4 ms·
Title should be "I was a drug rep. I know how pharma companies pushed opioids.", as per the original article. Here's a tl;dr of the article (quoted from the ar
by brenden2 7y ago
Title should be "I was a drug rep. I know how pharma companies pushed opioids.", as per the original article.
Here's a tl;dr of the article (quoted from the article itself) to save you a click:
> Medical students and doctors didn’t just learn how to assess and pay attention to patients’ pain — they also internalized the idea that prescribing opioids was a professional, even an ethical, obligation. Exaggerating the clinical significance of pain drastically expanded the market for opioids, bringing them to populations with a high risk for addiction, like adolescents.
- vo2maxer 7y agoThe code of conduct changed around 2009 as the author points out. Prior to that time it was a torrent of all kinds of expensive gifts, which were not restricted to opioid prescriptions. The higher the number of “scripts” a physician had, the more extravagant the giveaways. Interestingly, prior to the opioid frenzy, the culture was one of great restraint often leading to under medication of pain and unnecessary suffering for patients. This was superseded by the conviction that pain had to be eliminated if at all possible, it was a physician’s moral imperative to do so. Now in hindsight, it’s clear that Pharma was driving a lot of this ethos.