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OxyContin Billionaire Patents Drug To Treat Opioid Addiction (cbsnews.com)
Richard Sackler, the billionaire businessman behind Purdue Pharma, has patented a new drug to help treat opioid addiction (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The news of the patented form of buprenorphine, a mild opioid that is used to ease withdrawal symptoms, comes as Colorado's attorney general is suing the OxyContin creator for profiting from opioid addictions. Some now believe that Sackler and his family, who owns Purdue Pharma, will be trying to profit from the antidote. The Washington Post reports: The lawsuit claims Purdue Pharma L.P. and Purdue Pharma Inc. deluded doctors and patients in Colorado about the potential for addiction with prescription opioids and continued to push the drugs. And it comes amid news that the company's former chairman and president, Richard Sackler, has patented a new drug to help wean addicts from opioids. "Purdue's habit-forming medications coupled with their reckless marketing have robbed children of their parents, families of their sons and daughters, and destroyed the lives of our friends, neighbors, and co-workers," Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman said Thursday in a statement. "While no amount of money can bring back loved ones, it can compensate for the enormous costs brought about by Purdue's intentional misconduct."
The lawsuit states that Purdue Pharma "downplayed the risk of addiction associated with opioids," "exaggerated the benefits" and "advised health care professionals that they were violating their Hippocratic Oath and failing their patients unless they treated pain symptoms with opioids," according to the statement from the Colorado attorney general's office. But Purdue Pharma "vigorously" denied the accusations Friday in a statement to The Washington Post, saying that although it shares "the state's concern about the opioid crisis," it did not mislead health-care providers about prescription opioids. "The state claims Purdue acted improperly by communicating with prescribers about scientific and medical information that FDA has expressly considered and continues to approve," a spokesman for Purdue Pharma said in the statement. "We believe it is inappropriate for the state to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA." The report makes note of the patent's description, which acknowledges the risk of addiction associated with opioids and states that the drug could be used both in drug replacement therapy and pain management.
The lawsuit states that Purdue Pharma "downplayed the risk of addiction associated with opioids," "exaggerated the benefits" and "advised health care professionals that they were violating their Hippocratic Oath and failing their patients unless they treated pain symptoms with opioids," according to the statement from the Colorado attorney general's office. But Purdue Pharma "vigorously" denied the accusations Friday in a statement to The Washington Post, saying that although it shares "the state's concern about the opioid crisis," it did not mislead health-care providers about prescription opioids. "The state claims Purdue acted improperly by communicating with prescribers about scientific and medical information that FDA has expressly considered and continues to approve," a spokesman for Purdue Pharma said in the statement. "We believe it is inappropriate for the state to substitute its judgment for the judgment of the regulatory, scientific and medical experts at FDA." The report makes note of the patent's description, which acknowledges the risk of addiction associated with opioids and states that the drug could be used both in drug replacement therapy and pain management.
If you are a multi-billion drug lord, you are called "big pharma". If after a while your product (Heroin, Cocaine etc) is banned, you switch to something else and the "evil" drug lords that are not big enough to be called "big pharma" take over those products.
Getting rich by both getting your users addicted and also selling them treatment is a further step in this theatre of the absurd we live in...
After a relatively serious motorcycle accident (36 years ago, it's all good since...), I received a prescription for percodan. I resisted the temptation to try it for a while, but one night I caved and took the pill.
*Never Again.*
I don't know whether it was a reaction to the drug, or a small taste of withdrawal. But every cubic millimeter of my body was uncontrollably itchy, for about a day and a half. EVERYTHING was itchy. Inside and out.
Pain is nothing compared to that experience.
That said... A guy making billions peddling that shit, then patenting a drug to treat the consequences of having taken the original known-addicting drug is magically, cosmically evil.
Some bullshit slashdot commenter talking about "personal responsibility" is almost as evil. I remember the Scientific American article written about opioids back in the '90's, in which the authors declared that opioids are not really addictive for patients in real pain. I don't remember whether there were any disclaimers. Now we know they were lying. Now we know that these "trusted sources" with money to be made were fucking over their customers.
And now we have shitheads commenting with such glibness about personal responsibility. To which I reply: Piss off boy. If you are lucky enough never to have experienced it, or possibly lucky enough to have experienced it and gotten past it, that's all fine. You are the exception. But that does not give you the privilege of dismissing the effects of such executive lying on other people who for one reason or another fell victim to the Royal Scam.
He'll solve the opioid problem. It really won't be that hard. He's got some great ideas on how to solve it, very great. He's got the best people working on it, very good people. And Mexico will pay for it, believe me.
