for 12 years - you sponsor a client (but the receiving entity calls it philanthropy) and they serve as a “reference” to help you get more business. The sponsorship is not contingent on the promotion, legally it can’t be, but it happens that way.
We would educate the providers on how to use the product, how insurers were providing coverage (again you can’t tell them what to put as a diagnosis but they understand pretty quickly under what circumstances insurance will or will not cover something). If there were issues with coverage, we’d likely write it off. Happy patient = happy physician = retain the business. There were a bajillion little rules to follow between Stark law, Anti-kickback statutes, False Claims Act, etc but all of these practices can legally happen within those bounds.
I suspect without the capitalistic involvement of companies, healthcare would be even more expensive. The companies fund a lot of philanthropic activity, provider education, supplies and services for those who struggle to pay, etc. I alone had an annual 7 figure budget for philanthropic sponsorships of clients - hospital foundations, free community cancer screening events, indigent patient funds.
While I was practicing at a clinic in the DHHS/ Indian Health Service, I was aggressively advised by our staff pharmacists to substitute Oxycontin long-acting for other short acting preparations because either they believed the Purdue propaganda or they were mandated at a higher level in the chain-of-command to enact this method of pain management. They justified it by repeating the same misguided information. That this was less likely to cause addiction and that the long-acting form of Oxycontin would not give our patients the "high" they were supposedly seeking with shorter acting drugs. Of course, just the opposite was true and this vulnerable population suffered terribly at the hands of our government health-care system, and the bad science and lies used by Purdue to negotiate contracts with them.
There was never any formal marketing saying oxycontin was less addictive. It was more effective because people with continuous pain only had to take a drug twice a day and the peaks and valleys of absorption were much smoother allowing for less pain. Again the problem was with people crushing the pills -stealing them from pharmacies or Grandma.
There were bad doctors running pill mills but most were caught. Nowadays people with severe intractable pain often suffer more because the rules made to protect from addiction only make it harder for legitimate pain patients to get relief. They have done little to lower death rates because it was never about legitimate prescriptions from experienced MDs it was about abusers and criminals that turned that drug into a killer.
The tort lawyers made a killing and Hollywood joined in to make more profit off of this. This doesn't diminish those who died from overdose but the situation was never due to proper prescribing of the drug.
Making people desperate for their next dose--which is exactly what Oxycontin's dosing schedule does--is the perfect way to induce addiction, even in people who are not normally inclined to become addicted. Purdue's local reps were instructed to tell doctors to give higher doses, not more frequent ones: another means of inducing addiction.
Right. It sends people into an addiction cycle *every time* a dose wears off. The LA Times had a really excellent story on the mechanism of addiction with Oxycontin - and the pill mills. It was a 3-parter about 6 years ago.
My brother was an early victim of the promiscuous use of opioid painkillers. He like so many of the victims came from a white working class background. To Big Pharma and their enablers at the NYT and in government this group was invisible to their elite circle of friends. This crisis from the beginning has disproportionately impacted white working class males. A class of people the Bushes, Clintons, Obama’s and Biden’s don’t give a rat’s ass about. It is 21st century class warfare.
I suspected there was something not quite right going on when it came out that Rush Limbaugh had become addicted to Oxycontin after back surgery. Addiction in such flamboyant personalities generally begins in youth if it's going to happen at all, not in late middle age.
This is so similar to the "guidelines" of "affirmation" which a non-professional lobbying group comprised mostly of men who think they are women who additionally have a medical degree or therapy credentials, which is named WPATH, the "World Professional Association for Transgender Health." The doses of wrong sex hormones prescribed after one 40 minute appointment, for a confused and immature teenager are much, much too high. The actual risks of liver failure, stroke and heart attack in both sexes, if this pharma protocol is continued over years and decades simply grow. Oxy, of course, figures prominently in the "post-surgery" phase when these children have been groomed into mutilating their genitals or having breasts sliced off. Big pharma corporations win BIG from the transgenderism cult. All the while, simple mind/body movement remedies, such as Feldenkrais physical therapy or chiropractic acupressure, are right under our noses. Anxiety and stress disorders are not cured by pills, injections and surgeries. More details on this medical malpractice:
The Danish clinicians are now concerned that the basis for gender-transition of large numbers of minors with diverse presentations of gender dysphoria is a single short-term Dutch study based in a different population and which has failed replication outside the Netherlands. Throughout the article, the Danish clinicians describe their initially positive view of the Dutch research, and their now growing concern about the lack of applicability of the Dutch experience from years past to the current clinical realities in the rest of the Western world. They appear to be signaling a widening gap between the positive trends that the Dutch clinicians continue to report (youth with low rates of mental illness, low rates of detransition, and positive short-term transition outcomes), and the problems emerging in the rest of the Western world (much higher rates of comorbid mental illness, an inability to show robust and reliable improvements in mental health, and growing rates of detransition).
