Monday, December 19, 2011

The Painkiller That Saves Money But Costs Lives

I don't think I know anyone who takes pain drugs, so I have no personal
knowledge. However, I found a short article about Methadone on the Seattle
Times web site recently when I was looking at Google Health news. Even the
summary seemed obviously suspicious, so I looked at the article.

To me, that article and all the data to which the Slashdot story linked screamed incompetence or fraud. Now that I've read a little of the linked data, I realize the writers are at least partly incompetent. Possibly only whoever started them looking was engaged in fraud to sell more expensive drugs.

I just discovered that I'm not the only one who thinks that. [nwsource.com] Short quotes, read the full comments:

"It does not matter if you switch every body to oxycontin or oxycodone. These drugs are terrible at controlling pain and all are very dangerous."

"... I have an issue with how the Seattle Times is drawing a correlation between poverty and methadone poisoning...."

Possibly Methadone is more often given to people who have little education, and who are therefore more likely to overdose because they didn't understand the instructions, or because they have other issues that confuse them.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/m9r8mNet09k/the-painkiller-that-saves-money-but-costs-lives

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