The criminal investigation into Matthew Perry's death shows (again) the profound corruption of American medicine - particularly the part of it that prescribes and promotes addictive drugs.
As a physician and surgeon I will tell you this. Two groups of people get the worst healthcare in America. The very poor and the very Rich. The poor because they lack access, the rich because they can get whatever they want.
Why continue to spread the myth? The poorest 20% ( 75 million) get Medicaid. They don't pay a penny- not even a bandaid or Tylenol. Completely free. Guaranteed access to any and all hospitals, guaranteed access to all the hospital staff. Sure a lot of docs do not want to see Medicaid patients in their offices - who does qt $9/ visit in many states?
And that is precisely what they want to force on all of us.
When I go to the grocery store and observe other people it appears to me the poor eat themselves into bad health. I see many riding carts with bloated bodies hanging over the edge of the carts. Makes me avoid the candy and soda aisle and head for the veggies.
You are correct, so-called Medicare for All is actually Medicaid. And when Ms. Harris is elected, it will come to pass. And our "healthcare" system will become worse, if that is possible.
You mean as bad as Canada? Where if they don’t want or allow you to be treated, the government tells you to go hame and die by legally sanctioned suicide.
Yes. All private hospitals that accepted government funds for construction have to participate in Medicaid. The Mayo Clinic in Arizona does not accept even Medicare for primary care but that is office-based and not a hospital.
I so agree. There is another angle. My parents now passed, were not rich but had the best federal life insurance around and used it to doctor shop for those who would test, retest, and prescribe for every ache. No doctor I know of tried to actually reduce their drug intake. But the good doctors did find a way to increase usage by prescribing drugs to counteract drugs, and keep those clinic visits going.
Watch the Tucker interview of Casey & Calley Means on how the food industry ( owned by & large by big tobacco) along with pharma ( who funds & owns the medical schools & establishment ) keeps Americans sick & fat. Sure people need to take responsibility for their health, but I’ve come to believe that a lot of the obesity & sickness across all demographics is caused by these corporations that stuff our food products with literal poison that creates an addiction to certain types of “ food”. A lot of what is allowed to be called food in America is not allowed in Europe & even Africa. The corrupt greedy agencies charged with overseeing the health ( food wise & drug wise) of Americans need to be completely shut down. Go from there.
VERY good point to add! Hopefully more and more people will revise how they choose to buy and eat. The more local shopping the better. Knowing local farmers who sell product and CSA's are growing in popularity, yet so many still stay creatures of habit and enable the corrupt psychopathic entities you mention. As for the SWAMP holding the corrupt entities accountable...I will believe it when I see it.
This is a bunch of baloney. I can’t get whatever I want and you would probably call us Rich because our cars are paid for our houses paid for we have a second income property. We don’t have to worry about healthcare, even though sometimes it really adds up and cost so much we can’t do things we normally could have that year whether it’s donate or travel to see our parents more than once… None of our physicians give us whatever we want. That’s ridiculous but when you travel in the circles of Hollywood and I’ve worked in Hollywood, you can always find a scumbag doctor. Sorry that’s just who they are because no decent physician would ever give anybody no matter how rich or how powerful they are what they want
Don’t forget anyone on Medicare. My aunt was so stuffed full of drugs, she didn’t know where she was. Of course if you questioned her, “well my doctor prescribed the medicine.” One of the meds was Methadone.
The WW2 generation and a generation of Marcus Welby MD thereafter indoctrinated SO many minds on the WHITE coat worship. Pharma was quite savvy in getting people to BUY into it all. An unfortunate reality and irony since so many people were far more independent generations past yet minds so dependent or co-dependent in the ways of western medicine
Interesting comments for sure. The issue with the very rich is that they dont take good advice and seek their own solutions which at times are not indicated or safe. A week of hip discomfort - hip replacement. Sore back after the Mercedes gets bumped, MRI and back surgery. Moderate coronary artery disease that could be managed medically, stents and surgery. Happens all the time.
Hard to stomach- but very glad you wrote this. Thank you for your stance on pot, speed, opiates and other drugs in general. I know this brings you criticism and hate, but the info needs to be published.
Exactly.. when I feel down I try to do something.. cook for others, donate to the pet shelter, weed the darn yard ugh, call an older relative, send a card to a sadder pal.. Instagram has ruined the USA mindset so I deleted it!!! Halfway to better mental health!lol
I agree. It's a little-known fact, but getting down in the dirt exposes you to an infinite number of breathed-in micro-organisms that produce a high similar to endorphins.
Yes, I told a few people that watching these commercials for drugs gives you the impression how much fun they have . Then, I go wow, what am I missing , you have this or that disease , take this drug & life is super great with travel etc. Healthy people lead boring lives, sickly people have great fun filled lives...with this or that drug is the message.
Good Energy by Casey and Calley Means (siblings with Stanford and HBS pedigrees) blow the whistle on the complex nightmare which is the American Medical Cartel. It will get worse. Needs to be entirely dismantled, starting with all Rockefellers and Gates related enterprises. Enough
I saw their interview with Tucker Carlson. The biggest shocker to me was that when cigarettes were found to cause cancer and other health problems, the tobacco companies bought food companies. They used the same business model as they did for cigarettes, alter the ingredients in processed foods to make them addictive. Much of what is found in processed foods is created in the lab, artificial flavoring, high fructose corn syrup, sugar substitutes, and all kinds of preservatives. These companies also fund studies by universities to "find" that their products are perfectly safe.