and
Another red flag is the high rate of psychiatric comorbidities in currently-presenting cases. The authors note that unlike the Netherlands, where gender dysphoric youth reportedly have a relatively low rate of psychiatric comorbidities (33%), in Denmark and other countries there is a much greater proportion of gender dysphoric youth with comorbid mental illness (e.g., 75% in Finland). These conditions include depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts/self-harm, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Speaking as a scientist, based on the number of retractions, there is a very serious problem with Dutch scientists falsifying data, supporting each other in mutual backscratching to get analysis approved that is mind-boggling nonsense.
My vote is they are making up data, cherry picking data they like, making up measurements that are unhinged from reality.
One can see something similar in a psychiatry/psychology cabal in the UK that had lied, and cheated to erase the reality of ME/CFS.
David Tuller has fought the ME/CFS battle for nearly 20 years. A voice crying in the wilderness, with eviscerating critiques that should result in mass firings and pulling their licenses to practice.
It seems to have caused the Danish researchers some concern. Why are the Dutch seeing a different cohort? (Could they have a different methodology for determining 'children suffering from gender dysphoria'?) And why are they only looking at the short term? What happens in the longer term?
The Dutch researchers, (DeVries, Martinius, et al) have conflicts of interest. First, there is a historic Dutch arrogance and superiority trait in the national personality, which goes back to their history of reclaiming the land from the sea 900 years ago, cementing their technical know-how. Second, that study was funded by the Ferring Pharma company, and we all know what happens if the results don't sell product. (Ferring does produce a gonadatrophin agonist similar to Lupron) You will find an interview with whistleblower Dutch journalists at YT channel, A Wider Lens. This study from 2014 was decidedly pro-puberty blocker, and only individuals who had not had previous mental health diagnoses or breakdowns were selected. They started out with N=70 and 15 dropped out, no explanation. There were 2 deaths, which were treated cavalierly by the researchers. One a suicide AFTER the medicalization and one death from sepsis after the section of intestine the surgeons tried to make into a tube to imitate a "vagina" became severely infected with e coli and the patient died within a couple of days. A study with N = 55 that had 2 deaths should immediately be scrapped. Recently these same researchers took 800k Euros to do follow up on this cohort. 50% were lost. Some of them now identify as a "furry" or "non-binary" instead of opposite sex from their natal sex. DeVries and Martinius, et al, shrugged their shoulders and called it "gender incongruence," claiming this is to be expected.
But they've legalized hard drugs and prostitution, so you could figure it out all by yourself. They were very efficient at giving the lists to the SS, as well. I do know some good people from there, like Mr. Menno, whose YT channel is brilliant.
True, but their following in the footsteps of the doctors who prescribed thalidomide and DES and the (neurosurgeons?) who did lobotomies on women with depression. It took years to get rid of that gross malpractice. Keep your spirits up, try out the Wellness Movement playlist at my channel, Trans Widow Ute Heggen, and get outside in nature. We are all mentors for the confused children.
Pharmaceutical companies are riding this trans wave, investing resources to align with it (example below), and will back away once the dangers (known already firsthand by families impacted) are fully exposed. Sadly, this has been made a political issue, when it really is a mental health issue worthy of valid research and therapy.
Yup. Here's another such report: "U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
The "first, do no harm" philosophy of medicine should be helping confused teens and adults to find the healthy neutral to live in through mind/body work, such as Feldenkrais physical therapy, chiropractic acupressure, Alexander body work and other movement systems, such as Wellness Movements playlist at my channel on youtube, called Trans Widow Ute Heggen. Cross-sex ideation is a psychiatric illness, falsely portrayed as a condition akin to diabetes. It often stems, as in my ex-husband's case, from childhood abuse and trauma, registered in the body as dissociation. The high HIV rates in "trans" individuals reveals the over-emphasis on sexual expression, the pornography addictions and the descent into prostitution as a life style. They're barking up all the wrong trees. It is sad, and a generation is essentially lost. Those who aren't lost are going to be taxed into poverty by the demands for the government to pay for plastic surgeries. Mass hysteria is another name for the movement.
