[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Health.]
By Jerry Rogers
Real Clear Health
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only led to enormous direct and indirect death in the U.S., but it has also incited an unprecedented and shocking overdose crisis.
The American Medical Association issued an October Issue Brief saying that it “is greatly concerned by an increasing number of reports from national, state, and local media suggesting increases in opioid—and other drug-related mortality—particularly from illicitly manufactured fentanyl.” And since the pandemic’s onset, “more than 40 states have reported increases in opioid-related mortality.”
In a December alert, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a substantial increase in fatal drug overdoses coinciding with the closures and other measures taken to control the pandemic. “The US has seen a substantial increase in fatal drug overdoses and set a record for deaths from overdoses. This represents a worsening of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States and is the largest number of drug overdoses for a 12-month period ever recorded," the CDC alert said.
According to the CDC, the 12-month count of opioid deaths increased 38.4%, and its Health Alert documented a “98% increase in synthetic opioid deaths in 10 Western states. After declining 4.1% from 2017 to 2018, the number of overdose deaths increased 18.2% from the 12 months ending in June 2019 to the 12 months ending in May 2020.”
For clarity, the CDC confirmed that these grim numbers represent “a worsening of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States and is the largest number of drug overdoses for a 12-month period ever recorded.”
The statistics—the sheer numbers of lives lost—are dire.
Still, we have seen at least one thing go right this year. The bio-pharmaceutical sector came through with a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. Innovation was able to bend science to our aspirations. What usually takes up to ten years, America’s innovative bio-pharmaceutical companies accomplished – the design and testing of a new vaccine – in less than ten months. Nothing short of remarkable – miraculous really – in the history of science and medicine.
By now we are all familiar with the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine (and myriad other companies are right behind Pfizer with effective vaccines ready for market). As I write these words, the first shots are being administered to frontline health-care workers. For the first time during the COVID-19 crisis, I can state with confidence that the end of the coronavirus pandemic is finally in sight.
The great irony here is that Big Pharma is usually treated as a political boogeyman. A recent piece in Bloomberg captured Pharma’s image thusly, “At the end of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started, the two best-known faces of the pharmaceutical business were the imprisoned Martin Shkreli and the lawsuit-laden opioid makers at Purdue Pharma LP. The rest of the industry was perhaps best known for the skyrocketing prices of its medicines.”
Not a good look, to say the least. However, the coronavirus vaccine is an example of pharma companies working diligently alongside researchers, regulators, and others to bring real and tangible benefits to millions of Americans – and indeed billions of people around the world.
This may be a high point for Big Pharma’s image in modern America – because sadly away from the celebrations around the vaccine, problems with the opioid epidemic are looming large. Those problems have never really gone away – they have simply been on the back burner during the COVID crisis.
One of those responsible for the opioid crisis – the UK pharma firm Reckitt Benckiser, which was fined $1.4 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice for aggressive marketing of opioid addiction products – is now back in the headlines. Reckitt has filed a massive lawsuit against its former subsidiary, Indivior, in an attempt to effectively claw back that $1.4 billion that it agreed to pay the U.S. government as penalty for the suffering caused by the company’s actions.
It gets worse. Not only would the lawsuit essentially mean that Reckitt would get off scot-free (not have to pay a financial penalty for its role in opioid epidemic) – but it would also directly fleece US taxpayers. How so? Because Indivior reached its own settlement, with authorities, but the payment structure means that it has not yet handed over the cash. If Indivior is now forced to pay $1.4 billion to Reckitt, it would likely lead to bankruptcy and the authorities – and we taxpayers – can forget about the $600 million Indivior agreed to pay in its settlement.
A year ago, who would have guessed that big, bad pharma would be getting credit for saving the world? The COVID-19 vaccine is a medical miracle, and the industry is rightly getting the credit for it. To cement this new support, though, the opioid crisis must also be resolved.
Overdose deaths have hit new highs and it seems that some in the industry care less about fighting addiction and helping to prevent fatal overdoses, and more about fighting legal battles to swindle American taxpayers.
Jerry Rogers is the editor of RealClearHealth and the host of the 'Jerry Rogers Show' on WBAL NewsRadio.
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Health.]
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