LogFAQs > #884394621

Peace___Frog posted...

Nelson_Mandela posted...

Peace___Frog posted...

Thanks for the explanation.


I suspect there are a lot of root causes of the epidemic, and I'm in favor of curbing use of opiods in hospital settings as well as going after drug companies that oversell their shit. I don't pretend to have all the solutions, but doing nothing is only going to make things worse. I also support treating the users with some sympathy and providing law enforcement with that antidote thing I've heard about but can't remember the name of.

This is the one area where "big pharma" has been pretty unforgivable recently. There's definitely malfeasance going on there, but it's also important to remember that many doctors are total scumbags/idiots and need to be held accountable too.

Oh I agree. Doctors, for all their reverence, are incredibly corrupt when it comes to suggesting medicines to their patients. It makes sense because there's no way for a human to be aware of every single remedy and weigh the pros and cons. But this kind of epidemic doesn't just happen.

I'd argue that epidemic is a result more of societal issues than availability. That same feeling of hopelessness that Trump was able to feed into when dismantling the Republican field is the exact same thing fueling the epidemic. This epidemic is especially bad in rural white America, and has gotten so bad the life expectancy of white Americans has actually been dropping in recent years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/health/life-expectancy-decline-mortality.html

Dr. Arias, who is preparing a larger study of mortality trends over the past 15 years, said drug overdoses, liver disease and suicide were the main drivers of the gloomy trends among whites in recent years, a pattern also found by other researchers.

Obviously there are things we can and should do to help curb the opioid epidemic, but if Trump doesn't also address the underlying issue the bigger problem here isn't going to change. Opioids are abused because of ease of access, and if you cut them off then the population susceptible to their abuse is going to switch to other means to dull their pain. "Deaths of desperation" isn't going to go down as a whole I would guess - you would see fewer drug overdoses but an increase in suicide and liver disease. The opioid epidemic is a symptom of the problem, and not the problem itself.

Also, pain is notoriously difficult to manage and diagnose. Big Pharma is obviously pushing this too hard, but it isn't as if the doctors and big Pharma are addressing an imaginary problem. It isn't always obvious if a patient has drug seeking behavior, and while doctors have signs they are supposed to look for, most people who do this sort of thing ALSO know what doctors are looking for and can lie around it. There isn't an easy test you can hook someone up to and go "oh you have nine pain units - that's bad". There are plenty of problems with the relationship between doctors and drug manufacturers, but it isn't as if a big portion of a doctor's income is coming from those sweet sweet fentanyl profits. I believe "scumbag doctors" aren't the main driving force here, and a bigger problem in the industry are doctors suggesting too many tests (MRI, X-ray, etc) that aren't needed instead of giving away too many drugs.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."