Have you been living under a rock or is my definition of large public outcry vastly different? I hear about this more than I hear about climate change issues (b

Have you been living under a rock or is my definition of large public outcry vastly different? I hear about this more than I hear about climate change issues (but not as much as about gun violence, which causes far fewer deaths in the US). But what causes far greater deaths than even opioids, is avoidable medical errors. It's quite difficult to stop a highly addictive class of drugs which is backed by big business (legal or illegal). But that many avoidable medical errors in 2018, despite the high barriers to become a doctor? Maybe we shouldn't be treating this opioid problem so gravely after all. The more serious, more deadly, more costly problem of avoidable medical errors could be even the root cause of the addiction epidemic. I spent the better part of my adult life as an addict, and yet not one doctor out of the many that I saw acknowledged or noticed. Furthermore, on the occasions I did muster enough courage to ask them if the drugs were causing harm (three different non-opioid drugs at different periods of my life), I was shrugged off, the doctors saying that my symptoms do not match up, or otherwise downplaying the situation. I needed hard evidence that what I was doing was actually harming me or I saw no incentive to quit. By the time one does enough chronic use to be at risk of death, I imagine the addiction and habit is far too strong to easily break. So I'm of the opinion that the root cause is with the medical profession's apparent limitations. It's often very hard to get medical help in general until something is plain and obvious, highly common, or literally killing you, with the evidence needing to show up on examination or test. This is something that I could be vastly improved with AI doctors and open access to anonymized health data. But given how much of a fight the taxi cab driver union puts up (with self driving cars and even Uber), I won't hold my breath for the AMA to get behind the idea.