BY
NORMAN J CLEMENT RPH., DDS, NORMAN L.CLEMENT PHARM-TECH, MALACHI F. MACKANDAL PHARMD, BELINDA BROWN-PARKER, IN THE SPIRIT OF JOSEPH SOLVO ESQ., IN THE SPIRIT OF REV. C.T. VIVIAN, JELANI ZIMBABWE CLEMENT, BS., MBA., IN THE SPIRIT OF THE HON. PATRICE LUMUMBA, IN THE SPIRIT OF ERLIN CLEMENT SR., WALTER F. WRENN III., MD., WILLIE GUINYARD BS., JOSEPH WEBSTER MD., MBA, BEVERLY C. PRINCE MD., FACS., RICHARD KAUL, MD., LEROY BAYLOR, JULIE KILLINGWORTH, JAY K. JOSHI MD., MBA, ADRIENNE EDMUNDSON, ESTER HYATT PH.D., WALTER L. SMITH BS., IN THE SPIRIT OF BRAHM FISHER ESQ., MICHELE ALEXANDER MD., CUDJOE WILDING BS, MARTIN NDJOU, BS., RPH., IN THE SPIRIT OF DEBRA LYNN SHEPHERD, BERES E. MUSCHETT, STRATEGIC ADVISORS
CONT_
CDC, DOJ-dea false uno false omnibus
October 2019
Helen Borel RN., Ph.D. writes in her book American Agony; The Opioid War Against Patient in Pain:
“What tragedies the DOJ-DEA cabal is visiting on innocent doctors and their patients. The plight of pain care physicians for unjust imprisonments and Doctors deaths within a few months of DOJ-DEA incursion into their lives and professions.”
Human Rights Watch, is very concerned that pain patients are suffering as a direct result of the illegal actions by DOJ operatives who seem to have been awarded carte blanche to implement Hitlerian tactics, to answer to no one, to destroy doctors’ lives with the added fall-out being the destruction of pain patients’ lives.”
GHANA BOY PHARMD “OPIOID GUIDELINES MAJOR FLAWS“
OCTOBER 15, 2015
The makeup of groups advising CDC on guideline developMENT
FROM
Robert Twillman, Ph.D., FAPM
Executive Director
American Academy of Pain Management
TO:
The Honorable Fred Upton
Chairman
House Energy and Commerce Committee United States House of Representatives Washington, DC
Although CDC has not been transparent about the members of the Core Expert Group that helped it develop the initial recommendations, the Stakeholder Review Group, or the three experts who will assist it in developing a final draft, we are privy to this information because we are one of the stakeholder groups invited to review the draft. We find the makeup of these groups both puzzling and concerning. To wit:
Core Expert Group: This group of 17 individuals contains one person who is a bona fide pain management expert—Dr. Jane Ballantyne, a retired physician most recently from the University of Washington. The remaining members include five non-physicians and eleven physicians from a variety of medical specialties.
“_ this is a panel filled with individuals who are on the record as opposing the use of opioids to treat chronic pain in nearly all circumstances_”
For instance, one is a retired cardiologist who works for a state health department, while another is an emergency physician and medical toxicologist who, by virtue of his specialty, treats primarily acute pain and overdoses, rather than chronic pain.
Another is a neurologist who is best known for his nationwide advocacy of efforts to markedly curtail opioid prescribing. In sum, this is a panel filled with individuals who are on the record as opposing the use of opioids to treat chronic pain in nearly all circumstances.
By virtue of their work, they focus on the potential harms of opioid treatment without focusing on the potential benefits—which is not surprising, given that they come from backgrounds that do not expose them to people with pain who are successfully treated with opioids.
Stakeholder Review Group: Eighteen groups are identified as stakeholders, and each of those stakeholders has identified a point person. Here, the representation of pain management organizations is somewhat better: six of the 18 groups are specifically pain management provider organizations.
Another nine groups represent various medical specialties in which pain is prevalent; two represent people who have chronic pain, and one is an organization that has been prominent in efforts to curb opioid prescribing across all patient groups.
Final Review Group
This group consists of three physicians, one of whom is a pain management specialist. The remaining two members are an expert in outcomes research and healthcare communication, and an emergency medicine specialist and medical toxicologist who has published extensively with the toxicologist previously identified as a member of the Core Expert Group.
Interestingly, this individual’s website lists her research expertise as, “Evaluating methods to limit the initiation of new opioid users and modify opioid misuse through interventions in the ED, regionally and nationally.”
LACK OF A SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS
We are struck by two facts here: this has very limited applicability to the treatment of chronic pain, which is the supposed subject of the guideline; and that this is a public statement that the primary goal of her research is to reduce the total number of opioid prescriptions written, a fact that is inconsistent with the effort to develop a guideline addressing the prescription of opioids to manage chronic pain.
These groups, charged with developing a guideline on how best to use opioids to treat chronic pain, are overwhelmingly dominated by individuals with no apparent expertise in the subject, nearly devoid of groups representing and advocating for people with pain, and studded with a number of individuals who are publicly on record as opposing the use of opioids to treat most types of chronic pain. This leads us to our next source of concern.
FOR NOW, YOU ARE WITHIN
THE NORMS
- page 221,
2. American Academy of Pain Management 10/2015, (the Academy) to express our concerns about an effort underway by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop a guideline for prescribing of opioid analgesics to treat pain.