35 years of experience here as a general internist - primary care provider.
First of all -
When I was in training and then the first 10 years or so of my career, we were trained to give opiates to patients in only 3 situations -
1) Dying patients - especially those with cancer
2) Immediate care post trauma - like car accidents
3) Immediate care post surgical - for surgical pain. That would also include a few doses of opiates for those in the ER in agony from appendicitis or whatever who would soon be going to the ER.
That was it - THE END. And I mean The End.
And then along came the late 1990s. If a patient even said they hurt just a little bit - we were encouraged to dose them up with opiates to the max. Not just encouraged - pain became the 5th vital sign - and if you did not treat it you could face sanctions, etc. At the same time, the benzo overprescribing became a national epidemic. It had been a bit of a problem with housewives in the 70s - but in the late 90s - it just exploded. The main impetus for this seemed to me to be the introduction of drugs like Ambien. Big Pharma was all over the airwaves extolling the virtues of meds like OxyContin and Ambien and Lunesta.
So now fast forward 25 years - and I am dealing with all kinds of patients who are on all kinds of meds - given to them by specialists just wanting to get them out of the office. When they invariably get hooked - “Oh, go see your PCP - they will take care of you.” I am absolutely swamped by patients addicted to all manner of these agents - often 2-4 at a time. Almost always on all kinds of other meds - like SSRIs, Abilify, seizure meds like Lamictal, etc. I am horribly equipped in my office ( and I would dare say most PCPs across the country are the same) and I was NEVER EVER trained as a general internist to deal with this problem at this magnitude. There is literally no help from psychiatry - and sending them to pain management physicians for the most part is like sending them to Dr. Feel good. I feel trapped and out of my league constantly all day - there is simply no way to begin to deal with this - and the PCPs of America literally have no help at all.
It is a national tragedy and a national disgrace. I have personally witnessed countless lives and families being trashed before my eyes. It burns me up to see doctors like you describe here making profit on this tragedy.
The medical paradigm is that pain is what the patient says it is. If he says he has severe pain, then he has severe pain and the opiate protocol kicks in.
I’m sorry, however, addicts die every day from lethal doses sold to them by dealer & NOT A PEEP. No dead addict’s dealers are ever found or held accountable.
Matthew Perry is not special.
Yes, we already know majority of doctors are SELL OUTS. You just need to look at the childhood vaccine schedule.
Doctors take an oath-dealers do not. There's a difference. Furthermore, dealers and even those doing drugs with someone who ODs have faced trial and been convicted.
Alex - you might want to do a similar story on over use of cancer diagnostics. For example a recent editorial in Journal of Internal medicine stated that colonoscopies (which are not done in EU) cost tens of billions and have not been shown to reduce all cause mortality (they do reduce colon deaths though, but so do other less costly diagnostics). Anyways, cancer "prevention" on net *can* do more harm than good by over treating patients and killing their quality of life. Just a thought... some people think it's another big-pharma racket (I'm not saying that, but think it's worth looking at)
Colonoscopies are a bad example. It is a once-every-five-years test for those over 50 who have a family history of colon cancer. I will be having my third one next year. The first two did not do any harm. They did not affect my quality of life at all. Who would write such a thing in the Journal of Internal Medicine, unless they were an advocate of a health insurance company?
Read Dr. Vijay Prasad about colonoscopies. You’re lucky nothing bad happened to you, but that doesn’t mean they are worth it. They can and do cause harm and are not necessary in many cases.
I seem to remember something recently about new thinking about stuffing tubes up people’s rumps - there are risks (perforations) and after a certain age the risk-reward curve got skewed. For people with a family history, a personal history, different set of facts.
Correct. I had the first on at age 66'; they found 12 polyps, and have had them every two years since. They continue to find polyps, but not as many. I have no family history. Shop carefully for your provider. The dangers are perforations AND infection. Too many providers really don't know how to perform the procedure and/or properly clean and disinfect the equipment.
Are you OK? Are you kidding me for those of us who have colon cancer in the family or have issues with our colon finding those pre-cancerous polyps is a godsend what you wrote is irresponsible and ridiculous.
What is “irresponsible and ridiculous” about stating the findings of the latest research? People are not even allowed to discuss it or look into it? Now THAT would be irresponsible.
first off, I did not write the editorial. second, I believe the author was referring to testing in the general population - those over 45 but with no family history which is the current recommendation... his point, supported by some data, is that net is too wide and causing some unintended harm...
So much corruption in the medical field. Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Cally & Casey Means goes in to the details of the biggest problem with doctors and the FDA - the food we eat. They explain why our health in the USA is going down hill along with our life expectancy,
This kind of doctoral behavior has been happening for decades but usually in isolated situations. However, with the Covid pandemic, the butchering of adolescents thinking they should be the opposite sex and the partnerships with the pharma companies, sadly there is zero faith in our medical industry.
Thankfully, access to the Internet can help anyone and everyone to double and triple check what can be done for each individual and whatever physical or mental problems that occur.
