Experts: Untreated pain as serious a problem drug abuse. By Tristan Scott of the Missoulian. With the specter of prescription drug abuse looming large, health care workers stressed Friday that untreated pain in Montana is a public health crisis commensurate to that of addiction.
The article well describes the public health chaos this is the predictable consequence of clinical and public health authorities abandoning their real mission to uphold the medical standard of care for their citizenry, and instead focusing exclusively on the policeman’s agenda which prioritizes ‘catching a few addicts’ over providing adequate pain management for legions of innocent patients.
Excerpt: “As usual, the academics ignore the elephant in the living room. Regarding review articles that wring their hands about the lack of long term evidence of the safety and efficacy of opioid analgesic therapy, they never discuss the impossibility of measuring the efficacy and safety of a therapy that almost no physician is comfortable doing properly. For an excellent analysis of what we might call the “new academic opiophobia,” see the Pain Relief Network’s 2008 “WA State Tort Claim” pages 34 – 37.”
***Pain Relief Network files State Tort Claim vs. WA State***; Laura Cooper, Esq.; [Pain Relief Network][prn]; 2008/07/08. [**Full text PDF**] **Permalink:** http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/archive/prn-tort-claim-vs-wa/ **See also:** [**PRN Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, and Damages**][d1] – 2008 and, [**WA's Interagency Guideline on Opioid Dosing for Non-Cancer Pain**][d2] – 2007 —- SUMMARY: Nature of Relief Sought: This lawsuit is the result of grossly misinformed prejudices about opioid(1) pain medications held by high-level Washington public health officials. Those prejudices are identified in medical literature …
Excellent article by Dr. Forest Tennant explaining and demystifying chronic opioid therapy for chronic pain.
Blog entry about the distortion of medical ethics and of medical practice of pain management using opioid therapy by drug war imperatives on physicians to value catching drug abusers over providing compassionate and rational medical care to their patients.
Blog post about a Letter to the Editor (LTE) to an Alabama paper entitled, ‘Answer to methadone is God’. Begins, “What is interesting about the LTE reprinted in full below, is that the writer, a nurse, is describing behavior that any reasonable person can imagine, and would excuse, a chronically undermedicated person with severe chronic pain for displaying. [...]”
Newspaper article focusing on Siobhan Reynolds, founder and President of the Pain Relief Network (PRN) and her life experience of trying to get decent medical care for a husband in chronic pain, while raising a child and founding a movement for social change – the Pain Relief advocacy movement.
Editorial from the Washington Times about DEA’s war on doctors and the pain crisis in America that has resulted in the casual and routine undertreatment of moderate to severe chronic pain. Article focuses on the tragic story of James Fernandez, a combat disabled vet of the first Gulf War.
Wow. “Drug addiction” must be as bad as being “gassed at Aushwitz, slaughtered in Armenia, raped in Rwanda.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. It. Isn’t. Oh how we love to dramatize “addiction.” Everybody is an expert – and exactly to that extent the word and concept have become meaningless. Which doesn’t stop drug war prosecutors putting juries with no medical training in the position of deciding life and death, literally, on the basis of a distinction not even medical experts can make with assurance: the difference between a ‘drug seeker’ and a ‘pain patient.’
Excerpt: “Veterans in chronic pain average less than 4 Percosets a day from the compassionate care-givers of the Veterans Administration… [Such low-potency opioids] are indicated for mild to moderate acute pain, not chronic moderate to severe persistent pain… Oxycodone is a short acting opioid in this preparation, with an effective duration of action of about three hours. One pill every six hours of oxycodone/acetaminophen for chronic pain guarantees that the patient will be in unacceptable pain 50 percent of the time, at best. That’s not treatment, it’s under-treatment; it could not possibly be adequate.”
Impressions of the re-trial of Dr. William Hurwitz by Dr. Alexander DeLuca who witnessed the courtroom proceedings of 2007-04-17, as the trial drew to a close. Excerpt: “Still I was struck, as I always am observing war on docs prosecutions, at how tilted the playing field is, at how much more difficult the defense’s task is. The defense must convince a jury of medical lay people that complicated medical decisions made in very complicated cases were reasonable and well-intended; the prosecution need only sling mud. The former task requires the judge and jury have a medical student level understanding of …
18 Apr 2007 |
No Relief in Sight (full text plus Related References) – by Jacob Sullum, Senior Editor of Reason Magazine, 1997. Source. ‘Brief Note’ added: 2009-07-14. **Brief Note:** A true classic in the annals of the pain crisis in America. This article, as much as any other one thing I can think of, altered my life from practicing physician to practicing pain relief advocate. I am also a big fan of Mr. Sullum’s 2004 book, *Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use*. ..alex… “Torture, despair, agony, and …
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