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posted by martyb on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the profits-at-all-costs dept.

Infamous OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma used front organizations and sponsored research to deceive the World Health Organization and corrupt global public health policies with the goal of boosting international opioid sales and profits, according to a Congressional report (PDF) released Thursday, May 22.

The investigation identified two WHO guidance documents that appear to parrot some of Purdue's misleading and outright false marketing claims about the safety and efficacy of their highly addictive opioids.

The findings, released by Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), land as the country is still grappling with an epidemic of opioid abuse and overdoses. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid overdoses kill an average of 130 Americans every day.

Clark and Rogers say that the motivation for the investigation follows a 2017 warning letter Congress members sent to the WHO. Given the opioid epidemic unfolding in the US, the lawmakers warned the WHO that opioid makers would try to expand into international markets, which could potentially trigger a global epidemic. But the Congress members say they didn't get a response (though the WHO disputes this).

"When the WHO failed to respond to the letter, we began to question why they would remain silent about such a significant and devastating public health epidemic," the report reads. "The answers we found are deeply disturbing."

Based on public records, the report outlines a tangle of organizations and individuals that connect financial threads from Purdue to WHO.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/world-health-organization-parroted-purdues-deceptive-opioid-claims-report-says/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:22PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:22PM (#847640)

    That food pyramid [wikipedia.org] you speak of did not come from the medical industry, it came from the department of agriculture.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:26PM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:26PM (#847643) Journal

    And how many doctors told there patients to follow the food guide instead of saying "WTF? That'll make you fat!"

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @04:28PM (#847645)

    Where do you think the recommendations came from if not doctors or other healthcare "experts"? If they weren't on board why wasn't there an outcry from them?

    Anyway, I suspect I am responding to the same AC that showed up recently who seems to have such little understanding of the world that they must be a bot.