You may be joking or being sarcastic/satirical/?? But I’ve seriously made the same point:
Why the big push to legalize weed and decriminalize others; why isn’t there a bigger push to go after the fentanyl problem, the source (if not ChaiNah, at least end the "middlemen closer to home). There is no use for these drugs outside of a medical facility other than to kill - go after these purveyors of death for homicides they cause. {Oops, that was a tangent}
Anyway, I agree, if people are stoned, mentally impaired and "need the gummint " then they’ll be more likely to vote for the party of death, democrats.
ChaiNah Love it. The media found that word to be xenophobic but I chuckle every time he says it. Democrats have no desire to stop fentanyl coming into the country. So it kills people, big deal. The people dying are mostly those Walmart people they hate anyway. Like you said, mentally impaired people are dependent on the government and will vote for Democrats forever. Folks who love freebies will too. I see many 60-80 somethings who love what the government gives them. The covid shot is free! Yay! The flu shot is free! Bless the government for helping seniors. I've told people countless times that nothing the government gives us is free. I have to explain that the government does not have any money of its own, it's simply using taxpayer dollars to pay for every "freebie".
I'm an 84-year old former cowgirl/horse ranch owner, whose only medication (thank you Lord Jesus), is eye drops for my glaucoma. I refused to take the vaccines and lost touch with my son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons plus all my fair- weather friends during Covid. I take what my doctor says about prescriptions with a smile and a 'no thanks.' He's young and probably got his medical degree from places like Harvard and we know what they teach!
My close friends are not pill takers either. My son and I are more-or-less close again. (Again, thank you Lord Jesus.)
Keep telling people about the 'not-ever-free-help' from the government. Some will get it eventually. Hopefully before November 5th.
Here in Oregon, where Measure 110 unleashed holy hell on our streets, our naive and corrupt pols are tinkering with psychedlics, psilocybin as the gateway with LSD etc soon to follow. The state will license people administering the magic mushrooms--but freelancers are already busy with unsanctioned 'shroom parties.
The legislature, controlled by progressive radical Democrats, broke their arms "rolling back" 110 (under pressure from voters, who have notoriously short attention spans); in real life, this means that Portland will spend over a $-million on a "diversion" center--where druggies will be dropped off by cops (since the sheriff will not admit arrested drug addicts to jail)--then "offered" drug rehab- (at some future date) then released back onto the streets. The center is next to a preschool.
Alex, you are very wrong to believe that SSRIs are not dangerous, and also to believe that they're not horrendously difficult to get off of. There are numerous documented cases of people who tried to get off of SSRIs and ended up committing suicide because the effort to do so was horrifically and unbearably painful. David Foster Wallace is one notable example. The only reason we know about this is that he was a famous writer. How many others, ordinary human beings, not celebrities, have experienced similar degrees of unbearable suffering and despair, which he described, as he attempted to wean himself off these satanic drugs? We have no idea.
It is also undeniably true that one of the acknowledged side effects of SSRIs is suicidal ideation, suicidal behavior, and actual (successful) suicide. The FDA itself has been forced to admit this shocking fact. Think about that for a minute or two (or three or four, or as long as you can.)
SSRIs are known and are admitted by the entrenched medical establishment to increase suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempts, and suicide itself.
We are not all created the same. I took SSRI because they were prescribed for Fibromyalgia. They did make me fly off the handle in a rage but I stopped taking them cold turkey without incident.
Thank you so much for bringing to light the issues with legalizing of drugs both medically and on the street. THANK YOU ALSO for bringing up the corruption in the medical profession. I live on the west coast of the USA and from SoCal through Washington State we have seen the destruction first hand. I can attest that drugs both legal and illegal have decreased safety from walking down the street to driving on the freeway, ruined the lives of families and communities, increased homelessness, increased crime, and is permanently damaging the developing brains especially of those under 25. Yet, the news media in our area keeps pushing the benefits of making drugs legal, giving addicts safe places with clean needles and free drug paraphernalia, and telling us that these drugs treat everything from childhood seizures to mental illness to PTSD in veterans. Sure there are rare cases where marijuana does help some difficult to control seizure disorders, but that is hardly a reason to mass legalize it for those without those disorders. In fact, I have seen those with mild to moderate mental illness progress into schizophrenia with cannabis use - yet there are no warnings on cannabis products that it can make mental illnesses worse. How is that a good idea for our country?
Now onto our doctors - they think every solution is in a bottle or pill form because that is what they memorized in school instead of learning how to solve problems for themselves and do the scientific process. They don't really spend much time on underlying causes before jumping to trail and error with medications. My dad felt his pain meds were causing rebound headaches and wanted to get off of them - his doctor's response was, "I get people on pain meds; I don't get them off of them." This doctor had a guaranteed income from a steady stream of patients coming to get renewals of their prescriptions, so it never occurred to him to get any of those patients off addictive drugs even when they asked for it. My dad got off the meds and had less headaches - so all those years the pain meds were making his symptoms worse not better. Over the course of my life, I have been offered chronic pain medications, antidepressants, and immune suppressants about 15-20 times. Fortunately, I don't trust doctors and got second opinions - turned out I had a torn ligaments, needed narrower shoes, a tumor in my ovary needed surgically removed, needed to eat a special diet, and had some nutrient deficiencies. I did NOT need prescribed medicines - I needed good doctors who liked to solve puzzles. If I had trusted those bad doctors, I would have been hopelessly addicted to pain meds, on antidepressants, and probably gone through trans surgery before I was 18. But I will tell you about one doctor who had me convinced that I had a serious autoimmune disorder and even though I had serious allergic reactions to the injectable medication, I could not stop taking it or bad things would happen. Well, I stopped taking that medication because I was allergic to it and I decided that doctor was an idiot to tell me to keep taking it. Then I got a second opinion where I found out that I had no major illness at all, should have never been on that medication that could cause cancer, and I just needed to stop eating wheat. So now I live under the shadow of cancer - not knowing if it will pop up because once day I trusted a doctor that I should not have.