Follow “The Science” = Follow the money. Name, shame, and punish all who hurt and kill patients like the Sacklers did. Fauci, Pfizer, Moderna for covid and Pritzker for trans are names who deserve to be exposed in the next documentaries: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-2
It's about the $...it's always about the $. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Add $ to that! Power and money NO MATTER what the issue will almost ALWAYS corrupt. (Should I drop the almost?)
1000% Agree! The Trans issue is the next "science based guidelines" and what's worse is that it's being targeted, not only from the medical side, but also from the education side as well:
Trans/gender ideology is like NXIVM but promoted at school - normalized,, medicalized, monetized, professionalized... None of it is scientific. It is medical experimentation on minors based on ideology (cult fundamentalist religion).
Steve Levine paper: Published: 14 April 2023
Current Concerns About Gender-Affirming Therapy in Adolescents
LovingMother...Brilliant! Gender ideology IS a cult that is brainwashing a generation of children. I follow Megyn Kelly's podcast (HIGHLY recommend) - in July she had Helen Joyce as her guest. Helen is the author of "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" and her interview contained many jaw-dropping moments about just how sick and dangerous this movement is.
Hi Sierra23, Abigail Shrier wrote "Gender Ideology is not a pendulum, and it will not swing back with a little help from inertia. Gender Ideology is a fundamentalist religion—intolerant, demanding strict adherence to doctrine, hell-bent on gathering proselytes. I do not here use the term “religion” metaphorically or lightly." https://www.thetruthfairy.info/p/little-miss-trouble
When Franklin, above, said "All of us practicing saw it. But we were silent. We saw this on the grounds first, and now it's just coming into the mainstream narrative." regarding the opioid epidemic I instantly thought of the GI epidemic - which is actually a cult ideology pushed via schools which then sets the kids up for medicalization. It also parallels:
Joyce just had another recent interview with Jordan Peterson worth listening to. You can get on Spotify or Daily Wire, it will probably be cancelled from YouTube.
For real Yuri. Watching Painkiller I couldn’t help but see numerous similarities to the trans “epidemic.” It seems like every day another of my son’s friends becomes trans. It’s creepy and disturbing and heartbreaking. Meanwhile I strategize tirelessly to keep my daughter in reality. But yeah--like lines of crushed oxy those parallels add up.
I lost my fiance during the first wave of lockdowns when she overdosed, alone. She was 29. I was in L.A. at the time, she in Atlanta. Isolated, lonely, and depressed after losing her job, she relapsed after 3 years clean. It's the reason I remain so bitter about the lockdown and quarantine policies imposed on us.
Beyond the numbing accountancy, the opioid epidemic has failed to impress itself onto America. Most people don't realize how badly our pandemic policies exacerbated drug overdoses. Before the pandemic hit, national efforts to stem the opioid crisis were just beginning to show progress. In January 2020, the CDC released 2018 data showing a slight decline in fatal overdoses for the first time in 28 years, a glimmer of hope that makes what followed all the more sad.
This is heartbreaking, Brad. I wish you never had to go through this… I am also still bitter about the lockdowns because it severely damaged my children and we are still struggling.
I so wish these lockdowns never happened and your fiancé were still around, with you and with many people who loved her.
Brad, I’m so sorry, although I know those words are not helpful. I too remain angry about lockdowns and other Covid policies. So many people tell me I should just let it go and move on. No! We have to raise our voices to make sure that this never happens again!
We can't let it go. Already, the little creeps are ready to descend on us with their rules, masks and lockdowns. Why? A certain election is coming down the pike. Never forget 2020.
Because those who do not suffer addiction think it is a choice to misuse whatever. And in the case of some addictions it is a choice to use at first. But the people addicted to opiods were lead to that addiction by the medical doctors they had turned to for help.
Brad, I am sorry for your loss! And your post highlights what has taken a backseat when discussing the ills of the pandemic policies. Policies shoved down our throats by “Big Brother Government”
So many people died (and died alone!) during the shutdown, and not just FROM COVID, but BECAUSE OF THE “Trust Science” BS rhetoric.
My longtime Dr., who is a very good friend, told me at dinner one evening that if I got COVID I was to call him immediately & “DO NOT go to the ER.” He, like so many other Drs., knew how to “successfully treat” the virus, but had to be discreet, else his privileges at the hospital be lost + same fear of his medical license to practice medicine.
"Most people don't realize how badly our pandemic policies exacerbated drug overdoses."
Isn't it ironic that the Times was one of the biggest pharma propagandists in not only promoting lockdowns, but castigating and censoring anyone who didn't "follow the science"?
So true. It always leaned left but after they purged Bennet (editor) and McNeil, their top Covid reporter, they really went off the rails. That's when I cancelled my subscription.
