The news industry was complicit in the opioid crisis

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/opioids-news-prescription-doctor.php

by danso • 7 years ago

166 135 7 years ago

cjr.org

BucketSort• 7 years ago

Let's be honest, what aren't they complicit in?

happytoexplain• 7 years ago

Broad condemnation of a broad group of a people is a dangerous path.

Clubber• 7 years ago

Yes, but you have to admit, the news doesn't really serve its intended purpose of speaking out against power. It seems more like a conduit that's pretending it's not.

duxup4• 7 years ago

What counts as complicit?

Reporting accurately on what the medical community thought the answer was?

ineedasername4• 7 years ago

I think complicit is too strong of a word. They were reporting on the established (at the time) medical opinion. If the news industry hyped these drugs beyond what the medical establishment held to be accurate, then I would agree, but this article doesn't really indicate that.

mieseratte5• 7 years ago

Perhaps news agencies should include some measure of due-diligence and skepticism, rather than parroting.

yifanl• 7 years ago

Certainly, but skepticism doesn't mean reporting "nothing is true". When the vast majority of medical sources claimed opioids were safe, most media understandably wanted to avoid looking as conspiracy theorists.

ineedasername4• 7 years ago

You assume they didn't due any due diligence. Maybe they didn't, but maybe they did too. Either way, what would have sufficed beyond verifying that it was indeed the prevalent medical opinion of the time and that it wasn't contradicted in any significant way? It's not the role of news media to verify scientific research further than that-- it's the role of the research establishment which, yes, failed at that task until it was too late to avoid a crisis.

If there had been significant opposition to this at the time, I would agree that news media failed. But I just searched through ProQuest and Google Scholar for research journals during 1990-2000 and I didn't find much at all that points towards significant risks of increased prescribing of these drugs. Quite the opposite, they pointed towards them being underutilized and leaving patients in significant pain despite low risk of addiction.

As it turns out, doctors were wrong. But it's only in the last few years that the scope of the issue has really come to light. I can't fault the media for not knowing 25 years ago what the medical establishment has only recently come to accept.

sbhn• 7 years ago

The role of news media is to distract

forgottenpass• 7 years ago

They were reporting on the established (at the time) medical opinion.

To what end though? I'm not conspiratorially asking "what was their real angle?", but the much more simple "why did they think it was newsworthy for a non-doctor audience?"

I've seen the NYT run articles on a regulated industry I happen to work in. I'm no doctor, but I can see parallels because everything is slow moving and presumably based on expert opinion. Coverage of subtle points is surrounded by laughably bad analysis that drops a line of facts that lead the reader into conclusions they don't include in the print. Because if they printed it, the counterargument would be swift and damning. But without them explicitly saying it I'm "conspiratorial" if I say they're implying it. They then go on to make a wide-ranging hamfisted policy prescription that don't make sense for the subtle issue we started with and I'm 110% on board for fixing, but do make sense if you believe the unstated intermediary conclusion.

ineedasername4• 7 years ago

I think the "why were they reporting is at all" question has more validity than "they didn't do their research". Because, again, the research available supported their position.

As for why it was reported at all, a health issue of interest to many thousands of people would seem to be newsworthy.

Finally, there were articles published by media outlets that showed potential problems with these prescriptions [0][1] And those were just what I found in a minute or two of searching. All available evidence shows that media outlets used prevailing scientific opinions of the time, and still managed to raise appropriate questions when issue began to arise.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/19...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1996/06/18/dc-i...

pjc50• 7 years ago

"Chronic pain is widespread and under-treated" may well still be true. It's just that opioids do carry a risk of addiction. This is partly why so many states have started legalizing marijuana, medical or otherwise.

I don't really like this article's tone of press-blaming: ultimately the medical profession has to take responsibility for its treatment, both under- or over-treatment, and has its own responsbility to find out the facts and disseminate them through professional channels.

codeddesign2• 7 years ago

Yes, but controversy sells papers. Ultimately the blame is on the pharmaceutical industries, the doctors, and yes the patients.

bilbo0s• 7 years ago

People are looking for anyone to blame. Drug reps. Doctors. Pharmaceutical firms.

Now we've entered the "politicians/the media is to blame" stage.

