TV documentary on pain treatment funded by doctor with industry ties
www.statnews.com/2017/03/24/pain-documentary-public-television/
Public television stations across the country have begun airing a documentary about pain treatment produced by a doctor with significant financial ties to the manufacturers of opioid medications — a fact not disclosed in the program.
“The Painful Truth” chronicles the plight of several patients struggling to find effective treatment for chronic pain. Throughout the 57-minute-long program, politicians, federal agencies, and others are depicted as having overreacted to the epidemic of opioid-related overdoses; the documentary suggests pain specialists have been discouraged from prescribing opioids to patients who genuinely need them.
The program accuses the US Drug Enforcement Agency of unfairly targeting pain doctors and putting a “bounty” on pain clinics the agency aims to shut down.
“The political culture has declared war against opioids and those who prescribe them,” the narrator of the program says. “The DEA is the army. The pain patients are the civilians caught in the middle.”
The producer, Dr. Lynn Webster of Utah, and several of the experts he quotes in the program, have long-standing and extensive financial relationships with pain medicine makers. When asked why these relationships are not disclosed to viewers, Webster told STAT that he did not receive any drug industry funding for the documentary. He said it was funded entirely by himself and his wife.
“I am cognizant of that issue, but I think I dealt with it as carefully as I could,” he said in an interview. If viewers want to know whether any of the individual doctors associated with the documentary have financial relationships with pharmaceutical makers, Webster said they can search for that information on the web.
Filed under: General Problems
I don’t care who funded it because I saw the show and it was right on the spot. Everything that was happening to these 4 people on this video have been happening to thousands of thousands of chronic pain patients. Maybe instead of condemning who funded the video you showed watch it because everything discussed were items you have mentioned about how badly and unfair chronic pain patients have treated by the healthcare system. I though it was excellent.
Sooo what??!!!,,,this is about being humane to human beings in physical pain,,,,not a pill,,,,,,,unlike thee addiction ties/side,,who are NOT being humane,,who think they have rite to decide who suffers in physical pain and who does not,,,thus thinking that have rite too INFLICT severe physical pain onto another human being in severe physical pain from a medical conditions,,,,big difference,,,one,,,is trying to be humane,,,thee addiction jerks are being hitlers,,,mary