100% correct yankee. Ask the former FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, how public sentiment is towards addictive pain killing drugs. She was forced to resign after she overruled her advisory panel and approved a powerful new opioid pain killer, Zohydro.
The Family and close friends of tens of thousands of pain killer overdose victims are as mad as hell and they are making a difference.
Hamburg called on to resign for FDA's approval of Zohydro
The FDA approved opioid painkiller Zohydro nearly a year ago as a med to provide relief for those with chronic pain. But the drug has been nothing but 11 months of aggravation for the agency and its leader, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, who is now being called on to resign by organized anti-addiction groups who say the FDA has contributed to an epidemic of abuse in the country.
"We are especially frustrated by the FDA's continued approval of new, dangerous, high-dose opioid analgesics that are fueling high rates of addiction and overdose deaths," says a letter to Hamburg's boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, according to CBS News. The letter is signed by about 15 groups.
An HHS spokesperson said Burwell would respond, adding that opioid abuse "is a serious issue and one that the secretary is focused on."
The approval of Zohydro and other painkillers has turned into a political hot potato for Hamburg, who has pointed out that 100 million people who suffer from chronic pain are looking for relief. But some doctors, prosecutors and politicians have pointed to rising rates of opioid addiction and overdose deaths, and the attendant crime, and called on the agency to stop approving new drugs in the category. Overdose deaths from painkillers tripled in the 20 years leading up to 2011.
The groups claim the agency is not in sync with a country overwhelmed by a drug problem and point to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation that doctors reserve high-powered painkillers for use on cancer patients and for end-of-life care. Most prescriptions are written, instead, for back pain and arthritis.
The letters says, "Dr. Hamburg's support for using opioids to treat chronic non-cancer pain is squarely at odds with efforts by the CDC to discourage this widespread practice." But FDA spokeswoman Erica Jefferson responded that "[p]reventing prescription opioid abuse and ensuring that patients have access to appropriate treatments for pain are both top public health priorities for the FDA."
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