There is SO MUCH money involved for the doctors with recurring RX, and that's the carrot. Now add the stick of NOT following the script, and being under threat of board action or medical license revocation, and imagine their double-bind (not that it's excusable). Finding a doctor you can trust is paramount.
When I took over medication management for my father in his late 70's he was on so many heavy-hitting psychotropic and pain-killing medications, and the meds to manage the side effects, it was incredible to me. And no one of his doctors knew the whole picture or cared. The next year was spent working with different doctors to get him off everything unnecessary.
I would have reported that doc to the medical board (the one who said he gets people on opioids, not off of them). That’s like a flight instructor telling you he can take off but can’t land.
There was no one doctor to report. And they were all justified in their prescriptions IMHO, they just followed the book. Someone had to actually care. It was his cardiologist that worked with me. He performed bypass surgery on my dad when he had a heart attack in his fifties. He never stopped caring about his health.
Such an unfortunate reality the minds of so many Americans choosing the wrong fork in to road repeatedly as they slide into the slippery pharma bowl. Just count the # of social media, radio, print and tv ads in any given day for a drug TO use to solve all your problems. You will be amazed at just how many you will see and hear. Americans are pretty messed up, and the CCP is loving IT too as they help providing almost 95% of the fentanyl precursors to locations around the world and especially south of America's border
the ads aren't for the public, they are to own the stations so they never say anything against BIG PHARMA lest they pull their advertising dollars from the network
Yes, I've heard a few people say this very thing. The Pharma ads seem like 75% of the ads on any given show. I keep saying I'm going to watch some of the shows I record all the way through instead of skipping all the commercials and count the number of Pharma ads in each show. It seems like there's just one after another.
Yup! Our airwaves have been sold to the highest paying advertisers & the media companies themselves know this & do not care.. I’d love to see all public advertising of prescription drugs banned!!!
YES on the banning directly to the PUBLIC, but I would like to see the public willingly taking all these drugs, actually think for themselves and not so easily choose to be mis-led and take more personal responsibility
PTSD is a “squishy non disease”? You willing to say that to the families of hundred of veteran who takes their own life every year in America? MDMA is far from perfect, but it is clinically much more effective than any other treatment we have for depression. The trials need to produce better data for sure, but to call yourself a journalist who specializes in pharmaceutical stories and write off a promising new treatment to this abhorrent epidemic of suicide in this country - one of your most uninformed opinions I’ve heard.
I have a friend who got his leg blown off below the knee. He has PTSD. I have employees who spill a drink on themselves & claim PTSD. He’s not talking about the first case.
One thing that does not seem to get mentioned is the nonsense of "medical marijuana" in states such as Michigan that have legalized recreational marijuana. If you can buy it ad nauseum OTC then there is no reason to have "medical marijuana." Any state that has legalized marijuana needs to stop the farce of giving phony prescriptions for alleged medical marijuana.
I used to work at a charitable clinic and was getting fed up with all the "poor" people who came in with MM Rx when the MM Clinics charged $250-350 for an "office visit" to get the Rx. They would get the Rx for MM and then come in to see me for the same alleged problem for which they were given the Rx. My reply was to tell them that I refuse to address this issue as it is currently being treated by another doctor. If that problem has not improved or cleared on the Rx that the doctor gave you then you need to see him back to reevaluate the problem but I will not interfere with ongoing Rx given to you by another doctor, especially when the problem of which you complain may be DUE TO your use of marijuana. It was always met with shock as they had really never considered that the Rx for MM would be considered a real medication for a real problem by another doctor.
When you see someone for MM they are asked to check what problems they experience on a sheet of paper that literally has a list of 50+ symptoms and or disease states. ANY one of these conditions will warrant an Rx for MM. I always refused to participate in any way with this nonsense as I saw it as a liability and only a medical liability.
As a physician and surgeon I will tell you this. Two groups of people get the worst healthcare in America. The very poor and the very Rich. The poor because they lack access, the rich because they can get whatever they want.
Why continue to spread the myth? The poorest 20% ( 75 million) get Medicaid. They don't pay a penny- not even a bandaid or Tylenol. Completely free. Guaranteed access to any and all hospitals, guaranteed access to all the hospital staff. Sure a lot of docs do not want to see Medicaid patients in their offices - who does qt $9/ visit in many states?
And that is precisely what they want to force on all of us.
When I go to the grocery store and observe other people it appears to me the poor eat themselves into bad health. I see many riding carts with bloated bodies hanging over the edge of the carts. Makes me avoid the candy and soda aisle and head for the veggies.
completely FREE...yeah right. SOMEONE is paying for it. The TAXPAYER
Not.private hospitals.