When something goes wrong in this spectacular a fashion, you can bet people will try to lay blame wherever they can. But probably the truth is that this was on all of us. Doctors for prescribing without disseminating incredibly pertinent information, Parmas for creating "medicinal" opioids in the first place, politicians for not admitting the need for stronger regulation earlier, media for not covering the story better earlier, the people for being in denial about the obvious signs of addiction in their friends and loved ones. I mean the list probably goes on and on.

Loughla• 7 years ago

I'm with you on this.

It's like conspiracy theories - people WANT someone to point to and say, "that is the person in charge, they're the reason this has happened."

When in most cases, a really, truly shitty situation like this one does rely on the action of a few, powerful, bad actors, but mostly it's daily choices to simply not think made by all of us.

luckylion3• 7 years ago

The companies typically pay the doctors, donate to the politicians and buy ads in the news media for friendly reporting. "Who is to blame" is not that hard to figure out, the more subtle question is whether those who took the money and provided the services are complicit or whether they were totally bamboozled and just didn't do their jobs well.

vkou2• 7 years ago

You're missing the elephant in the room.

Our society's piss-poor ability to deal with addiction.

Once the system recognizes you as an addict, the moral crusaders in our justice system will do their damn best to limit you to provably ineffective forms of treatment, like 12-step programs. Methadone maintenance? Don't even think about it. Getting you off black-market drugs? Don't even think about it.

While everyone's busy arguing about who is at fault for getting millions of people addicted, we continue to treat addiction like we are still in the 'leeching and trepanning' stage of medicine.

nprz• 7 years ago

A 2001 US News and World Report story described OxyContin as a “safe, effective medication with few side effects,” and put the chances of addiction at one percent
we now know that between eight and 12 percent of patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain develop an addiction

I wonder how the state of the economy influences rate of addiction?

codeddesign2• 7 years ago

I would imagine that the rate directly correlates with other additions such as alcohol. While addition happens to all classes of society, those in impoverished areas tend to have a greater concentration of addition (at least reported).

_iyig• 7 years ago

Seems like a good place to link Paul Graham’s essay on PR firms, and their relation with news media outlets:

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

same_as_today2• 7 years ago

Today the same media is praising Cannabis and CBD, and says that marijuana is the miracle cure for depression, ...

Of course, you can't question that, especially on HN where every anti-cannabis opinion is downvoted.

kibwen• 7 years ago

This is a sweeping statement, can I ask for at least one sourced example? I've seen no source attempting to claim that marijuana is a miracle cure for depression, or that CBD is anything other than a fad propped up by a regulatory fluke. At most, I have seen articles regarding the potentially beneficial painkilling effects of marijuana for terminal cancer patients.

same_as_today2• 7 years ago

All of these articles from very reputable sources say that many view marijuana as a miracle cure. Of course, they are balanced and also question this narrative, but why do they say this view is widespread?

How one molecule from the cannabis plant came to be seen as a therapeutic cure-all:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/14/magazine/cbd-...

More Australians are using medicinal cannabis to treat a host of health problems as reports of its supposed healing powers flood the media:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/11/medicinal-ca...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/05/cbd-a-mariju...

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/25/marijuan...

saiya-jin• 7 years ago

That's an extreme view, don't know where you are getting positive-only information feed. Like any mind-altering substance, it has its positives and drawbacks which are different from person to person.

For me personally, the benefits far outweigh drawbacks. In society where things like alcohol and cigarettes/tobacco are perfectly fine although they provably destroy endless stream of families, lives and bring one of the worst possible (and costly to society) ways to die, having cannabis illegal is unfair and illogical. US prisons full of small time weed offenders, an event that effectively ruins one's professional life.

Read a bit about history and why it was banned in US, which then pushed it to the rest of the world. Even to places like India where its used as religious plant for millennia.

I strongly welcome legalization and hope the movement comes to Europe, and rest of the world soon. Society is better off if it is legalized (and regulated for things like access to minors/psychiatric patients, strength, purity etc).