One of the problems with modern capitalism is we have removed all responsibility from the equation. This mother fucker, and mother fuckers like him, can line their pockets at the expense of the health of people. This mother fucker should be sitting in a prison cell some where. But instead he gets to hide behind a corporation and count his money.
The capitalist system is the best economic system we have come up with. But we have freed to many people from responsibility of their actions.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
That's where the third pill comes in....
After a recent operation the first thing they did in the recovery room is shoot me full of opioids and I'm in commie Europe. When I went home I got a small number of oxycodone tablets for if things went off the deep end and the NSAIDs became useless (as they tend to do for serious pain). What's supposed to be the alternative?
After a recent operation the first thing they did in the recovery room is shoot me full of opioids and I'm in commie Europe. When I went home I got a small number of oxycodone tablets for if things went off the deep end and the NSAIDs became useless (as they tend to do for serious pain). What's supposed to be the alternative?
CBD. Cannabidiol. People primarily associate marijuana with THC, which is the euphoria-inducing drug, but the other piece of marijuana is CBD, which is one, if not the most effective and non-addictive painkiller available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's where medical marijuana is finding its niche. People who need pain relief get CBD; you can get patches, ointments, tinctures, sublingual drops, pills, or vape pens. People who want to replicate opiods get CBD with a bit of THC. People with panic attacks, PTSD, mental disorders, etc get THC. The ratio of the chemical formulation provided depends on your symptoms.
Its no surprise that anti-marijuana research and lobbying is primarily funded by big pharma - its competition.
"The structure you describe discourages risk-taking & disruption, and encourages groupthink. History has taught us that the engine of progress is decentralized innovation."
Exactly the opposite. Big pharma is anything but decentralized. Big pharma is also failing to produce anything earthshattering and new that revolutionizes medicine. Stop and think about it, how many miracle drugs have you seen in the last 30 years? Not new surgeries or cancer busting treatments but actual medications? Not many. For the most part you see new drugs that are minor variations on old drugs so the patents are new and doctors given heavy incentives to prescribe them. If we tried a new structure existing medications wouldn't disappear and it is unlikely to do worse. There is actually more medical innovation coming out of Europe than the US these days and they are completely socialized.
This would allow anyone with the qualification to do so to individually jump right in and develop drugs which will hit the market at rates we pay for generics now. You don't need a handful of people to have a chance of winning the lottery to motivate, a top 1% salary is plenty of economic motivation to go into the field and everyone, wealthy or not, has a shared interest in offering that incentive.
"Capitalism isn't necessarily the only way to get there, but it's an extremely powerful way to harness human greed & status-seeking behavior. It's foolish to disregard that."
Big Pharma isn't capitalism at all, it is exactly the opposite. People are right to not want government controlled healthcare because our government will do a terrible job of it. But it is also true that market economics work poorly for healthcare and research. There is no real limit to what you can squeeze from a person for good health and there is a greater profit to be made if you can make someone continue to pay for treatment rather than cure them.
When it comes to the health of citizens that is unacceptable and a non-profit (although there is nothing to say there can't be more than one to compete) run by actual experts solves both problems, the staff will be well compensated for the work they are doing but also will have to convince their peers they are in fact doing valuable work and progressing medicine without any attempt to halt and maximize the monetary benefit of a discovered medication before going on to the next beyond the minimum necessary to break even. By taking funds from the fed tap, it's a loan, there is still interest to be paid back and so still pressure and that interest varies with the economic state of the country we will just be investing these funds into medical progress rather than banks. And of course we will still be privatizing the production, distribution, and sales of the drugs produced with FDA control only on quality and purity to make sure nobody is cheating or ignorantly producing poison.
This has an excellent side effect. You'll certainly want to see your doctor to figure out which medication you should take or if you should be taking any at all but it will eliminate 90% of the repeat visits which are just to get a new prescription you already know you need. This frees up doctors offices to treat more patients and/or provide more attention and care to those they see.
It's very simple, human greed in medicine conflicts with the interest of every other human when it comes to producing medication. Status-seeking behavior and wealth is only one form of status, you can seek status in a non-profit environment. On the other hand, so long as you have controls that prevent cheating, human greed can work just fine on production and distribution where for-profit competitors all have access to the same medications and compete for the profits to be had on manufacturing them and getting them into the hands of those who need them. Small company? Great, make your profits on the medications needed by a smaller number of people that are going to be higher cost. Big company? Great, use your ability to invest in mass prod