The corporation McKinsey is a hired gun, and in the case I describe today, the bullet is an opioid that has been loaded into the gun by physicians hired by McKinsey, as well as the physicians who hired McKinsey. McKinsey worked with physician-led Purdue Pharma – the maker of OxyContin (a narcotic pain medication similar to morphine) – to create and employ aggressive marketing and sales tactics to overcome physicians’ reservations about the highly addictive drugs.
More than 150 physicians work at McKenzie. And they helped to create the opioid crisis.
At about the same time as Oxycontin’s approval, the American Pain Society, led by physician Russell Portenoy, M.D., a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, introduced the “pain as the 5th vital sign” campaign, followed soon thereafter by the Veterans Health Administration adopting that campaign as part of their national pain management strategy. This declaration was adopted by most physicians but was not accompanied by the release of any device that could objectively measure pain, as was done with all previous vital signs, blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate and temperature, making the “fifth vital sign” the first and only subjective vital sign. Mr. Portenoy who took bribes from Purdue, would later admit to making false proclamations about the pain-person killer. Apparently Portenoy’s Complaint was that he didn’t make enough money being a physician.
One would expect the physician group, the AMA to have done something while the opioid crisis was at its height. Instead, the 12-module training suggested that physicians were still too tentative about prescribing narcotics. “The effectiveness of opioid therapy may be undermined by misconceptions about their risks, particularly risks associated with abuse and addiction,” read materials from one session. The class included ideas like “pseudoaddiction,” referring to when pain patients seem “inappropriately drug seeking,” but aren’t truly addicted—rather, they just needed more pills. In the fine print, the AMA-branded course materials reveal that the training’s development and distribution was made possible by an “educational” grant, otherwise known as a bribe, from Purdue Pharma. The bribe, according to Mother Jones – “between 2002 and 2018, the AMA and the organization’s philanthropic arm, the AMA Foundation, received more than $3 million from Purdue Pharma.” Worse still, the physician Richard Sackler, M.D., his physician brothers Arthur Sackler, M.D., Raymond Sackler, M.D., and Mortimer Sackler, M.D., oversaw the meteoric growth of OxyContin as the president and Board of Purdue, while Richard Sackler also sat on the board of directors of the AMA Foundation, the money grubbing arm of the AMA, from 1998 until 2004.
The bottom line – money flows hugely through the Medical-Industrial Complex, and at the core of the complex are physicians who control the system at all levels and are paid to treat, not heal. A privatized, deregulated system brought to new heights be Ronald Reagan,in the 1980s, made things worse. Many will do any treatment to a patient-victim, whether it works or not and whether it harms or not. Physicians also fake or improperly conduct clinical trials to bring more money making prescriptive drugs to market. Remember, only a physician can sell a prescription drug and there’s no incentive to sell or recommend anything else that can be sold by others. Opioids. like C-sections and heart stents, are egregious examples of treating for money without benefit, but only causing harm. Treating with opioids is a big moneymaker for physicians – if the addict you, they have a patient for life. Sadly, the physician’s patient for life often overdoses and dies earlier than expected, and the physician’s gravy train is lost.
Stem Cells, Health, Technology 