Now to advise it as panacea for mental issues is plain stupid. Go see an expert, that's why we have them. Same would go for stuff like LSD.

s_y_n_t_a_x• 7 years ago

Purely anecdotal, but cannabis helps w/ my depression and migraines. I've been smoking for 10 years now. I don't really see the media praising it, it is more socially acceptable nowadays though.

ademup• 7 years ago

I wish I could use the fallacious "No TRUE doctor would use The Times to inform medical decisions." Because it seems like it should be universally true. On the one hand I am glad this one is telling their truth, now I feel more informed. On the other, I am appalled and terrified that this may apply to a significant percentage of "true" doctors.

caconym_2• 7 years ago

These days I don't think you can blame the media for anything without blaming the advertising industry as the upstream cause. We distribute unbundled nuggets of content that are optimized to get clicks (and to drive click rate, meaning you have to make your impact and turn the consumer around as quickly as you can), because that's what's incentivized by advertising-based revenue streams. Those optimizations are not compatible with accurate and balanced coverage of nuanced issues.

I assume something similar was true in the 90s, or starting to be true, but I don't have as good an understanding of how it all worked back then.

gundmc• 7 years ago

It's pretty absurd to shift the blame to advertising.

This wasn't the age of clickbait and adtech, this was over 20 years ago. 24 hour news channels like Fox News and MSNBC were in their infancy. Isn't there some responsibility to be had to uphold journalistic integrity?

If anything, this article shows the danger of pop science and journalists writing authoritatively about things they don't understand well.

caconym_2• 7 years ago

Maybe you missed the first two words of my comment: "these days". I did not restrict my context to 20 years ago, because neither does the linked article.

bpaddock4• 7 years ago

My wife killed herself because of Chronic Pain. Her saga is required reading at Duke Medical School and has become part of the documentary Pain Warriors, to be released soon. The documentary covers the lives of those miss treated by the Medial Establishment, including doctors that treat Chronic Pain.

Those with Chronic Pain are being left to suffer because of abusers. In April of 2019 the CDC stated that their "guidelines" are being miss applied. Sadly the damage is already done.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/s0424-advises-misapp...

"CDC Advises Against Misapplication of the Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain Some policies, practices attributed to the Guideline are inconsistent with its recommendations.

In a new commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), authors of the 2016 CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (Guideline) advise against misapplication of the Guideline that can risk patient health and safety.

CDC commends efforts by healthcare providers and systems, quality improvement organizations, payers, and states to improve opioid prescribing and reduce opioid misuse and overdose. However, some policies and practices that cite the Guideline are inconsistent with, and go beyond, its recommendations. In the NEJM commentary, the authors outline examples of misapplication of the Guideline, and highlight advice from the Guideline that is sometimes overlooked but is critical for safe and effective implementation of the recommendations.

CDC is raising awareness about the following issues that could put patients at risk:..."

bpaddock4• 7 years ago

Dr Myles Gart wrote a piece entitled “Pain is not the fifth vital sign” Medical Economics on May 20th, 2017.

http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/medical-economics...

This is my reply to Dr Gart's editorial, edited to fit the format here the best I can.

“… First and foremost, we must bury the claim of pain being the fifth vital sign and replace it with a 21st Century pain assessment tool that incorporates objective evidence and measures of pain. …”

Dr Gart, at this moment are you hungry? In your lifetime have you ever been hungry? Hunger is a type of pain. Did you treat that pain by consuming a substance?

Please correct me if I am wrong. To my knowledge there is no objective test, no simple Pain Meter, that will show me that you are hungry. Yes we could look at enzymes and such. Will that truly tell me just how hungry you are objectively?

If there is no objective test for a pain as simple as hunger, that each of us experience most every day, what hope does a person in Chronic Pain have?

In Ohio the Governor is now practicing medicine by decreeing that there can be no more than seven days of opiate pain medication. Perhaps he should discuss that with the person that was hit by a train and survived with most every bone broken.

My wife Karen died of suicide to stop the pain she experienced for over over 20 years, due to the failure of the Medical Establishment as a whole. THIS IS THE REALITY OF Chronic Pain.

"Karen's Journal of CSF Leak Headaches and Chronic Pain: How Intracranial Hypotension and Levaquin (Levofloxacin) Killed Me"

is now required reading at Duke School of Medicine to educate future Neurologists about the realities of Chronic Pain.

A local reporter wrote in a Cover Story:

"Karen's first-hand account of her illness gave an honest, heart-wrenching depiction of what it is like to live with debilitating pain day-to-day." – http://www.kpaddock.org

May I humbly suggest you read it.

