In 2010, a faint alarm sounded.

Esteemed science journals began to realize that intractable pain patients were soon to be damaged if hysteria being whipped up by Dr. Kolodny and his esteemed friends in the pharmaceutical industry, who had much stake in the rise of buprenorphine (enough to keep tweaking its formulation to keep the patent), were to be taken seriously.

The esteemed scientific journal Cochrane published a study entitled, “Opioids for Treatment of Long-term Noncancer Pain” .

The authors arrived at the conclusion:

…proper management of a type of strong painkiller (opioids) in well-selected patients with no history of substance addiction or abuse can lead to long-term pain relief for some patients with a very small (though not zero) risk of developing addiction, abuse, or other serious side effects”.

The authors added a caveat that their study had the parameters of a shorter window of time than other medication review studies, simply due to humanity.

Plainly put, a control group of intractable pain patients can only be asked to go so long without pain relief in a civilized society for the purposes of medical research.

This is a particularly sad and astonishing fact to ponder, as medical professionals are daily force tapering and abruptly cutting off intractable pain patients’ prescribed opioid medications and anxiety medications that they have taken for many years at stable doses, as directed, with no signs of substance abuse.

Yet, the research community feels this is too inhumane to do for study purposes.

In addition, the National Institutes of Health also published a paper supported by the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch, entitled “Access to pain treatment as a human right”, in which the authors argue:

“According to international human rights law, countries have to provide pain treatment medications as part of their core obligations under the right to health; failure to take reasonable steps to ensure that people who suffer pain have access to adequate pain treatment may result in the violation of the obligation to protect against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

State Legislators began to implement tracking programs in their states, called the Physician Drug Monitoring Program or PDMP.

In some states known as the PDMD: the Prescription Drug Monitoring Database.

This program was slipped into states without a single person voting.

Many had no idea it was even in place.

No consent was given, indeed, it was never asked for in the first place.

It is a controlled substance tracking system, which pharmacies use to see where a patient gets controlled medications, and how much each patient receives.

In classic government style, calls to track *all* prescriptions have been heard, as well as increasing pressure on Congress by stakeholders to implement a National PDMP database.

Nebraska has caved to date and begun tracking every single prescription dispensed in its borders. We see yet again, a personal tragedy fueled this law, not any actual data or science.

Not a single word about patient privacy, patient rights, or patient informed consent is in any of these conversations.

If we don’t mention it, it isn’t a problem, seems to be the prevailing attitude.

Supposedly to control “double dipping”, this program has become a 1984-type program with the boot squarely on the throat of chronic pain patients and their physicians.

Former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions weaponzied the PDMP systems to target the few sane, independent physicians left who were treating painful disease patients the way they had been trained to do so.

In these cases, if the doctor also had any assets in his name?

An arcane law was applied to them called asset forfeiture.

This controversial law came from the government’s efforts of attempting to stop cartel leaders and Mafia dons from fleeing the country with huge assets in hand.

Applying it to the average citizen was the brainchild of California senator Kamala Harris, and Jeff Sessions embraced the idea wholeheartedly.

In some states rampant abuse of this system occurs, with no punishment.

Veterinary offices have full access to the state PDMP, though they treat animals and not people, and HIPAA does not apply remotely to veterinarians.

There is absolutely no way on earth to legally justify this.

Law enforcement also has access to the PDMP system in some states.

Additionally, in some states as well as in some pharmacy chains nationwide, there is an added program named NarxCare, brought to you by Appriss, Inc., a private company in Louisville, KY, in which the physician can enter a patient’s name and date of birth, and the computer will use an algorithm to decide whether or not that patient “deserves” to receive prescribed pain medication according to the “score” received by the algorithm.

The algorithm searches the state database and decides this “score” based on how many prescriptions have been filled of what medications and in what amounts.

These algorithms are proprietary, so little is known of their formula, however what IS known is that they do not take into consideration diagnosis, scans, labs, genetics, surgeries, length or time of conditions, doctor patient relationships or any other variable outside the medication and amount.

What kind of medical practice is this?

What is the point of a $100,000 + medical education if a physician is going to push a button to decide care instead of using their education?

Why are algorithms being used to determine worth of human suffering, a very personal and subjective experience that a machine cannot possible determine the worth of?