I'm have my Doctorate of Pharmacy. I was in the field at the time the opioid pandemicwas occurring. We all saw it. I personally, on my off days, went to Doctor's offices to tell them about the doses they were prescribing and how it needed to drop. They didn't stop. They were following the "guidelines."
All of us practicing saw it. But we were silent. We saw this on the grounds first, and now it's just coming into the mainstream narrative.
This is why I'm so vocal about the pandemic and the measures we took. Sure we were trusting the science, but what I learned from the first pandemic (the opioid pandemic) is that they're two sciences. There's the science that's hidden (aka this stuff is destroying homes), then there's the science that's the guidelines (trust the science)
We need to learn from the opioid pandemic and apply those same lessons to all pandemics. Here are a few articles I've written from the medical aspect of things:
Why we need Question the Science: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/how-trust-the-science-became-question
The Dark Side of Medicine: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/the-dark-side-of-medicine-see-no
What about the "uncontested science" about climate change?
Good for you for trying. I was personally affected by this epidemic from the patient side. I had injured my neck and my Dr would not approve an MRI. I was in serious pain. Ended up seeing several neurologists and each time I was given more narcotics and stronger ones. That was it. I finally got my PC to authorize an MRI by being really pissed off. Ended up w a herniated disc that required surgery. The worst part of this whole Sh show was when I no longer needed the pain meds, and lucky for me I couldn't wait to stop taking them, I went thru severe withdrawal. Not one dr. warned me of the addictive nature of this medicine. This happened back in 98/99. I got thru it, thank God but it wasn't easy.
Interesting to see how this article about the terrible Pharma bad actors got morphed into covid lockdowns and then stretched to transgender angst.
Speaking as someone who had (technically still have) a pharma company, the sociopaths from MBA programs have turned it into a system with scientists who are mostly working hard to do great things, against sociopaths for whom money is the only thing. Thos causes routine shutdown of firms with products that threaten cash cows. 💸 💰 🤑 💲 💵
Because it is the same pattern.
You've collided with a growing reality of the last 30 years: there's science (the real thing done by knowledgeable people who work at it hands-on every day) and then there's Official Science, shaped by needs of Authority and The Powers That Be.
It's devastating to compare the behavior of the Boomer generation, since the 1990s, and its addiction to appeals to authority and mystification and constant caving into "activists" -- the opposite of science -- to the war generation's scientists that you get a glimpse of in Oppenheimer. The latter understood that, while they had detailed and abstruse scientific knowledge that others lacked, they were not the Authorities. They respected the openness of science and the need to educate the politicians (the elected authorities) and general public as fellow citizens, about all things nuclear. (All of them were supporters of nuclear power, for example, because nuclear power is not nuclear weapons.) I knew a few of them, and they had a healthy anti-authoritarian streak. (See Feynman's famous "cargo cult science" commencement speech from the 1970s, a speech that would probably be canceled today.) The comparison nauseates me.
The new "ideal" is Fauci -- not a public health doctor (although he enjoys being wrongly labeled as such), rather a laboratory research scientist who long ago left behind scientific work to climb the bureaucratic ladder. (See Fauci's failed 1990s push for AIDS vaccines, helping to stall antiviral treatments that actually are effective.) Universities now are overwhelmingly dominated by the same administrative-bureaucratic types.
The problem started in the 1960s with the rise of television and chuckleheaded media. The first of these pseudo-experts was Paul R. Ehrlich and his 1968 book, The Population Explosion. Not a demographer, or a historian, or an economist, he knew nothing about the history of human population and how it relates to economic development. For decades afterward, experts had to constantly clear their throats to correct the fallacies that Ehrlich and others like him dropped on society. You still hear echoes of it today.
Yeah... "Following the guidelines..." Funny how that happened the last three years as well.
I trust you individual medical professionals, but not ONE institution.
I will never understand how medical doctors are the gatekeepers to controlled substances but are not trained therein. Nor apparently willing to regard the input of those who are.
Much like what happens with the Gender Affirmation and with Covid, doctors were swamped with recommendations and guidelines from so-called experts about how opioids could be used safely. Remember "Pain the 5th Vital Sign"? See below:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5878703/
Big Pharma provides the "training."
Trust us, we're Experts (TM).
This is when I need the puke emoji.
Hoping that someday similar miniseries and/or documentaries come out about Pfizer, PFauci, and the thousands of other credentialed criminals in and out of our government who perpetrated the COVID profiteering scheme that wrought havoc in the US and around the globe. I’m not optimistic that any will be served adequate or any justice at all. Those with the most money and power win in the end. So much for the “no one is above the law” bullshit the ‘above the law’ lie through their rotten teeth to us plebes about.