See for FDA links on the antibiotic issue [at http://www.kpaddock.com/fq ].

In book form it has been edited by a medical doctor that has the same condition has Karen had. When bought through the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation 100% of the royalties go to them, to support them, just in case anyone thinks I'm posting this to promote the book for profit myself. The book can be read for free at http://mystory.kpaddock.com for free.

I do not know what motivated you to write your article. I do know from it that far more time needs to be spent with people in Chronic Pain, to understand the realities of their life.

When a person in Chronic Pain that has been taking opiate pain medication under a competent doctors supervision for ten years, is able to function, take care of their family, hold a job, is without warning told then can not have it any more, “tough luck”. What are they to do? They resort to street drugs and become the very victims this currently policy is trying to prevent.

People in Chronic Pain have typically already tried multiple rounds of physical therapy, bio-feedback, meditation, exercise and the list goes on, with no relief from the pain. What are they to do?

Not having Chronic Pain myself, I will never claim to understand it. I did watch my wife suffer with it for 20+ years. What exactly is the agenda here? None of us such as Advocates like myself nor the sufferers have figured this out yet. Can anyone please explain? To us it appears as an attack on the most vulnerable.

This is one of the many comments I received about your article: “…Chronic problems frustrate doctors and they blame the patient rather than look at themselves. …” or support research to find real solutions to Chronic Pain. No one chooses to live with Chronic Pain each and every moment of their lives.

rjkennedy98• 7 years ago

Dr Gart, at this moment are you hungry? In your lifetime have you ever been hungry? Hunger is a type of pain. Did you treat that pain by consuming a substance?

If you don't eat you die. Do you die if you don't consumer pain killers? No you don't.

This is similar to the nonsense peddled by people who claim anti-depressants are the same as insulin and various other snake-oil salespeople.

hestipod3• 7 years ago

I fight this urge every day because of pain and have great empathy for both you and your wife. I was left in constant pain by badly done and, ultimately unneeded surgery. I have been off and on medication for many years now and have fought the system the entire time. I was recently cut off again after a long term doctor retired and the new options are all fairly hostile to pain patients.

The thing that is the hardest is that ultimately the best pain control for me is a safe and calm lifestyle and decent healthcare in the right conditions I can survive without medication, but with the loss of health and money goes your access to that lifestyle and healthcare, increasing the need for meds, at a time and situation in which you can least get them. I've tried nearly everything, at least that I can access, and that access, mainstream and alternative just gets worse here in the USA. I just need a small flat and a simple life in a city with connections and resources. I am stuck in the opposite.

I had a great, once in a lifetime, accomodative job opportunity abroad from a member here that I couldn't get to because of worsening pain and life stability and I sunk further as a result. Should have just gone and failed and gotten it over with rather than suffering more in worse conditions. It's a pit of quicksand once you get in it. It's hard enough in countries with good systems, but in the USA it's hopeless. I am now stuck in rural nowhere in so much pain with no good healthcare and transport and a horrid quality of life. I am over the debate and the "opiod crisis" and people's judgement here...I just want out and stable if thats even possible anymore, or it over. Tired of suffering every day.

lonelappde3• 7 years ago

The US solution to this problem is to sue to the surgeon and retire from the settlement

cwkoss2• 7 years ago

Many underserved chronic pain patients are turning to growing their own, seed tea, and kratom. Might still be able to find decorative dried pods as well.

Dextromethorphan and grapefruit juice can potentiate to stretch out doses in times of drought.

Sorry to hear that our medical system is failing you. Truly immoral.

Afton2• 7 years ago

Thank you for sharing this.

Someone I love has chronic pain managed with (legally prescribed) opioids, and they have constant low-level anxiety that a bureaucratic mixup will result in their medication being denied (or heaven forbid they lose a prescription, or that they'll need a refill when their doctor is on vacation and the locum will be 'suspicious of drug seeking behavior'.

They had to sign a document that if they lost a prescription, they understood that they would be denied a refill, even though (a) there isn't actually any reason to physically hand them the piece of paper, it could all be done between the doctor and pharmacy, and (b) people with chronic pain typically also exhibit various degrees of 'being distracted' due to that same pain.

