In Case You Haven't Heard…

Abstract

In a new chapter in the history of the American Medical Association (AMA), which might be titled “AMA vs. Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP),” the AMA sharply criticizes PROP (known for its affiliation with anti‐opioid activist and expert witness for the government Andrew Kolodny, M.D.) for accusing it of siding with the pharmaceutical industry by backing off from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) 2016 opioid guidelines. For the PROP letter, see https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.m4901/rr‐1. For the AMA's response, praised by pain patient advocacy organizations, see https://searchlf.ama‐assn.org/letter/documentDownload?uri=/unstructured/binary/letter/LETTERS/2021‐2‐19‐AMA‐Response‐Letter‐to‐PROP‐FINAL.pdf. The AMA has “always focused on a multipronged approach to help patients with pain, patients with a substance use disorder, and harm reduction efforts to help save lives from overdose and mitigate other harms,” the letter states. One of the harms of the prescribing guidelines, which the CDC itself said have been “misapplied” (although this admission wasn't made until opioid overdoses continued to increase long after prescriptions were cut back), was that pain patients continued to suffer. People didn't want to get needed procedures because they were told they would only get Tylenol for pain. The AMA's recommendations, which PROP opposed, “highlighted that the nation now faced a drug overdose epidemic fueled by multiple substances, combined, adulterated, and resulting in a staggering increase in death from illicitly manufactured fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin.” Also see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adaw.32764.