You are correct, so-called Medicare for All is actually Medicaid. And when Ms. Harris is elected, it will come to pass. And our "healthcare" system will become worse, if that is possible.
You mean as bad as Canada? Where if they don’t want or allow you to be treated, the government tells you to go hame and die by legally sanctioned suicide.
Yes. All private hospitals that accepted government funds for construction have to participate in Medicaid. The Mayo Clinic in Arizona does not accept even Medicare for primary care but that is office-based and not a hospital.
I so agree. There is another angle. My parents now passed, were not rich but had the best federal life insurance around and used it to doctor shop for those who would test, retest, and prescribe for every ache. No doctor I know of tried to actually reduce their drug intake. But the good doctors did find a way to increase usage by prescribing drugs to counteract drugs, and keep those clinic visits going.
a RACKET for sure. A SICK and dependent society is just a better biz model
Watch the Tucker interview of Casey & Calley Means on how the food industry ( owned by & large by big tobacco) along with pharma ( who funds & owns the medical schools & establishment ) keeps Americans sick & fat. Sure people need to take responsibility for their health, but I’ve come to believe that a lot of the obesity & sickness across all demographics is caused by these corporations that stuff our food products with literal poison that creates an addiction to certain types of “ food”. A lot of what is allowed to be called food in America is not allowed in Europe & even Africa. The corrupt greedy agencies charged with overseeing the health ( food wise & drug wise) of Americans need to be completely shut down. Go from there.
VERY good point to add! Hopefully more and more people will revise how they choose to buy and eat. The more local shopping the better. Knowing local farmers who sell product and CSA's are growing in popularity, yet so many still stay creatures of habit and enable the corrupt psychopathic entities you mention. As for the SWAMP holding the corrupt entities accountable...I will believe it when I see it.
This is a bunch of baloney. I can’t get whatever I want and you would probably call us Rich because our cars are paid for our houses paid for we have a second income property. We don’t have to worry about healthcare, even though sometimes it really adds up and cost so much we can’t do things we normally could have that year whether it’s donate or travel to see our parents more than once… None of our physicians give us whatever we want. That’s ridiculous but when you travel in the circles of Hollywood and I’ve worked in Hollywood, you can always find a scumbag doctor. Sorry that’s just who they are because no decent physician would ever give anybody no matter how rich or how powerful they are what they want
Don’t forget anyone on Medicare. My aunt was so stuffed full of drugs, she didn’t know where she was. Of course if you questioned her, “well my doctor prescribed the medicine.” One of the meds was Methadone.
The WW2 generation and a generation of Marcus Welby MD thereafter indoctrinated SO many minds on the WHITE coat worship. Pharma was quite savvy in getting people to BUY into it all. An unfortunate reality and irony since so many people were far more independent generations past yet minds so dependent or co-dependent in the ways of western medicine
Interesting comments for sure. The issue with the very rich is that they dont take good advice and seek their own solutions which at times are not indicated or safe. A week of hip discomfort - hip replacement. Sore back after the Mercedes gets bumped, MRI and back surgery. Moderate coronary artery disease that could be managed medically, stents and surgery. Happens all the time.
Anyone who stents a coronary artery( absent some unusual or emergent situation) below 70% is gonna be in deep trouble.
Hard to stomach- but very glad you wrote this. Thank you for your stance on pot, speed, opiates and other drugs in general. I know this brings you criticism and hate, but the info needs to be published.
but all the drugs keep telling me how great drugs are for depression...right before they OD
You know what is good for depression, GO DO SOMETHING..hike, voluteer, work, paint, travel, play sports, etc
Exactly.. when I feel down I try to do something.. cook for others, donate to the pet shelter, weed the darn yard ugh, call an older relative, send a card to a sadder pal.. Instagram has ruined the USA mindset so I deleted it!!! Halfway to better mental health!lol
I agree. It's a little-known fact, but getting down in the dirt exposes you to an infinite number of breathed-in micro-organisms that produce a high similar to endorphins.
Yes, I told a few people that watching these commercials for drugs gives you the impression how much fun they have . Then, I go wow, what am I missing , you have this or that disease , take this drug & life is super great with travel etc. Healthy people lead boring lives, sickly people have great fun filled lives...with this or that drug is the message.
Good Energy by Casey and Calley Means (siblings with Stanford and HBS pedigrees) blow the whistle on the complex nightmare which is the American Medical Cartel. It will get worse. Needs to be entirely dismantled, starting with all Rockefellers and Gates related enterprises. Enough
I saw their interview with Tucker Carlson. The biggest shocker to me was that when cigarettes were found to cause cancer and other health problems, the tobacco companies bought food companies. They used the same business model as they did for cigarettes, alter the ingredients in processed foods to make them addictive. Much of what is found in processed foods is created in the lab, artificial flavoring, high fructose corn syrup, sugar substitutes, and all kinds of preservatives. These companies also fund studies by universities to "find" that their products are perfectly safe.
35 years of experience here as a general internist - primary care provider.
First of all -
When I was in training and then the first 10 years or so of my career, we were trained to give opiates to patients in only 3 situations -
1) Dying patients - especially those with cancer
2) Immediate care post trauma - like car accidents
3) Immediate care post surgical - for surgical pain. That would also include a few doses of opiates for those in the ER in agony from appendicitis or whatever who would soon be going to the ER.