I could go on, and TBH, my friend hasn't had any gaps in getting their medication, but the current wave of anti-opioid hysteria is concerning.

throwaway5752• 7 years ago

"current wave of anti-opioid hysteria is concerning"

This is not the media's fault, nor is this is not chronic pain patients' faults. This is the result of criminal corruption and abuse in the pharmaceutical industry and distribution system. There is a real and enormous problem https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o... (opioid overdose death rates have more than quadrupled in 20 years, are at a high level already versus other causes of death at 50k annually, and are accelerating). Opioids are some of the most dangerously addictive medicines that exist, and habituation and pill selling is a huge problem that is also ruining and ultimately costing lives.

vkou2• 7 years ago

A friend's wife underwent brain surgery ~8 years ago. She was prescribed pain medication for a long while.

At some point, she realized that she may be developing a bit of a pill problem. She went to her doctor, to see what could be worked out.

He listened her out, marked her down as drug-seeking, and cut her off, cold turkey.

Surprise, fucking surprise, the very next thing she did was to turn to black market oxy.

Eight years of rehab, rehab again, fighting, bargaining, threatening, and pleading, she's once again relapsed, and their marriage is falling apart.

I speculate that if it does, she'll likely be dead in a few years.

hestipod3• 7 years ago

I've been through that over and over with doctors turning hostile and outright lying and am going through it again now after the worst year I have ever had pain wise. I never took a LOT by any measure, in fact very small doses just to get by, and only about half of the days in any given year as I cycled off and when situations were calmer. I have avoided seeking stronger things offline and will off myself before going there as its costly in every way and has no good outcome. I have a sensitive corpus it seems and can't take a lot of any medication, a built defense against massive addiction I am thankful for in a way, or else I probably would have ended up like some of the worst victims in a gutter using heroin. But I guess in the end what does it matter if you cannot get better anyway. Ultimately people just want to stop hurting and don't care about people's politics...and when it gets like this, and doctors and society and families are so hostile and blaming, the only plausible thing becomes stopping the existence that hurts.

mindslight• 7 years ago

The whole situation is already the product of too much left-brain imperative thinking, but I have to wonder if a basic suit for medical malpractice would have legs. The doctor in question essentially got her physically addicted, and then when told of the symptoms, unilaterally chose a wildly inappropriate "treatment" which exacerbated that addiction.

imtringued• 7 years ago

Doctors aren't allowed to help people to recover from drug dependencies. If a doctor opens a clinic that gives people access to non contaminated drugs with a dosage that is controlled by a trained professional then it will be shut down because people get jealous that their tax money is spent on keeping junkies "high" when in reality the dosage gets lowered successively until no adverse health effects remain and the "high" almost completely disappears but still satisfies the dependency enough to prevent them from seeking out black market drugs. What most of the population also fails to realize is that the health effects of black market drugs are almost trivial compared to the financial damage they cause which has a far greater impact on the lifestyle of that person. You don't become a criminal or a prostitute when you spend $50 on "medication", but it's pretty much guaranteed when your "medication" costs you $1000 per month. For most people that's the difference between being homeless or not.

patientplatypus• 7 years ago

I am sorry for your loss.

mnm1• 7 years ago

The solution for chronic pain is to prescribe opiates on an ongoing basis. The solution for addiction is to prescribe opiates on an ongoing basis. That might be methadone or suboxone or something more common like oxycodone or morphine. What happened to your wife should never have happened. It's tragic that incompetent organizations like the CDC and others still haven't realized this and are driven by unscientific drug war hysteria rather than scientific approaches to recovery. Not only do addicts suffer, but chronic pain sufferers also suffer. Often there is no difference between the two groups.

DrScientist• 7 years ago

There is general lack of basic scientific knowledge for those working in the media and too much cut & paste.

However, Doctors should have known better - opioids are not some new fangled treatment for goodness sake[1]

Doctors are highly trained, highly paid and their failure is central to the opioid crisis.

[1] In fact they are one of the first modern medicines - a wonder drug - then people realized the downsides. That was over 100 years ago.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum#History https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Opium...

scarface747• 7 years ago

Why is it that when “rural America” and the suburbs got caught up in a drug epidemic people blame the media, corporations, the lack of opportunity, and call it an illness, but when it was happening in the “inner city” it was all about “the culture”, “moral failings”, “getting tough on crime”, and “the war on drugs”.

I wonder what could the difference possibly be....

