| layout | title | description | Image |
|---|---|---|---|
default |
Book Review- Fentanyl, Inc. How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic |
This book provides a historical, scientific, political, and pharmacology overview of the drug Fentanyl and its many analogs. |
Saturday, November 16th 2019
Book Report: Fentanyl, Inc. How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
Amazon Purchase Link for Fentanyl Inc.
This book provides a historical, scientific, political, and pharmacology overview of the drug Fentanyl and its many analogs. “This book is the result of my interviews with 160 people, visits to drug sites and laboratories all over the world, and research drawn from hundreds of source materials” (p18).
- Opiates = drugs derived naturally from the opium poppy, like morphine (p25)
- Opiods = generally means similar chemicals made synthetically in labs, like fentanyl (p25)
- The American history of opiate abuse goes back to the revolutionary war and the term soldier’s disease, which was a disease defined by opiate addiction in the wounded military (p25)
- Purdue brought OxyContin to marker in 1996, touting its benefits as a slow-release pill that contained high doses of the opioid oxycodone - contin means “continuous” (p26-27)
- “During the 1990s another sea change swept American medicine; the desire to treat patients more humanely. Traditionally, doctors focused on four “vital signs” when caring for patients: their temperature, breathing rate, blood pressure, and pulse rate. But in the mid-1990s the American Pain Society called for pain to be considered a new “fifth vital sign.” Whereas doctors were previously reticent to prescribe opioids because they considered them addictive, the ramifications of the Jick-Porter letter caused their thinking to shift: if opioids were, in fact, safe, patients should not be consigned to agony. “It was not only okay, but it was our holy mission, to cure the world of its pain by waking people up to the fact that opiates were safe,” Boston pain specialist Dr. Nathanial Katz told journalistSam Quinones for his book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, describing the new conventional wisdom that took hold. “All those rumors of addiction were misguided ...My fellowship director even told me, ‘If you have pain, you can’t get addicted to opiates because the pain soaks up the euphoria.’”(p26)
<script>
/**
- RECOMMENDED CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT AND UNCOMMENT THE SECTION BELOW TO INSERT DYNAMIC VALUES FROM YOUR PLATFORM OR CMS.
- LEARN WHY DEFINING THESE VARIABLES IS IMPORTANT: https://disqus.com/admin/universalcode/#configuration-variables*/ /* var disqus_config = function () { this.page.url = "https://shea08.github.io/fentanyl"; // Replace PAGE_URL with your page's canonical URL variable this.page.identifier = "/fentanyl/"; // Replace PAGE_IDENTIFIER with your page's unique identifier variable }; */ (function() { // DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE var d = document, s = d.createElement('script'); s.src = 'https://shea08.disqus.com/embed.js'; s.setAttribute('data-timestamp', +new Date()); (d.head || d.body).appendChild(s); })();