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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.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 25 2019, @08:44PM (7 children)
How about reason?
For example, I can note that measles has gone in incident by three orders of magnitude roughly in countries which adopt near universal vaccination. I can note that measles and its complications are worse and more frequent than corresponding complications of the measles vaccines commonly used.
Similarly, I can consider the risks and benefits of using opioids without requiring an expert and their potential conflicts of interest to tell me what to think.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:12AM (6 children)
The first is just as easily explained by differences in diagnostic criteria, and the second is just false. Fake facts.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:12AM (5 children)
On the first remark, everything can be easily explained by any arbitrary criteria you want to throw out there. OTOH, if you're going to use reason and evidence, it's not so easy to explain things via that method. Sorry, it doesn't account for three orders of magnitude that happens every time some country adopts mass vaccination for measles.
As to the second statement, sorry, you're wrong here as well. The last time this conflation of side effects of vaccination with the symptoms of measles was defended, a certain AC was equating [soylentnews.org] any appearance of a rash (the side effects of vaccination) with the seven to ten days of full body rash of measles; occasional fever with measles's consistent, high fever; and of course, ignoring that people who get sick from measles are usually out for at least a week (7 to 10 days of misery in the usual scenario, folks!), possibly taking out other people as care givers while it is rare for side effects of vaccination to cause any need for sick days.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:24AM (4 children)
Yes it does. It is the same mechanism every time. The simultaneous introduction of vaccination + blood tests + doctors are hesitant to diagnose measles in vaccinated patients happens the same way every time. Find a single counter example.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:33AM
Same AC. And it would be so easy if they ever just ran a blinded RCT. But they didn't and never will.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:49PM (2 children)
Yes with the big factor being vaccination. Changing an infection from exponential growth to exponential decay remains a big deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:16PM (1 child)
It is so boring when you respond. You never have any good info of your own, mostly opinions or questionable info everyone has seen already.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 27 2019, @12:24AM
Why should I go with novel but weak arguments when the whole thing was settled half a century ago and whose truth continues to be reinforced every time another part of the world adopts near universal immunizations? There's no point to changing an argument that still works devastatingly well. I find it remarkable how we can complain that an old argument still works without considering the stilted thinking that goes into those rival arguments. How can you not be concerned that anti-vaxxer arguments continue to be defeated by old reasoning and evidence? What is more boring again, the people who bring arguments to the table that come already broken, or the people who then quickly perform the coup de grace on those arguments with the usual rebuttals?
Come up with something that isn't pre-broken. Then we'll have something interesting to talk about.