Would like to see the horrific trans scientific/medical community exposed for it’s corruption as well.
Franklin, thanks for sharing. I thought you might find this interesting. https://open.substack.com/pub/gibm/p/states-of-despair-how-does-your-state?r=7v0pb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Why do you not mention how Big Pharma starts recruiting 'relationships' with young doctors while they are still in school? The vacations, perks, parties and cash involved? That is a scandal and abomination of the practice of medicine that needs to end.
That's a thing of the past. That was changed years ago. Those things were fun but they never got me to prescribe a drug that was not appropriate . But some of the people whining about that have no problem getting wined and dined on their jobs. Only Doctors were taken to task . I found it insulting that a free meal would get me to change my prescribing habits. It never did.
That is admirable that you did not. At Purdue, the drug company that pushed Oxycontin, they were very successful in pushing "pill mills" and rewarded their top "pushers". But the reality of the "just give me a pill" mindset is easily seen across the American landscape and in the cost of "healthcare". Even if you did not succumb to a form of bribery, all doctors have succumbed to the "just subscribe a pill" mentality of health. At 60, I take nothing. Am in perfect health. It took years of eliminating foods from my diet and finding proper supplementation to deal with my chronic digestive problems and severe eczema. I use food to treat myself, along with the herbs and plants that keep people healthy. As to the "pill" mentality, the damage was still done in that the doctors I have seen, (many) do not appreciate the body's ability to heal itself through proper nutrition as much as they do the lazy man's way of just take a pill. I know it is a complicated issue, but there is a huge monetary incentive to keep people sick and the overall health of Americans certainly shows it.
It goes so much deeper than most are aware of. It’s not even remotely just pharma - it’s any company that sells anything in the industry. Med devices are huge $$$ but also equipment and diagnostics (lab tests) and services, all the way down to your companies that sell bandaids. I managed a division of sales reps for a diagnostics company for 12 years - you sponsor a client (but the receiving entity calls it philanthropy) and they serve as a “reference” to help you get more business. The sponsorship is not contingent on the promotion, legally it can’t be, but it happens that way.
We would educate the providers on how to use the product, how insurers were providing coverage (again you can’t tell them what to put as a diagnosis but they understand pretty quickly under what circumstances insurance will or will not cover something). If there were issues with coverage, we’d likely write it off. Happy patient = happy physician = retain the business. There were a bajillion little rules to follow between Stark law, Anti-kickback statutes, False Claims Act, etc but all of these practices can legally happen within those bounds.
I suspect without the capitalistic involvement of companies, healthcare would be even more expensive. The companies fund a lot of philanthropic activity, provider education, supplies and services for those who struggle to pay, etc. I alone had an annual 7 figure budget for philanthropic sponsorships of clients - hospital foundations, free community cancer screening events, indigent patient funds.
100% Have you heard of the Flexner Report? I JUST finished editing this piece in my book and will look to post in here on Substack soon.
Essentially, Medicine got a facelift due to $$$
While I was practicing at a clinic in the DHHS/ Indian Health Service, I was aggressively advised by our staff pharmacists to substitute Oxycontin long-acting for other short acting preparations because either they believed the Purdue propaganda or they were mandated at a higher level in the chain-of-command to enact this method of pain management. They justified it by repeating the same misguided information. That this was less likely to cause addiction and that the long-acting form of Oxycontin would not give our patients the "high" they were supposedly seeking with shorter acting drugs. Of course, just the opposite was true and this vulnerable population suffered terribly at the hands of our government health-care system, and the bad science and lies used by Purdue to negotiate contracts with them.
There was never any formal marketing saying oxycontin was less addictive. It was more effective because people with continuous pain only had to take a drug twice a day and the peaks and valleys of absorption were much smoother allowing for less pain. Again the problem was with people crushing the pills -stealing them from pharmacies or Grandma.
There were bad doctors running pill mills but most were caught. Nowadays people with severe intractable pain often suffer more because the rules made to protect from addiction only make it harder for legitimate pain patients to get relief. They have done little to lower death rates because it was never about legitimate prescriptions from experienced MDs it was about abusers and criminals that turned that drug into a killer.
The tort lawyers made a killing and Hollywood joined in to make more profit off of this. This doesn't diminish those who died from overdose but the situation was never due to proper prescribing of the drug.
Making people desperate for their next dose--which is exactly what Oxycontin's dosing schedule does--is the perfect way to induce addiction, even in people who are not normally inclined to become addicted. Purdue's local reps were instructed to tell doctors to give higher doses, not more frequent ones: another means of inducing addiction.
