The Medical Freedom Channel

The lead news story kicking off this week’s editions of Medical Freedom Channel is an Associated Press news-analysis entitled, “Pain medicine use has nearly doubled.” As noted in the editor’s note on the blurb, the most significant fact in this account is that this account is based, not on studies and surveys performed by physicians and other health professionals, but on “statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

In other words, the focus is on “drug abuse” by those who misuse painkillers (presumably illegally), rather than on the prescribed recommendations of pain management physicians and others caring for those afflicted with chronic ailments, involving constant or acute physical agony, for whom such substances as are in existence should (in a humane society) be readily available to ease their distress, by any means.

Well, that’s the conclusion we should be drawing, were we living in any kind of sane culture!

Fact is, though, the DEA (dra)goons have overtaken the whole “first do no harm” premise of medicine as it is was originally conceived. The rule now is better stated as, “do no harm, but do no more good than the War on (Some) Drugs warriors wish to allow.” And the agency’s focus has now become, instead of its mandate (still questionable in itself, at least in a free society?) to curb “drug abuse” — the keepers of an ever-changing list of “controlled” substances that have been declared “illegal,” along with the harassment, arrest and prosecution of legitimate healers trying to help those most in dire need of pain relief.

And their handmaidens and lapdogs, the media (print, broadcast and even much of the Internet), go meekly along with this tyrannical meddling in something that properly should be between healers and their patients, even using the DEA’s own data to make its case.

In the story in question, this goes well beyond the issue of “illegal drugs.” (Note that this term is now apparently being defined as any of the following: (a) “not on our list of approved substances” (exempting alcohol, nicotine, etc., in spite of their known deleterious effects on the human body); (b) certified as “controlled” by some agency or committee (marijuana, cocaine, etc.); or (c) “not being used for approved purposes (without formal prescription, or obtained by devious means). If we add the Food and Drug Administration’s prohibitions (not approved except for use X, which has been “proven” to be of some effect on malady Y only …), it’s a wonder that anything is legal these days.)

But I digress …

This article goes after issues the DEA should not even be involved in, even under the broadest interpretation of its powers. As already noted, the AP analysis is of “the amount of five major painkillers sold at retail establishments” based on “statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.” They note that between 1997 and 2005 this figure “rose 90 percent,” and that over “200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data, … enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country.”

The story then goes on to chronicle cases of oxycodone (most familiar in OxyContin) and Hydrocodone (Vicodin) use, while bundling the numbers together for overall use of these pain-relieving substances, to include DEA estimates of “illegal” use and sale of same. The justification for DEA meddling in the “legal” side of the equation? “The DEA figures analyzed by the AP include nationwide sales and distribution of drugs by hospitals, retail pharmacies, doctors and teaching institutions. Federal investigators study the same data trying to identify illegal prescription patterns.”

Impressive statements, and well coordinated figures, to be sure, but (to bastardize Bastiat) what is not being seen here?

How about for starters the involvement of a criminal enforcement agency, presumably concerned only with “catching crooks” and punishing them, in monitoring the supposedly “legal” doings of doctors and their patients? Something fundamentally wrong with that, especially when we consider how much of the DEA’s focus has spotlighted such healers as Dr. William Hurwitz and pharmacist D. Michael Woodward, for the apparently egregious “crime” of serving their patients and customers.

To their credit, the AP reporters do attempt to look at some of\ the larger issues, by including actual chronic pain-sufferers and their physicians in their story. They interview both those actively in current acute pain, as well as at least one survivor of a chronic-pain partner who has since made it her personal crusade to stop this persecutorial madness. The story also attempts to address the cause of this increase in pain-pill use, citing our aging population (and its bevy of diseases, all presumably unavoidable with age), the huge “ask your doctor” advertising campaigns undertaken by Big Pharma drugmakers, and the shift in focus of the medical world, which used to consider pain just a part of the healing process.

Moreover, the concern of the article, and many of those interviewed for it, is that we are becoming far too dependent on ‘taking a pill” whenever anything is awry, especially if pain is involved. This is a legitimate concern, and one that those who advocate anything but the steady crawl (or gallop?) into nationalized, all-inclusive healthcare, and a society that takes convalescent care as a given for everyone, should perhaps keep in mind the next time a “splitting headache” strikes.

They also note something that almost contradicts their headline: “The increase in painkiller retail sales continues to rise, but only barely. There was a 150 percent increase in volume in 2001. Four years later, the year-to-year increase was barely 2 percent.” So in other words there is NOT an increase in painkiller use, only in their “illegal” use; we are not in the midst of an epidemic of oxycodone, only seeing a bigger percentage of it being taken and sold “illegally”?

Then why was this presented as though it were about “health issues”? Is it just part of the propaganda effort, to demonize every effort to help those truly in need of relief, in the name of fighting some “public menace” of drugrunning?

Gee, it wouldn’t be the first time … now would it?