According to a recent report by the Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis, “more than 600,000 people in the USA and Canada have died from opioid overdose since 1999, and a staggering 1.2 million more are estimated to die …
Category: Meds
How Enhanced Recovery After Surgery solves our opioid problems
In retrospect, we were an addicted nation waiting to happen. Not from a self-indulgent culture, not from an unwillingness to suffer hardship, nor any of the generational criticisms of lack of grit. Our opioid crisis derives from an impatient culture th…
Topoisomerase inhibitors and chronic pain
Topoisomerase inhibitors emerged in the American medical landscape in 1971, thanks to the discovery by Dr. Jim Wang of the E. coli omega protein. Topoisomerase I, an enzyme identified by Dr. Wang, plays a crucial role in DNA unwrapping from supercoilin…
Off-label prescriptions, side effects, and lawsuits: Navigating ethical and legal dilemmas
A recent TV advertisement attempted to recruit clients for a class action suit against a pharmaceutical manufacturer (PM) for a medication side effect (SE). The “cause of action” was unstated: was it the side effect’s existence or tha…
DEA overreach: a threat to doctors’ freedom in American medicine
Today, doctors’ liberty and property are at risk when they choose to treat a patient. Not because of some new law but because of the misapplication of old ones. The current opioid panic has essentially given the DEA free rein to target any physic…
The opioid crisis: profits, lawsuits, and pharmaceutical influence
The absolute belief in a vast conspiracy is often associated with an unbalanced mind. People suffering from some forms of mental illness are prone to these beliefs, seeing the invisible hand of the CIA behind the music choices on their radio stations. …
Where do they come up with all those goofy names for prescription drugs, anyway?
An excerpt from Pills, Shills, and the Psychiatry Wars: Musings from the Drug Safety & Healthcare News Blog. I was spreading pine straw around the bushes in my yard in Atlanta, Georgia, when I started thinking about … you guessed it! The goof…
Beyond opioids: a new hope for chronic pain relief
Opioids work through the mu opiate receptors throughout the body and brain, dampening pain signals being sent through the peripheral nervous system and spinal cord. It also acts on the ventral tegmental area, causing the release of dopamine in the nucl…
The unseen battle: America’s veterans and the crisis of chronic pain
Since the Civil War, there have been seventy-four wars and conflicts America has fought in. But as bad as previous wars had been, there has never been anything in American history like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. While America’s direct interve…
Can we finally say goodbye to opioids? There may be new pain relief on the horizon.
In an article I recently wrote about a new calcium channel-blocking medication that could be effective in treating central chronic pain, I mentioned that medications like lidocaine block sodium channels to prevent the transmission of pain through the p…