That was it - THE END. And I mean The End.
And then along came the late 1990s. If a patient even said they hurt just a little bit - we were encouraged to dose them up with opiates to the max. Not just encouraged - pain became the 5th vital sign - and if you did not treat it you could face sanctions, etc. At the same time, the benzo overprescribing became a national epidemic. It had been a bit of a problem with housewives in the 70s - but in the late 90s - it just exploded. The main impetus for this seemed to me to be the introduction of drugs like Ambien. Big Pharma was all over the airwaves extolling the virtues of meds like OxyContin and Ambien and Lunesta.
So now fast forward 25 years - and I am dealing with all kinds of patients who are on all kinds of meds - given to them by specialists just wanting to get them out of the office. When they invariably get hooked - “Oh, go see your PCP - they will take care of you.” I am absolutely swamped by patients addicted to all manner of these agents - often 2-4 at a time. Almost always on all kinds of other meds - like SSRIs, Abilify, seizure meds like Lamictal, etc. I am horribly equipped in my office ( and I would dare say most PCPs across the country are the same) and I was NEVER EVER trained as a general internist to deal with this problem at this magnitude. There is literally no help from psychiatry - and sending them to pain management physicians for the most part is like sending them to Dr. Feel good. I feel trapped and out of my league constantly all day - there is simply no way to begin to deal with this - and the PCPs of America literally have no help at all.
It is a national tragedy and a national disgrace. I have personally witnessed countless lives and families being trashed before my eyes. It burns me up to see doctors like you describe here making profit on this tragedy.
Retirement cannot come soon enough for me.
Check out some of my posts on my page. Some of us made it out of the mess that pharma created. Good PCP’s like you are gold. Also here’s a guest post on sensible medicine. https://www.sensible-med.com/p/acute-pain-management-in-the-opiate?r=15g3mk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
May you make it to retirement soon, before the corrupt system drains you of your compassion.
I retired from addiction medicine and now help nurses pro bono. It’s the greatest gift of my career.
The medical paradigm is that pain is what the patient says it is. If he says he has severe pain, then he has severe pain and the opiate protocol kicks in.
I’m sorry, however, addicts die every day from lethal doses sold to them by dealer & NOT A PEEP. No dead addict’s dealers are ever found or held accountable.
Matthew Perry is not special.
Yes, we already know majority of doctors are SELL OUTS. You just need to look at the childhood vaccine schedule.
Exactly
Doctors take an oath-dealers do not. There's a difference. Furthermore, dealers and even those doing drugs with someone who ODs have faced trial and been convicted.
Alex - you might want to do a similar story on over use of cancer diagnostics. For example a recent editorial in Journal of Internal medicine stated that colonoscopies (which are not done in EU) cost tens of billions and have not been shown to reduce all cause mortality (they do reduce colon deaths though, but so do other less costly diagnostics). Anyways, cancer "prevention" on net *can* do more harm than good by over treating patients and killing their quality of life. Just a thought... some people think it's another big-pharma racket (I'm not saying that, but think it's worth looking at)
Colonoscopies are a bad example. It is a once-every-five-years test for those over 50 who have a family history of colon cancer. I will be having my third one next year. The first two did not do any harm. They did not affect my quality of life at all. Who would write such a thing in the Journal of Internal Medicine, unless they were an advocate of a health insurance company?
Read Dr. Vijay Prasad about colonoscopies. You’re lucky nothing bad happened to you, but that doesn’t mean they are worth it. They can and do cause harm and are not necessary in many cases.
I seem to remember something recently about new thinking about stuffing tubes up people’s rumps - there are risks (perforations) and after a certain age the risk-reward curve got skewed. For people with a family history, a personal history, different set of facts.
Correct. I had the first on at age 66'; they found 12 polyps, and have had them every two years since. They continue to find polyps, but not as many. I have no family history. Shop carefully for your provider. The dangers are perforations AND infection. Too many providers really don't know how to perform the procedure and/or properly clean and disinfect the equipment.
Actually, I got a great colon cleanse, had the best three days of sleep in decades and was given some righteous drugs.
Are you OK? Are you kidding me for those of us who have colon cancer in the family or have issues with our colon finding those pre-cancerous polyps is a godsend what you wrote is irresponsible and ridiculous.
What is “irresponsible and ridiculous” about stating the findings of the latest research? People are not even allowed to discuss it or look into it? Now THAT would be irresponsible.
first off, I did not write the editorial. second, I believe the author was referring to testing in the general population - those over 45 but with no family history which is the current recommendation... his point, supported by some data, is that net is too wide and causing some unintended harm...
No family history of colon cancer in my family and yet….my cancer was discovered by doctor-recommended, regular 10 year colonoscopy.
So much corruption in the medical field. Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Cally & Casey Means goes in to the details of the biggest problem with doctors and the FDA - the food we eat. They explain why our health in the USA is going down hill along with our life expectancy,
This kind of doctoral behavior has been happening for decades but usually in isolated situations. However, with the Covid pandemic, the butchering of adolescents thinking they should be the opposite sex and the partnerships with the pharma companies, sadly there is zero faith in our medical industry.
Thankfully, access to the Internet can help anyone and everyone to double and triple check what can be done for each individual and whatever physical or mental problems that occur.
