Almost everything I know about chronic pain I learned while working in hospice palliative care, where pain management was one of the most important components in easing the end-of-life suffering of our patients. But even before then, one April morning in 1983, I listened to my father’s oncologist tell our family:
“We are reluctant to give him morphine for his pain because it’s addictive.”
My Dad, who had been diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer, died nine hours after that pronouncement. But at least he wasn’t an addict when he died. Continue reading
Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug company (at least until their blockbuster cholesterol drug 
November 11, 2011 was a happy day for Big Pharma. That’s the day when The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute issued new guidelines recommending that every child’s first cholesterol check should occur before the kid hits puberty, between the age of 9-11. As the Wall Street Journal 
When my son Ben came down with another killer sore throat this past summer, he went to his doctor for an antibiotics prescription. He’d suffered this condition in the past, and he knew just what would help ease his painful symptoms. Both he and the doctor agreed this sure sounded like strep, so without even having to wait for the throat swab test results for the group A Streptococcus bacteria that cause strep throat, Ben left the doctor’s office with a prescription for antibiotics in hand.
