Tag: reason.tv

Meet the Doctor Who Refuses to Stop Prescribing Opioids to Pain Patients

"I take the Hippocratic oath seriously that my job is to relieve pain and suffering," says Dr. Forest Tennant, a California pain specialist who patients from across the nation are flocking to see.

Tennant takes the patients turned away by doctors afraid to prescribe painkillers amidst the government's war on opioids.

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Pain patients from across the country who say they can't get the treatment and medication they need in their home states are flocking to a boundary-pushing pain specialist based in West Covina, California.

The problems these patients face stem from the opioid addiction and overdose crisis, which results in as many as 91 deaths a day in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The media and government have dubbed this problem the "opioid epidemic," and law enforcement agencies have reacted accordingly. Physicians are routinely arrested for overprescribing and running so-called "pill mills," and some states have filed lawsuits against pharmaceutical manufacturers. In 2016, the DEA clamped down on painkillers, reducing the allowed production of opioid medications by 25 percent or more. This year, the CDC issued guidelines advising avoid prescribing high doses over 90 morphine milligram equivalents.

Many physicians have even begun to adjust the way that they think about pain.

In a New England Journal of Medicine article, one of the pain specialists advising the CDC recommended that pain patients "use coping and acceptance strategies that primarily reduce the suffering associated with pain and only secondarily reduce pain intensity." That opioids are never an effective chronic pain treatment is quickly becoming conventional wisdom, and the American Medical Association has even begun to advise physicians to abandon the pain rating scale when assessing patients.

"I take the Hippocratic oath seriously, that my job is to relieve pain and suffering," says Dr. Forest Tennant. "So when I see the AMA decide that they're not going to assess pain, I'm not with them."

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Music by Kai Engel (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/kai_engel/) and Blue Dot Sessions (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/).

When Cops Play Doctor: How the drug war punishes pain patients

The steady stream of celebrity stories about prescription drug abuse makes Americans keenly aware of the dangers of overdosing on medications like OxyContin and Vicodin. And from President Obama's Drug Czar to California Attorney General Jerry Brown, politicians are calling for greater power to monitor doctor-patient relationships in order to fight the "epidemic" of prescription drug overdosing.

But maybe the real epidemic is underdosing. Countless Americans suffer with severe chronic pain because doctors are afraid to treat them properly.

Michael Jackson's death unleashed a flurry of media stories about all aspects of the pop star's life, including his alleged prescription drug abuse. On the same day countless millions watched Jackson's star-studded memorial service, reason.tv interviewed another musician.

Seán Clarke-Redmond, a man who enjoyed an active live before the neurodegenerative disease ALS, often referred to as Lou Gerig's disease, rendered him nearly immobile—he can no longer even play the piano.

The disease also left him in almost constant pain. Redmond is prescribed some medication, but not nearly enough to keep his pain under control. Dr. Frank Fisher says Redmond's case is an appallingly common one.

"Chronic pain in America is an enormously under treated disease," says Fisher, a Harvard-trained physician. "It's a public health disaster."

Pain specialists like Fisher and patients' groups like the Pain Relief Network battle law enforcement officials who are forever on the lookout for "pill mills" and patients who misuse pain medicine. Fisher notes that the same medications so often associated with celebrity addiction are the same medications that combat pain most effectively.

Fisher has treated his patients with high doses of opioids-that is, until a swat team raided his clinic and threw him behind bars.

"They were trying to give me 256 years to life," says Fisher who argues that fear of prosecution often prevents doctors from treating chronic pain patients effectively.

What allows doctors' medical decisions to be overruled by police?

"What we're dealing with is a mass insanity," says Fisher. "We call it the war on drugs."

"When Cops Play Doctor" is written and produced by Ted Balaker and hosted by Nick Gillespie. Director of Photography is Alex Manning, Associate Producers are Hawk Jensen and Paul Detrick.