| Not to absolve Purdue's responsibility in this, but I do think this exposes the fraud that is the US healthcare system. First and foremost, it illustrates that drug regulation is basically a failure, and that the FDA and physicians cannot be trusted as sole authorities on drug safety. There needs to be more diversity of authority. You say "unless doctors ran their own studies" as if it is not the responsibility of physicians to be thinking critically about scientific information about drugs, in terms of who is providing the information and how to respond as scientists. Your statement basically assumes that doctors are not competent to evaluate and conduct scientific research. Why shouldn't doctors run their own studies? Maybe not each physician, by why don't they as a group? Why doesn't a large hospital run a trial? A conglomerate? It's not that difficult given the magnitude of the consequences involved and the frequency of prescription. It is the job of the medical community to be proactive participants in scientific process, especially when clinical consequences are on the line. That we've reached a point where we lay the responsibility of critical evaluation at the lap of the corporation says as much about the fault of the physicians and FDA as it does about the corporations. It's kind of like saying that an individual who knows a child is being abused but goes out of their way to transport the kid day after day to the abuser without reporting it bears no responsibility because they weren't abusing the child themselves. Anyone involved in the healthcare system knew that oxy was an addictive substance and there were rampant problems. The idea that someone with an MD shouldn't have a clue that increasing the dose would lead to greater problems is absurd--it's like claiming that a chemical engineer shouldn't understand that adding jet fuel to a fire wouldn't increase the blaze. Acting like physicians were innocent victims is a joke. The corporations and physicians were both complicit. Either that, or they were incompetent. It can't be neither. The FDA and physician groups need to be dethroned from their perches. |