Last week was a busy one for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as the nation’s health watchdog began taking serious action to combat the rising opioid crisis.
Source: CDC
It has been a busy month, in general, for top health officials.
On Thursday, the Senate approved a bill aimed at tackling the nation’s growing painkiller- and heroin-abuse epidemic, but it may prove to be a useless effort.
Source: NAADAC
Stomach this: scientists are genetically engineering bacteria which cause food-poisoning to create new opioid painkillers.
It’s OK. I’ll give you time to re-read that sentence.
Big Pharma won big today when the Senate nearly unanimously approved Dr. Robert Califf as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And not everyone is happy about it.
Califf was confirmed for the job in a vote of 89 to 4 after weeks of opposition from a handful of senators, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who had attempted to block the longtime cardiologist and academic researcher. [1]
In an effort to cut prescription painkiller addiction and overdose deaths, the CDC created prescribing guidelines. But it looks like Big Pharma is delaying those guidelines, likely to protect drug sales.
One of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical drug wholesalers is under fire from West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey.
On Friday, Morrisey announced a lawsuit against San Francisco-based McKesson Corporation alleging the company violated state consumer protection laws and the Uniform Controlled Substances Act by flooding West Virginia with tens of millions of prescription pills.
Another year has come and gone and the number of tragic, troubling deaths due to marijuana overdoses has not decreased.
That’s because if that number decreased, it would be in the negative. It’s 2016, and still no one has died from a marijuana overdose, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers released last month.
Opiate addiction continues to plague the United States.
The post 75% of High School Seniors on Heroin Started with Painkillers appeared first on The Anti-Media.
Patients who take antidepressants with painkillers could be setting themselves up for deadly adverse events, new research suggests.
The deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger may have grabbed headlines, but there is a far larger tragedy behind America’s recreational painkiller epidemic. Deaths from prescription painkillers have more than tripled in the last 20 years, while drug overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States.