Right. It sends people into an addiction cycle *every time* a dose wears off. The LA Times had a really excellent story on the mechanism of addiction with Oxycontin - and the pill mills. It was a 3-parter about 6 years ago.
My brother was an early victim of the promiscuous use of opioid painkillers. He like so many of the victims came from a white working class background. To Big Pharma and their enablers at the NYT and in government this group was invisible to their elite circle of friends. This crisis from the beginning has disproportionately impacted white working class males. A class of people the Bushes, Clintons, Obama’s and Biden’s don’t give a rat’s ass about. It is 21st century class warfare.
I suspected there was something not quite right going on when it came out that Rush Limbaugh had become addicted to Oxycontin after back surgery. Addiction in such flamboyant personalities generally begins in youth if it's going to happen at all, not in late middle age.
Some of the scariest words spoken, "I was just following orders." Now, we can add, "I was just following the guidelines." Thank you for your insights.
Uh, huh. See: https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
I follow their work. Wild times. Thanks for sharing.
This is so similar to the "guidelines" of "affirmation" which a non-professional lobbying group comprised mostly of men who think they are women who additionally have a medical degree or therapy credentials, which is named WPATH, the "World Professional Association for Transgender Health." The doses of wrong sex hormones prescribed after one 40 minute appointment, for a confused and immature teenager are much, much too high. The actual risks of liver failure, stroke and heart attack in both sexes, if this pharma protocol is continued over years and decades simply grow. Oxy, of course, figures prominently in the "post-surgery" phase when these children have been groomed into mutilating their genitals or having breasts sliced off. Big pharma corporations win BIG from the transgenderism cult. All the while, simple mind/body movement remedies, such as Feldenkrais physical therapy or chiropractic acupressure, are right under our noses. Anxiety and stress disorders are not cured by pills, injections and surgeries. More details on this medical malpractice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3APYP-hqSc&t=1s
Have you read the latest to come out of Denmark? https://segm.org/Denmark-sharply-restricts-youth-gender-transitions
Namely:
The Danish clinicians are now concerned that the basis for gender-transition of large numbers of minors with diverse presentations of gender dysphoria is a single short-term Dutch study based in a different population and which has failed replication outside the Netherlands. Throughout the article, the Danish clinicians describe their initially positive view of the Dutch research, and their now growing concern about the lack of applicability of the Dutch experience from years past to the current clinical realities in the rest of the Western world. They appear to be signaling a widening gap between the positive trends that the Dutch clinicians continue to report (youth with low rates of mental illness, low rates of detransition, and positive short-term transition outcomes), and the problems emerging in the rest of the Western world (much higher rates of comorbid mental illness, an inability to show robust and reliable improvements in mental health, and growing rates of detransition).
and
Another red flag is the high rate of psychiatric comorbidities in currently-presenting cases. The authors note that unlike the Netherlands, where gender dysphoric youth reportedly have a relatively low rate of psychiatric comorbidities (33%), in Denmark and other countries there is a much greater proportion of gender dysphoric youth with comorbid mental illness (e.g., 75% in Finland). These conditions include depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts/self-harm, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
How are Dutch youth so different from all the other youth in the world?
Or are the Dutch researchers lying?
Speaking as a scientist, based on the number of retractions, there is a very serious problem with Dutch scientists falsifying data, supporting each other in mutual backscratching to get analysis approved that is mind-boggling nonsense.
My vote is they are making up data, cherry picking data they like, making up measurements that are unhinged from reality.
One can see something similar in a psychiatry/psychology cabal in the UK that had lied, and cheated to erase the reality of ME/CFS.
David Tuller has fought the ME/CFS battle for nearly 20 years. A voice crying in the wilderness, with eviscerating critiques that should result in mass firings and pulling their licenses to practice.
https://virology.ws/david-tuller-posts/
It seems to have caused the Danish researchers some concern. Why are the Dutch seeing a different cohort? (Could they have a different methodology for determining 'children suffering from gender dysphoria'?) And why are they only looking at the short term? What happens in the longer term?
Why not long term? Because short term, drugs can make anyone happy with anything.