TeMPOraL• 7 years ago

That in the former case, the drugs in question are given to you by your country's medical system, while in the latter case, you have to procure them yourself on a black market?

scarface747• 7 years ago

I’m not saying that chronic pain isn’t real or shouldn’t be treated, but many of the abusers are “drug seeking” patients who go to different doctors to get prescriptions and many of the doctors are illegally prescribing the drugs. Opioids also end up on the black market and definitely they all aren’t bought legally.

Also, it is public knowledge that the government looked the other way and protected drug growers in South America in the 80s because it was more concerned with the Cold War.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

The thing is while a worryingly large minority of addicts used their prescribed medication first (including not taking as directed) the majority still used it illicitly either through street sources or stealing from those with legitimate needs.

There is still an obvious empathy gap and double standard.

ajross2• 7 years ago

That's true, but sort of side stepping the issue. Why is it that the country's medical system was willing to feed addiction-level quantities of abusable chemicals into some communities and not others?

In any case, there are large quantities of illegal drugs feeding the "opioid" crisis as well, though. Fentanyl didn't happen in a vacuum, it was pushed at people having trouble getting oxycodone. And yet we don't hear talk on FOX about the horrors of the appalachian cartels bringing this garbage across the border.

nyolfen• 7 years ago

probably the decades of people pointing out that the latter was wrong and research on addiction

rolltiide3• 7 years ago

This decade’s suburbs also have minorities hopped up on opioids.

You’ll never get resolution on the race baiting observation. You’ll never find it productive to try to get revenge by enacting the same failed policies “more equally”.

Yes, there are some people that are simply playing a game of power for people that look similar to them.

Now back to addressing the current problem holistically.

scarface747• 7 years ago

There is also plenty of studies that even in the same neighborhoods, Blacks are prosecuted more harshly for the same crime...

And the “same policies” are still in force in the inner cities and there are different policies in the burbs in rural America.

Whatarethese• 7 years ago

Because race is still a driving divider in our society.

LanceH• 7 years ago

Why is it that when someone says a group was complicit in something that affected rural America that blame is being shifted solely on that group because of racism? Everyone is aware. Give it a rest.

dfasdfasd• 7 years ago

Not everyone is aware of the extent and power of institutional oppression in America, and we can think of more than one thing at once. Realizing the double-standard doesn't prevent me from being upset at the institutional powers that got rural America addicted to opioids.

lambersley2• 7 years ago

For the same reason why when race is presented as a contributing factor, people say "give it a rest." 'Those who choose to ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.' Society must accept that race relations has played and does play a role in how we tackle issue.

equalunique3• 7 years ago

Recently had a conversation about "inner city" communities with a coworker. We're in Baltimore and she's an immigrant from Russia. She's concerned about the aggressive behavior/vandalism/crime of "inner city youths" - but being new to this country, she's unaware of how they got there/came to be there in the first place. Slaves fled to northern cities like Baltimore with nothing. Post-slavery, the communities and wealth they built were in most cases repeatedly destroyed/quashed/displaced by racists holding positions of power. The anger seen today is from being constantly cheated, generation by generation, by people who claim to have the moral high ground.

deogeo• 7 years ago

she's an immigrant from Russia.

Most Russians were literally owned by their landlords until 1861 [1]. After that, they suffered the most deaths of any country in both world wars, and many famines and purges under Stalin, and extreme repression in general in the Soviet Union.

Try not to frame her as completely ignorant of oppression.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia

teachrdan• 7 years ago

In the case of Baltimore, Wells Fargo employees targeted black families for subprime home mortgages in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis, even when they qualified for conventional mortgages with lower rates.

Wells Fargo organized events for African Americans on "how to build generational wealth," but internally said they were selling "ghetto loans" to "mud people."

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/07baltimore.html

https://consumerist.com/5283290/affidavits-on-how-wells-farg...

asdffdsa• 7 years ago

Well, it's gotta stop sometime right? Past history doesn't mitigate her concern

andonisus• 7 years ago

So should she not be concerned about this behavior? Does the fact that it stems from systemic racism and oppression make her any more safe from it?

strken• 7 years ago

People constantly blame the culture. Look at Hillbilly Elegy, for example.

zootme• 7 years ago

I recommend Dave Chappelle's new comedy special on Netflix as he touches on this in one of his bits.

