Incorrect Medical Information has Dire Consequences

The Press: Incorrect Medical Information, Dire Consequences! | American Council on Science and Health –By Wolfgang Vogel — Oct 2019

Reporters and editors have the duty to inform the public about current events. In fulfilling this duty, every journalist must follow the journalistic code of ethics; reports must be based on proven facts or when personal opinions are used they must be clearly be labeled as such.

Sometimes we don’t even realize the difference between something we have knowledge of and something we only believe. More than once in my life, things I thought I “knew” turned out to be more assumptions or opinions rather than facts.

The press is a major tool in informing the public and in shaping public opinions.

Any true journalist wouldn’t just repeat what everyone else is saying and assume it’s the whole truth. They would do some research of their own to verify the general narrative out there for themselves.

Lately, the integrity of the press has been questioned; many reports are either slanted or downright false in order to sway public opinion in the intended direction.

Focusing on the opioid crisis, articles often did and still do contain misleading statements, half-truths and sometimes completely false information.

gives the public a slanted picture of the true causes of the opioid crisis, stigmatizes patients, and has led government officials to enact damaging regulations and laws. So let us look at a few examples.

Reports on the opioid crisis typically focus foremost on the drug abuser and the many deaths conveying the impression that these opioid drugs are indeed “evil.”

However, it is seldom if ever mentioned that these drugs have been exceedingly helpful to millions upon millions of acute and chronic pain patients who have used them properly without experiencing significant ill effects, let alone, deaths.

Instead, reports constantly label these drugs as “highly addictive”.

Scientific studies have come to similar conclusions; that the chance of an adult acute or chronic pain patient becoming addicted is less than 1%.

Compared to alcohol and nicotine with an abuse potential of about 5%, these drugs are addictive but certainly do not deserve to be labeled highly addictive.

There is additional misleading information commonly reported – that these drugs are also frequently described so glibly as being deadly citing all the drug-related overdose deaths.

more than 100 million legitimate pain patients have used these drugs without the occurrence of any significant numbers of adverse reactions or drug-related deaths; these patients used the drugs as indicated.

These include all the millions of people who have surgeries and are prescribed opioids while they are healing. The number of surgeries in the US is in the millions, and only very few, maybe 1% became addicted for decades and decades.

In contrast, opioid related drug deaths are not caused by the use of these drugs per se but by their inappropriate uses.

Another fallacy – physicians are blamed for writing too many prescriptions which fueled the opioid crisis. This fallacy is based on older studies.

Perhaps physicians have overprescribed but this did not lead to the crisis as evidenced by the extremely low number of pain patients who became addicted.

While it is true that pharmaceutical companies promoted their drugs aggressively – as do all companies with their products – can they be held responsible for the deaths involving their drugs?

If a drunk driver causes an accident – we rightfully blame the driver.

If a drug abuser uses a drug contrary to directions and warnings and dies – reports blame the company but not the user.

Does this make sense?

Looking into the future, a company would be stupid to manufacture and sell these drugs again– and the vast majority of us will then suffer unnecessary pain and might die a painful death. 

Higher doses prescribed do not necessarily mean that patients consume higher amounts of drugs

So instead of taking a 20mg oxycodone pill 4 times a day, a patient could be taking one 80mg extended-release tablet that lasts all day. To me, it seems far harder to keep track of 4 doses a day than just a single one, yet PROP wants to ban such useful high-dose pills.

Furthermore, one reporter in a headline of the article called Oxycontin, a slow release preparation, more addiction prone than earlier immediate release tablets. Again, this is completely wrong. Immediate release tablets cause high spikes in drug blood levels which results in more intense euphoric feelings.

I’m beginning to feel downright cheated! I keep hearing about the euphoria experienced by taking opioids. In the 25 years I’ve taken daily opioid pain medications, I’ve never felt that euphoria – and neither have any other of the dozens of pain patients I’ve heard from.

My skepticism was recently confirmed by a study: Most People Don’t Feel Euphoric From Opioids

even worse is that every time I have contacted the editors of newspapers to inform him/her of such mistakes and offered a correction – there has been no reply and no correction.

The editors let the misinformation persist and uninformed readers continued to have a false or misleading picture.

News should not only be accurate but if mistakes occur they must be corrected.

The news is partially to blame for the general public to have a slanted and often false picture of the current opioid epidemic. But it is mostly to blame for unjustifiably stigmatizing physicians and have lawmakers enact laws which do not help the crisis but actually are hurting thousands and perhaps millions of legitimate patients not to get their unrestricted pain relief.