The Dutch researchers, (DeVries, Martinius, et al) have conflicts of interest. First, there is a historic Dutch arrogance and superiority trait in the national personality, which goes back to their history of reclaiming the land from the sea 900 years ago, cementing their technical know-how. Second, that study was funded by the Ferring Pharma company, and we all know what happens if the results don't sell product. (Ferring does produce a gonadatrophin agonist similar to Lupron) You will find an interview with whistleblower Dutch journalists at YT channel, A Wider Lens. This study from 2014 was decidedly pro-puberty blocker, and only individuals who had not had previous mental health diagnoses or breakdowns were selected. They started out with N=70 and 15 dropped out, no explanation. There were 2 deaths, which were treated cavalierly by the researchers. One a suicide AFTER the medicalization and one death from sepsis after the section of intestine the surgeons tried to make into a tube to imitate a "vagina" became severely infected with e coli and the patient died within a couple of days. A study with N = 55 that had 2 deaths should immediately be scrapped. Recently these same researchers took 800k Euros to do follow up on this cohort. 50% were lost. Some of them now identify as a "furry" or "non-binary" instead of opposite sex from their natal sex. DeVries and Martinius, et al, shrugged their shoulders and called it "gender incongruence," claiming this is to be expected.
The Dutch have an efficient method of treating severe depression -they euthanize them.
But they've legalized hard drugs and prostitution, so you could figure it out all by yourself. They were very efficient at giving the lists to the SS, as well. I do know some good people from there, like Mr. Menno, whose YT channel is brilliant.
I can't believe how medical research is so broken and corrupted in both sides of the Atlantic
True, but their following in the footsteps of the doctors who prescribed thalidomide and DES and the (neurosurgeons?) who did lobotomies on women with depression. It took years to get rid of that gross malpractice. Keep your spirits up, try out the Wellness Movement playlist at my channel, Trans Widow Ute Heggen, and get outside in nature. We are all mentors for the confused children.
Yes, we had lobotomies and eugenics in the US https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
Thank you for that information, Ute!
Pharmaceutical companies are riding this trans wave, investing resources to align with it (example below), and will back away once the dangers (known already firsthand by families impacted) are fully exposed. Sadly, this has been made a political issue, when it really is a mental health issue worthy of valid research and therapy.
https://www.gilead.com/purpose/partnerships-and-community/transcend
Yup. Here's another such report: "U.S. Sex Reassignment Surgery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Gender Transition (Male To Female, Female To Male), And Segment Forecasts, 2022 - 2030"
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-sex-reassignment-surgery-market
Of course, it is difficult to expose the dangers when the media complex and medicine are all in with how it is "safe and effective".
The "first, do no harm" philosophy of medicine should be helping confused teens and adults to find the healthy neutral to live in through mind/body work, such as Feldenkrais physical therapy, chiropractic acupressure, Alexander body work and other movement systems, such as Wellness Movements playlist at my channel on youtube, called Trans Widow Ute Heggen. Cross-sex ideation is a psychiatric illness, falsely portrayed as a condition akin to diabetes. It often stems, as in my ex-husband's case, from childhood abuse and trauma, registered in the body as dissociation. The high HIV rates in "trans" individuals reveals the over-emphasis on sexual expression, the pornography addictions and the descent into prostitution as a life style. They're barking up all the wrong trees. It is sad, and a generation is essentially lost. Those who aren't lost are going to be taxed into poverty by the demands for the government to pay for plastic surgeries. Mass hysteria is another name for the movement.
But "do no harm" means "not making money".
1000% agree! If the public knew the power that LOBBYING has, they will see how lobbyist secretly shape the path of policies here in this country.
Speaking on the trans issue, here's an article on it:
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/elmo-and-a-rock
Follow “The Science” = Follow the money. Name, shame, and punish all who hurt and kill patients like the Sacklers did. Fauci, Pfizer, Moderna for covid and Pritzker for trans are names who deserve to be exposed in the next documentaries: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-2
And the “science” that kids indoctrinated into thinking they were born in the wrong body will commit suicide if not affirmed.
This cannot even be proven. So why do people believe it, or even that lockdowns “saved lives” -- also unprovable.
It's about the $...it's always about the $. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Add $ to that! Power and money NO MATTER what the issue will almost ALWAYS corrupt. (Should I drop the almost?)
1000% Agree! The Trans issue is the next "science based guidelines" and what's worse is that it's being targeted, not only from the medical side, but also from the education side as well:
https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/elmo-and-a-rock
Beware of "the experts" and "a consensus of scientists" agree.
Yes!!!
Trans/gender ideology is like NXIVM but promoted at school - normalized,, medicalized, monetized, professionalized... None of it is scientific. It is medical experimentation on minors based on ideology (cult fundamentalist religion).
