Comment by notadoc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notadoc | Hacker News Reader

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> Stemming the flow of cheap fentanyl dumped into the United States by China

OK, and how's the "war on drugs" going thus far?

> Mental health professionals and managers at large drug companies need to start going to jail for over-prescribing psychiatric drugs.

Really? You want to put people into jail for trying to treat depression?

> throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for people.

And now you want to imprison doctors for treating pain and taking care of patients?

You can't be serious, I hope you are merely ignorant rather than that punitive.

BTW, prescriptions have nothing to do with illegal fentanyl overdoses, and virtually nobody prescribed painkillers becomes addicted to them. This is well studied but largely ignored by the political posturing, media hysteria, and moral panicking about an imaginary prescription crisis, data shows it does not exist.

"Overall 675,527 patients underwent urological surgery, of whom 0.09% were diagnosed with opioid dependence or overdose."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00225...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27400458

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3z98b/big-pharma-didnt-c...

Read facts and change your mind, or don't and remain ignorant. You have that freedom.

> OK, and how's the "war on drugs" going thus far?

The case with fentanyl is not like heroin, well established factories make it in China. It is within the Chinese governments power to stop the flow, this is a foreign policy issue. The fact that its not at all in the news is disturbing.

> Really? You want to put people into jail for trying to treat depression?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Secondly, this isnt "trying to treat depression", its a profit driven industry. SSRIs commonly do not outperform their placebo. Most of the recent adolescent mass shooters were on SSRIs!

> throwing doctors in jail who over prescribe these drugs would do wonders for people.

If Boeing engineers design an unsafe plane to squeeze out more profits and then line their pockets, which results in airplane crashes, they should go to jail. The same is true for healthcare.

Claiming that prescription opiods are not fueling the heroin and fentanyl crisis is a radical opinion. There was a massive lawsuit against the big pharma companies making money off these drugs. I'm not going to google research, its plain and simple.

Criminal doctors have been prescribing these drugs and making money off them. This has caused mass deaths and suicides.

Look at the chart of opion consumption on this page:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/nov/...

The number of opiod prescriptions year by year looks like the price of bitcoin. I dont need some study to try and convince me otherwise.

I'm doubtful the discussion will go anywhere productive but I think part of your argument is an assumption, "And now you want to imprison doctors for treating pain and taking care of patients?" because filling a role of a job to just prescribe medication isn't really trying and when we don't actually know what the outcome will be. Following a protocol isn't really trying is all.

Research from the past few years has been questioning if the brain will just adapt overtime while on medication to the point of becoming oversensitive when off the medication and where the normal state of the person gets worse. I've only read this about antipsychotics more so than antidepressants.

In any case much if not all research in the topic of mind altering medication is still in the infant years and should be read while being skeptic. Multiple unique life factors can make research very difficult to get right in this topic.

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