You are your own best medic.
now we know why it seems SO MANY are brain dead and voting for DEMOCRATS...they are drugged out of their minds and we go into DEBT slavery!
You may be joking or being sarcastic/satirical/?? But I’ve seriously made the same point:
Why the big push to legalize weed and decriminalize others; why isn’t there a bigger push to go after the fentanyl problem, the source (if not ChaiNah, at least end the "middlemen closer to home). There is no use for these drugs outside of a medical facility other than to kill - go after these purveyors of death for homicides they cause. {Oops, that was a tangent}
Anyway, I agree, if people are stoned, mentally impaired and "need the gummint " then they’ll be more likely to vote for the party of death, democrats.
ChaiNah Love it. The media found that word to be xenophobic but I chuckle every time he says it. Democrats have no desire to stop fentanyl coming into the country. So it kills people, big deal. The people dying are mostly those Walmart people they hate anyway. Like you said, mentally impaired people are dependent on the government and will vote for Democrats forever. Folks who love freebies will too. I see many 60-80 somethings who love what the government gives them. The covid shot is free! Yay! The flu shot is free! Bless the government for helping seniors. I've told people countless times that nothing the government gives us is free. I have to explain that the government does not have any money of its own, it's simply using taxpayer dollars to pay for every "freebie".
Howdy Louise,
I'm an 84-year old former cowgirl/horse ranch owner, whose only medication (thank you Lord Jesus), is eye drops for my glaucoma. I refused to take the vaccines and lost touch with my son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons plus all my fair- weather friends during Covid. I take what my doctor says about prescriptions with a smile and a 'no thanks.' He's young and probably got his medical degree from places like Harvard and we know what they teach!
My close friends are not pill takers either. My son and I are more-or-less close again. (Again, thank you Lord Jesus.)
Keep telling people about the 'not-ever-free-help' from the government. Some will get it eventually. Hopefully before November 5th.
MAGA.
I agree on drugs and vaccines. No thank you. Trump 2024!
Here in Oregon, where Measure 110 unleashed holy hell on our streets, our naive and corrupt pols are tinkering with psychedlics, psilocybin as the gateway with LSD etc soon to follow. The state will license people administering the magic mushrooms--but freelancers are already busy with unsanctioned 'shroom parties.
The legislature, controlled by progressive radical Democrats, broke their arms "rolling back" 110 (under pressure from voters, who have notoriously short attention spans); in real life, this means that Portland will spend over a $-million on a "diversion" center--where druggies will be dropped off by cops (since the sheriff will not admit arrested drug addicts to jail)--then "offered" drug rehab- (at some future date) then released back onto the streets. The center is next to a preschool.
You can't make this stuff up.
Alex, you are very wrong to believe that SSRIs are not dangerous, and also to believe that they're not horrendously difficult to get off of. There are numerous documented cases of people who tried to get off of SSRIs and ended up committing suicide because the effort to do so was horrifically and unbearably painful. David Foster Wallace is one notable example. The only reason we know about this is that he was a famous writer. How many others, ordinary human beings, not celebrities, have experienced similar degrees of unbearable suffering and despair, which he described, as he attempted to wean himself off these satanic drugs? We have no idea.
It is also undeniably true that one of the acknowledged side effects of SSRIs is suicidal ideation, suicidal behavior, and actual (successful) suicide. The FDA itself has been forced to admit this shocking fact. Think about that for a minute or two (or three or four, or as long as you can.)
SSRIs are known and are admitted by the entrenched medical establishment to increase suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempts, and suicide itself.
Furthermore, low intra-synaptic levels of serotonin are not the cause of depression.
We are not all created the same. I took SSRI because they were prescribed for Fibromyalgia. They did make me fly off the handle in a rage but I stopped taking them cold turkey without incident.
How long had you been taking them? That might determine the effects of stopping.
Thank you so much for bringing to light the issues with legalizing of drugs both medically and on the street. THANK YOU ALSO for bringing up the corruption in the medical profession. I live on the west coast of the USA and from SoCal through Washington State we have seen the destruction first hand. I can attest that drugs both legal and illegal have decreased safety from walking down the street to driving on the freeway, ruined the lives of families and communities, increased homelessness, increased crime, and is permanently damaging the developing brains especially of those under 25. Yet, the news media in our area keeps pushing the benefits of making drugs legal, giving addicts safe places with clean needles and free drug paraphernalia, and telling us that these drugs treat everything from childhood seizures to mental illness to PTSD in veterans. Sure there are rare cases where marijuana does help some difficult to control seizure disorders, but that is hardly a reason to mass legalize it for those without those disorders. In fact, I have seen those with mild to moderate mental illness progress into schizophrenia with cannabis use - yet there are no warnings on cannabis products that it can make mental illnesses worse. How is that a good idea for our country?