Steve Levine paper: Published: 14 April 2023
Current Concerns About Gender-Affirming Therapy in Adolescents
Stephen B. Levine & E. Abbruzzese
https://archive.ph/zmi9z
LovingMother...Brilliant! Gender ideology IS a cult that is brainwashing a generation of children. I follow Megyn Kelly's podcast (HIGHLY recommend) - in July she had Helen Joyce as her guest. Helen is the author of "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" and her interview contained many jaw-dropping moments about just how sick and dangerous this movement is.
Hi Sierra23, Abigail Shrier wrote "Gender Ideology is not a pendulum, and it will not swing back with a little help from inertia. Gender Ideology is a fundamentalist religion—intolerant, demanding strict adherence to doctrine, hell-bent on gathering proselytes. I do not here use the term “religion” metaphorically or lightly." https://www.thetruthfairy.info/p/little-miss-trouble
Yes aboutJoyce and her new book.
Here's some data:
"Has the USA Sterilized 2+% of all 6-17 year olds?"
https://4w.pub/has-the-usa-sterilized-2-of-all-6-17-year-olds/
When Franklin, above, said "All of us practicing saw it. But we were silent. We saw this on the grounds first, and now it's just coming into the mainstream narrative." regarding the opioid epidemic I instantly thought of the GI epidemic - which is actually a cult ideology pushed via schools which then sets the kids up for medicalization. It also parallels:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
Joyce just had another recent interview with Jordan Peterson worth listening to. You can get on Spotify or Daily Wire, it will probably be cancelled from YouTube.
PSW...thank you. I will check it out.
For real Yuri. Watching Painkiller I couldn’t help but see numerous similarities to the trans “epidemic.” It seems like every day another of my son’s friends becomes trans. It’s creepy and disturbing and heartbreaking. Meanwhile I strategize tirelessly to keep my daughter in reality. But yeah--like lines of crushed oxy those parallels add up.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mrsmiller/p/lies-lies-lies-yeah?r=9q8wg&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I lost my fiance during the first wave of lockdowns when she overdosed, alone. She was 29. I was in L.A. at the time, she in Atlanta. Isolated, lonely, and depressed after losing her job, she relapsed after 3 years clean. It's the reason I remain so bitter about the lockdown and quarantine policies imposed on us.
https://www.euphoricrecall.net/p/a-sad-soul-can-kill-you-quicker-than
Beyond the numbing accountancy, the opioid epidemic has failed to impress itself onto America. Most people don't realize how badly our pandemic policies exacerbated drug overdoses. Before the pandemic hit, national efforts to stem the opioid crisis were just beginning to show progress. In January 2020, the CDC released 2018 data showing a slight decline in fatal overdoses for the first time in 28 years, a glimmer of hope that makes what followed all the more sad.
This is heartbreaking, Brad. I wish you never had to go through this… I am also still bitter about the lockdowns because it severely damaged my children and we are still struggling.
I so wish these lockdowns never happened and your fiancé were still around, with you and with many people who loved her.
Brad, I’m so sorry, although I know those words are not helpful. I too remain angry about lockdowns and other Covid policies. So many people tell me I should just let it go and move on. No! We have to raise our voices to make sure that this never happens again!
Me too. I can’t just let it go! It dismantled my daughters life!
We can't let it go. Already, the little creeps are ready to descend on us with their rules, masks and lockdowns. Why? A certain election is coming down the pike. Never forget 2020.
Because those who do not suffer addiction think it is a choice to misuse whatever. And in the case of some addictions it is a choice to use at first. But the people addicted to opiods were lead to that addiction by the medical doctors they had turned to for help.
Brad, I am sorry for your loss! And your post highlights what has taken a backseat when discussing the ills of the pandemic policies. Policies shoved down our throats by “Big Brother Government”
So many people died (and died alone!) during the shutdown, and not just FROM COVID, but BECAUSE OF THE “Trust Science” BS rhetoric.
My longtime Dr., who is a very good friend, told me at dinner one evening that if I got COVID I was to call him immediately & “DO NOT go to the ER.” He, like so many other Drs., knew how to “successfully treat” the virus, but had to be discreet, else his privileges at the hospital be lost + same fear of his medical license to practice medicine.
"Most people don't realize how badly our pandemic policies exacerbated drug overdoses."
Isn't it ironic that the Times was one of the biggest pharma propagandists in not only promoting lockdowns, but castigating and censoring anyone who didn't "follow the science"?
The Times isn't what it was in 2001.
The Times isn't what it was in 1931. :)
So true. It always leaned left but after they purged Bennet (editor) and McNeil, their top Covid reporter, they really went off the rails. That's when I cancelled my subscription.
Timothy, you are correct!
Dr. Drew Pinsky worked through the Opiod crisis and said the same thing. He says he saw the exact same thing through COVID.