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FDA approves painkiller 1,000 times more powerful than morphine
- dahdum 8y agoIt’s more potent but essentially like every other opiod in action. I think it’s far more worthwhile to reduce new prescriptions for OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin than worry about niche opioids like this.
- TylerE 8y agoPossibly unpopular opinion: we’d be better off giving out more scrips and having fewer people scoring who-knows-what on the street. So many heroin stories start with: Shen my doctor wouldn’t give me a refill.
- dahdum 8y agoI tried to clarify new prescription vs refill for this reason. Once they are hooked I do believe harm reduction is warranted.
- DougN7 8y agoVery hard to tell who is hooked. Someone close to me had been using opiods for many years and is still in terrible pain most days. This person’s meds keep getting cut due to opiod-fear, which just increases the misery. So please remember there are legitimate long term uses, even if that’s not what we see in the papers.
- code_duck 8y agoThe danger is in tainted illicit drugs, like we’ve seen with carfentanyl in recent years. Indeed that has to do with illegal drug supplies and overseas factories, and little to do with FDA approval.
- Someone1234 8y agoSeems like this was primarily designed for military applications. To quote the article: > The pill from AcelRx Pharmaceuticals contains the same decades-old painkiller often given in IV form or injection to surgical patients and women in labor. [..] The pills contain sufentanil, a chemical cousin of the opioid fentanyl. So this drug is already highly available in hospitals via IV, this turns the IV into a pill, and the primary use-cases seem to be on the battlefield (where placing an IV may be dangerous both for sanitary reasons but also for practical reasons, like bullets whizzing by). > Gottlieb noted the pill was a high priority for the Department of Defense, which helped fund testing, because it wanted a way to provide fast pain relief to injured soldiers. The tablet, placed under the tongue with a dispenser, starts reducing pain in 15 to 30 minutes. PS - Not trying to imply the pill is bad because it was designed for military usage, more trying to balance out the misleading title "FDA approves painkiller 1,000 times more powerful than morphine." That "1,000 times more powerful" drug is already common as heck and decades old, this is a new DELIVERY SYSTEM.
- dang 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18366321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18366321
- assblaster 8y agoPotency doesn't matter if the dosage is decreased 100-1000x on a weight basis. It does, however, matter in cases of illicit production when a milligram of the drug is enough to kill a horse.