Now onto our doctors - they think every solution is in a bottle or pill form because that is what they memorized in school instead of learning how to solve problems for themselves and do the scientific process. They don't really spend much time on underlying causes before jumping to trail and error with medications. My dad felt his pain meds were causing rebound headaches and wanted to get off of them - his doctor's response was, "I get people on pain meds; I don't get them off of them." This doctor had a guaranteed income from a steady stream of patients coming to get renewals of their prescriptions, so it never occurred to him to get any of those patients off addictive drugs even when they asked for it. My dad got off the meds and had less headaches - so all those years the pain meds were making his symptoms worse not better. Over the course of my life, I have been offered chronic pain medications, antidepressants, and immune suppressants about 15-20 times. Fortunately, I don't trust doctors and got second opinions - turned out I had a torn ligaments, needed narrower shoes, a tumor in my ovary needed surgically removed, needed to eat a special diet, and had some nutrient deficiencies. I did NOT need prescribed medicines - I needed good doctors who liked to solve puzzles. If I had trusted those bad doctors, I would have been hopelessly addicted to pain meds, on antidepressants, and probably gone through trans surgery before I was 18. But I will tell you about one doctor who had me convinced that I had a serious autoimmune disorder and even though I had serious allergic reactions to the injectable medication, I could not stop taking it or bad things would happen. Well, I stopped taking that medication because I was allergic to it and I decided that doctor was an idiot to tell me to keep taking it. Then I got a second opinion where I found out that I had no major illness at all, should have never been on that medication that could cause cancer, and I just needed to stop eating wheat. So now I live under the shadow of cancer - not knowing if it will pop up because once day I trusted a doctor that I should not have.
There is SO MUCH money involved for the doctors with recurring RX, and that's the carrot. Now add the stick of NOT following the script, and being under threat of board action or medical license revocation, and imagine their double-bind (not that it's excusable). Finding a doctor you can trust is paramount.
When I took over medication management for my father in his late 70's he was on so many heavy-hitting psychotropic and pain-killing medications, and the meds to manage the side effects, it was incredible to me. And no one of his doctors knew the whole picture or cared. The next year was spent working with different doctors to get him off everything unnecessary.
I would have reported that doc to the medical board (the one who said he gets people on opioids, not off of them). That’s like a flight instructor telling you he can take off but can’t land.
There was no one doctor to report. And they were all justified in their prescriptions IMHO, they just followed the book. Someone had to actually care. It was his cardiologist that worked with me. He performed bypass surgery on my dad when he had a heart attack in his fifties. He never stopped caring about his health.
Such an unfortunate reality the minds of so many Americans choosing the wrong fork in to road repeatedly as they slide into the slippery pharma bowl. Just count the # of social media, radio, print and tv ads in any given day for a drug TO use to solve all your problems. You will be amazed at just how many you will see and hear. Americans are pretty messed up, and the CCP is loving IT too as they help providing almost 95% of the fentanyl precursors to locations around the world and especially south of America's border
the ads aren't for the public, they are to own the stations so they never say anything against BIG PHARMA lest they pull their advertising dollars from the network
Yes, I've heard a few people say this very thing. The Pharma ads seem like 75% of the ads on any given show. I keep saying I'm going to watch some of the shows I record all the way through instead of skipping all the commercials and count the number of Pharma ads in each show. It seems like there's just one after another.
Its the PUBLIC who are duped, but I get the point
Yup! Our airwaves have been sold to the highest paying advertisers & the media companies themselves know this & do not care.. I’d love to see all public advertising of prescription drugs banned!!!
YES on the banning directly to the PUBLIC, but I would like to see the public willingly taking all these drugs, actually think for themselves and not so easily choose to be mis-led and take more personal responsibility
Yes!! NEVER should a Doctor suggestion be considered an “order”!! That damn “doctor’s orders”, hurt no many people!
PTSD is a “squishy non disease”? You willing to say that to the families of hundred of veteran who takes their own life every year in America? MDMA is far from perfect, but it is clinically much more effective than any other treatment we have for depression. The trials need to produce better data for sure, but to call yourself a journalist who specializes in pharmaceutical stories and write off a promising new treatment to this abhorrent epidemic of suicide in this country - one of your most uninformed opinions I’ve heard.
I have a friend who got his leg blown off below the knee. He has PTSD. I have employees who spill a drink on themselves & claim PTSD. He’s not talking about the first case.
One thing that does not seem to get mentioned is the nonsense of "medical marijuana" in states such as Michigan that have legalized recreational marijuana. If you can buy it ad nauseum OTC then there is no reason to have "medical marijuana." Any state that has legalized marijuana needs to stop the farce of giving phony prescriptions for alleged medical marijuana.
When my patients used to tell me that marijuana was “natural” I’d remind them that syphilis is too.
I used to work at a charitable clinic and was getting fed up with all the "poor" people who came in with MM Rx when the MM Clinics charged $250-350 for an "office visit" to get the Rx. They would get the Rx for MM and then come in to see me for the same alleged problem for which they were given the Rx. My reply was to tell them that I refuse to address this issue as it is currently being treated by another doctor. If that problem has not improved or cleared on the Rx that the doctor gave you then you need to see him back to reevaluate the problem but I will not interfere with ongoing Rx given to you by another doctor, especially when the problem of which you complain may be DUE TO your use of marijuana. It was always met with shock as they had really never considered that the Rx for MM would be considered a real medication for a real problem by another doctor.
When you see someone for MM they are asked to check what problems they experience on a sheet of paper that literally has a list of 50+ symptoms and or disease states. ANY one of these conditions will warrant an Rx for MM. I always refused to participate in any way with this nonsense as I saw it as a liability and only a medical liability.
Cyanide as well.
Arsenic too.