HBKXNCUO• 7 years ago

Perhaps people are more sympathetic to people like them.

scarface747• 7 years ago

Exactly. The whole “that could be my child/mother/father/sister/brother”.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

because far too many in the political arena needed the crisis and as such had little real interest in solving it. it served both as a source of funds for campaigns and family as well as a means to keep opponents at a distance for fear of being branded. so simply working the selected voters gives them a solid base, one they can turn out for any affront, and one which will accept being told who the bogeyman is as long as it means never having to look in the mirror.

it is the same reason a school shooting, usually in predominantly suburban non minority areas whereas many more than that die in cities weekly.

political power is all about using problems for gain, not solving problems. while it can work in outlying areas it does not have the quick payback the city machine can. go look at the social interest groups, the community coordinator type jobs, and you will see friends and family if not down on their luck politicians who know which team to be on.

smileysteve• 7 years ago

I wonder what could the difference possibly be....

People are reluctant to think the government is capable of what they did...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_(2014_film)

duxup4• 7 years ago

I don't buy this line of argument.

If the news reflects the medical community's POV and the medical community is wrong, that makes them "complicit"?

Piece after piece told readers, including young doctors and medical students like me, that pain was under-treated and opioids were safe. Outlets championed a paradigm shift in the way we thought about pain relief. Pain joined body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate as the fifth vital sign.

Was that untrue? I remember those stories, lots of doctors were advocating for a change on how pain was treated.

The article straight up says that the medical community thought opioids were the answer.

Should the news media have rejected the medical community's position and suggested people use something else? Essential oils? Some sort of anti vax message?

The medical community might want to think twice about telling the news media or anyone else that they should have disregarded their expertise in the past as I'm not sure they'd like it if that happened today...

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

that makes them "complicit"?

By 2019 standards the news, the politicians, the doctors, are all "complicit in the opioid crisis" because they didn't predict the present state of affairs back in 1999 (or thereabouts) and work against it.

If everybody is complicit then nobody is. It makes for eyeball grabbing titles though.

macspoofing6• 7 years ago

If the news reflects the medical community's POV and the medical community is wrong, that makes them "complicit"?

The expectation is that news are independent and practice journalism and they don't just take anyone at their word.

duxup4• 7 years ago

they don't just take anyone at their word.

How does that work exactly?

Doctor's say they're not treating pain properly and they feel opioids are a good option to do that.

What exactly should a journalist do then?

Not report it?

Do some science?

EpicEng3• 7 years ago

So... journalists should have spent their free time self learning their way to a medical degree? Let's not forget stats as well since they'll need to read and understand hundreds of medical studies.

Journalists cannot be experts in every field they report on.

ben5092• 7 years ago

(I'm not taking a side on whether the opiod question is correct, just talking about the process of journalism.)

The press's ability as an institution to contradict another institution has practical limits.

In particular, if the broader medical community is largely on board with opiods, for a journalist to write a story, they have to get comments from medical authorities.

If those comments are consistently saying that opiods are necessary and good for pain management, an ethical journalist can't just ignore all those comments and harp on a few outliers.

And for a story to catch on, other journalists have to, in effect, replicate that work: they have to do their own investigations, but they're going to get a similar distribution of comments.

The press can typically focus on an institution if there's a particular scandal involving specific people or entities because then their questions become more targeted.

heisenbit• 7 years ago

It is a lot easier to parrot the talking points of someone pushing a sales narrative in an interview or through conferences than doing the footwork and ask hard questions e.g. why prescription numbers were skyrocketing in the US and not so much elsewhere on this globe.

CrankyBear• 7 years ago

Complicit? Reporters aren't medical experts. They reported what the medical pros of the 90s said. And, the doctors at the time all nodded their heads and said it was great stuff.

base698• 7 years ago

Yup, and the literature misquoted said the same 16 years ago, appears some of the media was into it then:

Drug companies amplified that theme in materials sent to doctors and pharmacists. For example, Janssen Pharmaceutica, the producer of Duragesic, called the risk of addiction ''relatively rare'' in a package insert with the drug. Endo termed the risk ''very rare'' in presentations to hospital pharmacists. Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of the powerful narcotic OxyContin, distributed a brochure to chronic pain patients called ''From One Pain Patient to Another,'' contending that it and similar drugs posed minimal risks.

''Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they are perceived as too strong or addictive,'' the brochure stated. ''But that is far from actual fact. Less than 1 percent of patients taking opioids actually become addicted.''

The trouble, however, was that studies that looked at the experience of pain patients who used long-acting narcotics for extended periods of time did not exist. So narcotics advocates like Dr. Portenoy and drug companies like Purdue Pharma had looked elsewhere, at surveys of patients whose use of narcotics was limited. And those reports were not always put into proper context.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/25/science/the-delicate-bala...

PaulHoule• 7 years ago

Lately Google and Bing have been pushing searches for medical terms away from Wikipedia and towards WebMD, but that article says WebMD is funded by drug companies, and is itself suspect.

Wikipedia has remarkably fair treatment of controversial topics such as rBST.

vertoc• 7 years ago

epmaybe• 7 years ago

Looking at my own experience with doctors who were practicing throughout this scandal, I always try to think: what will our generation's scandal in the medical community be?

The loss of the doctor-patient relationship could be one.

Our trust and financial relationship with the pharmaceutical/insurance industries, or maybe our salaries in general?

1121redblackgo2• 7 years ago

If there are any of chronic pain sufferers in here that have not yet explored the connection between emotions and pain, if you see this then now may be your lucky day.

There is no correlation between structural changes in your body and the level of pain you have to endure, and you can be fully cured from your chronic pain within months.

It is hard work, and you will have to deeply examine your life, but if you are ready I encourage you to check out Dr. Sarno and fall down the Healing Back Pain rabbit hole. Nicole Sachs has some excellent youtube videos that I recommend. As well there is Steve Ozanich's incredible book.

I suffered for a decade with debilitating back pain, arm pain, neck pain, headaches, arthritis, knee pain, jaw pain, tendinitis, all of it, every day, all day, my entire life was my pain for a decade. And like thousands and thousands of others before me, once I discovered the real source of my pain I could actually work on healing it, and within months I was fully cured, and now have a toolset to interface with stress and pain in a healthy way that will last me forever.

You don't have to suffer, but you will need to work at this.

1121redblackgo2• 7 years ago

A small addendum. This comment was downvoted '-1' pretty quickly. Like Eric Weinstein and the IDW suggest, we need the voices that were cast aside and disregarded if we are going to move forward in a new paradigm. I'm not lying or selling anything here. I am healed. So can you be. Your choice.

lambersley2• 7 years ago

Though I can accept that news industry may have had a role to play in the influencing the thoughts and opinions of inexperienced medical professionals, I cannot accept that they are 'complicit' in the opioid crisis.

Its hard to accept that the medical practice in the Americas is comprised of mostly "young doctors and students." In 2018, ~69% [1] of physicians in America were over 46 years old. I am more inclined to believe that bad actors, lobbying and general incompetence is to be blamed.

This topic reminded me of "The $100 billion per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax"[2] piece which highlighted drug companies who spent millions on marketing, borrowing a page from Big-Tobacco, doctors who over-prescribed and frustrated patients who too matters into their own hands.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/415961/share-of-age-amon... [2] https://qz.com/1010259/the-100-billion-per-year-back-pain-in...

simplecomplex• 7 years ago

The war on drugs doesn’t work. the government should not have the authority to interfere with what people put inside their body.

Stop blaming drug addiction on everybody but the drug addicts.

ashelmire• 7 years ago

I think it's interesting that out of 120+ comments on opioids, nobody mentions the elephant in the room:

Some studies find NSAIDs are as effective in the treatment of pain [1]. You can find several other studies with a quick search, though most of the ones I've found were short-term.

An additional issue is that opioids are not a treatment for the causes of pain. Pain is generally a symptom, not the underlying pathology. Physical therapy and other reliefs (nonsurgical) can treat the causes of pain and eliminate the need for any pain treatments.

And as for an anecdote - my stepfather went from large doses of opioids after back surgery and severe pain (for an issue they wouldn't recommend surgery for anymore, but would instead recommend physical therapy) for years, to a reasonable level of prescribed marijuana consumption.

Just some things to think about, since most of voices in the room seem to be pro-opioid.

1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26739...

The news industry was complicit in the opioid crisis

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