War on drugs and CDC

                           Doctors For Equal Rights For Physical And Mental Pain

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       Founding members Siobhan Reynolds Kevin Byers Vanessa Mullin Alen J Salerian

 War on drugs and CDC: Vital importance of institutional integrity

 Pat Lorenz butterfly theory says initial minor errors could be catastrophic.

Alen J Salerian MD

February 22, 2015

    History and Patrick Lorenz may help us understand the unintended collateral damage from  the war on drugs.   Pat Lorenz observed the sensitive dependence of complex systems on initial errors. Or simply the observation that sometimes minor errors could be catastrophic.

  It is helpful to study   the Vietnam War with  Lorenz paradigm .

  President Johnson, Robert McNamara, Mc George Bundy Gen. LeMay  declared war on Vietnam.    50.000 Americans and 1,5 million Vietnamese perished.

 What was the initial error? Over estimating the Soviet power.

  How come? Because Allen Dulles and CIA successfully tweaked secret data and statistics to greatly magnify the Soviet prowess.

    Before Kennedy , Eisenhower was undermined by  the U2 crises , a brainchild of Allen Dulles. It was difficult to portray Eisenhower as a weak leader  or a communist sympathizer .

   It was easier to portray a young president as a communist sympathizer. The Stripes and Stars reinforced this misperception of Kennedy so much that a young Army officer predicted JFK's demise weeks before November 22, 1963.(Col. Prouty's book, JFK assassination and CIA )

    Little tweaking of statistics here , a few twisting words there portrayed JFK  a soft leader .  The successful misinformation – the initial error – pave the way for the JFK assassination and the Vietnam War.

  A good many influential Americans  believed that if we did not attack Vietnam ,Vietnam would attack us . Another , man-made initial wrongful assumption with disastrous consequences.

     The initial wrongful assumption of the war on drugs and doctors has been built upon minor initial  errors. CDC has been broadcasting a nonexistent epidemic of deaths from prescription pain medication overdoses. The vital statistics have been tweaked to greatly magnify the dangers of prescription pain medications.   Equally harmful has been the man-made confusion of illicit drugs -intravenous heroin or cocaine- with pain relief medications. The difference is huge.

   In general long-acting pain medications are not abusable . Diversion comes from man-made government-sponsored shortage of pain medications..

 Simply you cannot take Opana ER (oxymorphone) or put a fentanyl (duragesic)  and get high. For a substance to elicit euphoria it must work quickly and have a relatively short half-life. Therefore  fentanyl and Opana ER  are relatively safe.

   The same is true about  Marinol  (dronabinol) a medicinal THC. When you smoke marijuana you get high quickly. With Marinol you can not get high. You may relax.

 The crucial pharmacological properties of various substances have been consistently overlooked in  newspaper and television stories that often highlight an erroneous message : pain medications are ravaging America.

   The reality is millions of Americans with chronic pain or addiction have been deprived of  consumer friendly relief. Science says   chronic pain may lead to brain damage, depression ,Alzheimer's and premature death.

    There are some 110 million Americans with chronic pain (Institute of medicine report). Hence, the potential harmful consequences of CDC initial error could be catastrophic at the expense of people with mental and physical pain. In medicine and politics there is no room for minor errors. The best weapon against man-made disasters is knowledge and institutional integrity.