Don’t believe me? Watch this.

Rising Painkiller Addiction Shows Damage From Drugmakers’ Role in Shaping Medical Opinion

A closer look at the opioid painkiller binge — retail prescriptions have roughly tripled in the past 20 years — shows that the rising sales and addictions were catalyzed by a massive effort by pharmaceutical companies to shape medical opinion and practice.

Opioids are a class of powerful drugs, often used for pain, that includes morphine, heroin and brand names such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet.

For years, doctors had been cautious about prescribing opioids to anyone except patients with cancer or in acute pain.

But drug manufacturers and some pain specialists helped create a body of scientific research assuaging the long-standing worries about opioids and pushed to expand the use of the drugs in people with chronic pain — bad backs, arthritis, sore knees.

Their studies reported minimal risks of addiction and dependence. These, in turn, were accepted by the FDA and the nation’s medical journals. State medical boards made their rules for prescribing opioids more liberal. Academic and industry articles dismissed the old fears as “opiophobia.”

These reports reached doctors through marketing efforts and told them that there were few risks in using opioids to treat chronic pain.

But according to a Washington Post examination of key scientific papers, a court document and FDA records, many of those claims were developed in studies supported by Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, or other drug manufacturers. In addition, the conclusions they reached were sometimes unsupported by the data, and when the FDA was struggling to come up with an opioid policy, it turned to a panel populated by doctors who had financial relationships with Purdue and other drugmakers.

Hugo Chavez Suffers New Complications in Cancer Fight - Indian Express

President Hugo Chavez’s new complications after cancer surgery prompted his closest allies to call for Venezuelans to pray for him on Monday, presenting an increasingly bleak outlook and prompting growing speculation about whether the ailing leader has much longer to live.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro looked weary and spoke with a solemn expression as he announced in a televised address from Havana on Sunday that Chavez now confronts “new complications” due to a respiratory infection nearly three weeks after his operation. He described Chavez’s condition as delicate.

The streets of Caracas were abuzz on Monday with talk of Chavez’s increasingly tough fight, while the news topped the front pages of the country’s newspapers.

“He’s history now,” said Cesar Amaro, a street vendor selling newspapers and snacks at a kiosk in downtown Caracas. He motioned to a daily on the rack showing side-by-side photos of Maduro and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, and said politics will now turn to them.

Cops: Woman Rams SUV Into Teen Over Walmart Parking Space

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A Bartow County school board member faces misdemeanor charges after deputies said she hit a teenager with her SUV during a dispute over a Walmart parking spot, Channel 2 Action News reports.

Deputies arrested Angela Cornett on Friday after the parking space altercation, according to Channel 2.

According to a police report, a 17-year-old girl stood in a parking spot at the Cartersville Walmart to hold it for a friend who had just given birth.

She didn’t want the friend to have to walk too far into the store. But when Cornett arrived in her SUV, deputies said she wanted the space too, and that led to a verbal disagreement.

“She told her to move and then she pulled into the parking spot and hit her with the tire of the vehicle,” said Bartow County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jonathan White. “They did see scuff marks on the victim’s knee, which was consistent with the height of the tire during that incident.”

In the report Cornett claimed she told the teen to move and as she pulled into the space, the teen “leaned against her vehicle and started to yell, ‘She hit me.’” In the report, Cornett’s daughter corroborated her mother’s story, according to Channel 2.

But when deputies examined the Walmart security camera video, they told Channel 2 it showed “the SUV stops as (the teen) stands in the parking space and suddenly accelerates. (The teen) is struck by the vehicle, and she is physically moved by the force of the vehicle.”

A Kansas sperm donor who was ordered to pay child support for the baby he helped a lesbian couple conceive plans to fight back in court, and suggested he might be a victim of bias against same-sex parenting.

Actually, I think this is probably an attack on I.V.F. in and of itself. Regardless of the sexual orientation of the couple (though that is playing a part in this), Evangelical Christians have never approved of I.V.F, and if by going after the Donors for financial support for the resulting Child in the event of a failed relationship, they can discourage participation in such activities, I believe they will (and are doing) so with this case. Would you donate sperm if you knew that you may become financially liable for the resulting child?

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of Our National Dialogue which is, as we know, what Rachmaninoff would have come up with had he written the Quaalude In C# Minor.

Before we begin with this week’s gobshitery, and what a motherlode there is, what with the president stopping in on a special Holiday Edition of Disco Dave’s Disco Dance Party, the well-known conservative intellectual journal Human Events —or, as it’s known around the magazine rack at the cigar store, Highlights For Wingnuts— would like to correct the record. Earlier, the Dumbest Man On The Internets had busted wide open the story that the Hilldebeast was “too busy” to testify about why she personally killed four people in Benghazi because she was jet-setting around the Caribbean with the Beautiful People. This proved to be in error. TDMOTI was contacted by the State Department.

This afternoon the State Department wrote Human Events and told us Hillary and Bill Clinton did not travel to the Dominican Republic today as was reported. Philippe Reines at the State Department said the Clintons are not in the Dominican Republic. The Clintons are not going to the Dominican Republic. Phillippe then added, “We likely disagree on just about everything, but surely we can agree that posting a lie is far different than posting an opinion.” We are posting this as a correction to our earlier post.

The Secretary Of State, as it happens, is presently luxuriating in that famous playground of the rich and famous, New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she is being treated for a serious condition involving a blood clot. While I’m sure Jim Hoft will be dressing up as a Candy Striper and working the halls to make sure that the Secretary is not being fed mojitos intravenously, Human Events, at the moment, regrets the error, but not its very existence, which is unfortunate.

Read more: Daily Politics Blog - Charles P. Pierce - Political Blogging - Esquire esquire.com

Link

According to Politco the Secretary of State has a blood clot between her brain and her skull. She is on blood thinners and will be released “once the medication dose has been established.’ Read the article at Poltico:politico.com

“Land of the Pakistanis” and “wee fat jews”, whine the Corries:

vs

“We’re all scotland’s story and we’re all just the same.”