In Celine Gounder’s article Who is Responsible for the Pain-Pill Epidemic? we see one doctors’ search for who is to blame for the current state of opioid dependency in America.
What happened and how it happened occupy the first few pages of her article. In 1980 and in 1986 “two small accounts in medical journals” (Gounder) seemed to suggest that opioids weren’t that bad. “Between 1999 and 2010”, sales of opioids “quadrupled.” “By 2010, the United States…” was using “ninety-nine percent of the world’s hydrocodone.” Gounder makes plain that there is a connection between the journal articles and the explosion of opioid abuse.
The bulk of this article is a quest to determine who is responsible for the problem started with those two medical journals. The problem is a big one involving “seventeen thousand” deaths annually. Gounder wants to know who’s to blame for the increasing use of drugs which not only kill but carry potential side effects such as “constipation, sexual dysfunction, cognitive impairment, addiction, and overdosing.” …show more content…
She says they “aggressively market their products” and “funded nonprofits” which increased the use of and the popularity of opioids. They also recruited doctors like Russell Portenoy and the Joint Commission to gain “access to hospitals to promote OxyCotin.” Portenoy even admitted a “benefit [to] my own pocketbook.”
In addition to the drug company’s financial motivations, doctors carry some of the blame. Pressured by patients, “Doctors have a hard time saying no.” Their compassion for their patients along with the pressure from the drug companies puts doctors in a bind. Patients “Pressure physicians to satisfy their requests for the pain pills they’d begun hearing about.” Patient demands make them a candidate for blame as
What happened and how it happened occupy the first few pages of her article. In 1980 and in 1986 “two small accounts in medical journals” (Gounder) seemed to suggest that opioids weren’t that bad. “Between 1999 and 2010”, sales of opioids “quadrupled.” “By 2010, the United States…” was using “ninety-nine percent of the world’s hydrocodone.” Gounder makes plain that there is a connection between the journal articles and the explosion of opioid abuse.
The bulk of this article is a quest to determine who is responsible for the problem started with those two medical journals. The problem is a big one involving “seventeen thousand” deaths annually. Gounder wants to know who’s to blame for the increasing use of drugs which not only kill but carry potential side effects such as “constipation, sexual dysfunction, cognitive impairment, addiction, and overdosing.” …show more content…
She says they “aggressively market their products” and “funded nonprofits” which increased the use of and the popularity of opioids. They also recruited doctors like Russell Portenoy and the Joint Commission to gain “access to hospitals to promote OxyCotin.” Portenoy even admitted a “benefit [to] my own pocketbook.”
In addition to the drug company’s financial motivations, doctors carry some of the blame. Pressured by patients, “Doctors have a hard time saying no.” Their compassion for their patients along with the pressure from the drug companies puts doctors in a bind. Patients “Pressure physicians to satisfy their requests for the pain pills they’d begun hearing about.” Patient demands make them a candidate for blame as