slimvictor
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American Pain Foundation Shuts Down as Senators Launch Investigation of Prescription Narcotics
As the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation Tuesday into makers of narcotic painkillers and groups that champion them, a leading pain advocacy organization said it was dissolving "due to irreparable economic circumstances."
The American Pain Foundation, which described itself as the nation’s largest organization for pain patients, was the focus of a December investigation by ProPublica in The Washington Post that detailed its close ties to drugmakers.
The group received 90 percent of its $5 million in funding in 2010 from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides for patients, journalists and policymakers had played down the risks associated with opioid painkillers while exaggerating the benefits.
It is unclear whether the group's announcement Tuesday evening — that it would "cease to exist, effective immediately" — was related to letters sent earlier in the day from Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the finance panel chairman, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to the foundation, drug companies and others.
In the letters, the senators cited an "an epidemic of accidental deaths and addiction resulting from the increased sale and use of powerful narcotic painkillers," including popular brand names like Oxycontin, Vicodin and Opana.
Growing evidence, they wrote, suggests that drug companies "may be responsible, at least in part, for this epidemic by promoting misleading information about the drugs' safety and effectiveness."
(...)
The senators are targeting a who's who of the pain industry, seeking extensive records and correspondence documenting the links, financial and otherwise, between them and the makers of the top-prescribed narcotic painkillers.
Letters went to three pharmaceutical companies, Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson, as well as five groups that support pain patients, physicians or research: the American Pain Foundation, American Academy of Pain Medicine, American Pain Society, Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group, and the Center for Practical Bioethics.
The Federation of State Medical Boards, the trade group for agencies that license doctors, received a letter, as did The Joint Commission, an independent nonprofit that accredits hospitals nationwide and made pain management a national priority in 2001.
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2003 noted that the commission partnered with Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, to distribute pain educational materials nationwide. The committee's letter to Purdue noted that the company pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it misled regulators, physicians and consumers about Oxycontin's risk of addiction.
cont at
http://www.propublica.org/article/s...ties-to-pain-groups?google_editors_picks=true
As the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation Tuesday into makers of narcotic painkillers and groups that champion them, a leading pain advocacy organization said it was dissolving "due to irreparable economic circumstances."
The American Pain Foundation, which described itself as the nation’s largest organization for pain patients, was the focus of a December investigation by ProPublica in The Washington Post that detailed its close ties to drugmakers.
The group received 90 percent of its $5 million in funding in 2010 from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides for patients, journalists and policymakers had played down the risks associated with opioid painkillers while exaggerating the benefits.
It is unclear whether the group's announcement Tuesday evening — that it would "cease to exist, effective immediately" — was related to letters sent earlier in the day from Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the finance panel chairman, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to the foundation, drug companies and others.
In the letters, the senators cited an "an epidemic of accidental deaths and addiction resulting from the increased sale and use of powerful narcotic painkillers," including popular brand names like Oxycontin, Vicodin and Opana.
Growing evidence, they wrote, suggests that drug companies "may be responsible, at least in part, for this epidemic by promoting misleading information about the drugs' safety and effectiveness."
(...)
The senators are targeting a who's who of the pain industry, seeking extensive records and correspondence documenting the links, financial and otherwise, between them and the makers of the top-prescribed narcotic painkillers.
Letters went to three pharmaceutical companies, Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson, as well as five groups that support pain patients, physicians or research: the American Pain Foundation, American Academy of Pain Medicine, American Pain Society, Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group, and the Center for Practical Bioethics.
The Federation of State Medical Boards, the trade group for agencies that license doctors, received a letter, as did The Joint Commission, an independent nonprofit that accredits hospitals nationwide and made pain management a national priority in 2001.
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2003 noted that the commission partnered with Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, to distribute pain educational materials nationwide. The committee's letter to Purdue noted that the company pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it misled regulators, physicians and consumers about Oxycontin's risk of addiction.
cont at
http://www.propublica.org/article/s...ties-to-pain-groups?google_editors_picks=true
