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., JULIE KILLINGWORTH, WILLIE GUINYARD BS., JOSEPH WEBSTER MD., MBA, BEVERLY C. PRINCE MD., FACS., RICHARD KAUL, MD., LEROY BAYLOR, 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
FEBRUARY 14, 2020
Julie Killingworth, Sarcoidosis Sufferer, Incurable Disabled Activist, and Native New Yorker. writes:
The CDC and the DEA have criminalized the treatment of my disease condition and these two United States agencies are directly responsible for causing needless suffering and needless deaths since 2016 in this country or for that matter around the world.
This is notwithstanding that thousands of medical providers, pharmacists, nurses have been imprisoned, loss their professional licenses, and billions of dollars of their properties illegally seized by this massive government fraud and overreach.
“At the helm of the debacle is Jane Ballantyne. All Anti-Narcotic crusaders hail Jane Ballentyne as a globally renowned expert as if she is the reincarnation of Jonas Salk. When cornered like rats with the truth they put out her name like a gun.
She is one of the Core Experts paid handsomely by Tom Frieden to write the 2016 Evidence-Based prescription guidelines redefining the definition of what qualifies as scientific evidence. Ballantyne is also the only core expert member who had any prior experience in pain management although the last time she was board certified was 1997.”
“Dr, Ballentyne, hadn’t been within arms reach of an actual patient in decades yet her “expert opinion” is held as the gold standard. I’d seriously question the accuracy of someone who claims to remember a recipe for a dip they haven’t made decades.”
A CONVERSATION WITH DR. RICHARD LAWHERN
OCTOBER 14, 2021
Few in the chronic pain community carry as much gravitas as Dr. Red Lawhern, and even fewer have his reach and influence. His research and insights have been cited in hundreds of medical journals and policy reports. His latest work can be found at – https://internationalpain.org/youarenotalone/
October 20, 2015
-CONTINUE-
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
THE CDC CORE OF NON-EXPERT:
“In its draft guideline document, CDC describes at length the steps it took to seat an unbiased panel, stating that it considered not only bias associated with employment as a consultant by pharmaceutical manufacturers, but also public statements made by experts, and a number of additional sources of bias. CDC asserts that it has succeeded in identifying an unbiased panel.
Yet, in the disclosures found in the CDC document, it is noted that Dr. Ballantyne, the only pain management expert in the Core Expert Group, has served as a paid consultant to a law firm that has aggressively shopped, to various levels of government, lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, alleging that those manufacturers are responsible for substantial harms to those government entities, resulting from adverse effects of opioid treatment that, in turn, resulted from illegal and/or inappropriate marketing practices by those manufacturers.
If the CDC was going to such great lengths to seat an unbiased panel, they should have easily identified that this law firm would undoubtedly be aided in litigating its cases by the establishment of a CDC clinical practice guideline recommending severe restrictions on the use of opioids.
Two members of the Core Expert Group, two designated reviewers in the Stakeholder Group, and one of the three experts assisting with the final draft of the guideline, all are members of the board of directors of an anti-opioid lobbying organization named Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.
This group has been extremely active in attempts to limit opioid use, including a Citizen Petition effort to convince the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the label indications for extended-release and long-acting opioids so as to limit their approved use to no more than 90 consecutive days and to doses at or below the equivalent of 100 mg of oral morphine daily, for all persons with non-cancer pain.
It should be noted that FDA denied this Citizen Petition on the basis of its review of the scientific evidence, opting instead to make minor, but still significant, changes to those label indications. Specifically, FDA found no evidence supporting either a duration or dose limit on these medications. (A copy of the FDA’s decision and its explanation is attached.) One of the recommendations contained in the draft guideline is that opioid doses above the equivalent of 90 mg of morphine daily be avoided.
American Academy of Pain Management FULL LETTER
It also should be noted that a long-time employee of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the home agency for this guideline, is a former member of the board of directors for Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing; his name appeared on the letterhead used to submit the Citizen Petition to FDA. The extent to which this individual participated in the guideline development process is unknown.
It is our contention that, if CDC intended to exclude experts who may have displayed a bias through their public statements and professional activities, it failed.
Several members of all three expert groups have written and spoken extensively and inaccurately about a supposed lack of utility for opioids in treating chronic pain, and several also have consulted with government agencies, non-governmental organizations engaged in addressing prescription drug abuse, and others, suggesting ways in which to limit opioid use.
It is not known to us if any of these individuals might also have consulted with for-profit entities such as workers’ compensation insurance companies.
We remain concerned that the biases of expert consultants have not been fully disclosed, and that some members of these groups perhaps should have been excluded.”
FOR NOW, YOU ARE WITHIN
THE NORMS
