The Man-made Opioid Epidemic: Part 3 – Opioids Are The Tip of the Iceberg.

NOAA Mike Magee The Man-made American Opioid Epidemic represents a supply chain failure and a management challenge if system flaws are to be corrected. In its simplest terms, the process involves approval, production, distribution, prescribing, dispensing, and consuming. For all pharmaceuticals, the goal should be to personalize and customize the prescription with the intent of […]

The Man-Made Opioid Epidemic: Part 2 – Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs.

CDC Mike Magee In part 1 of this 5-part series, the focus was on responsibility, which is multiple and shared by pharmaceutical companies, physicians and their representative organizations, state legislators and state medical boards coerced to ease regulatory oversight, and criminal profiteers. The scope of the problem was also writ large: a 5-fold increase in […]

The Man-Made Opioid Epidemic: A 5 Part Series.

CDC: Connecting Dots, Opioids-Heroin. Mike Magee As we learned last week, the opioid epidemic that we’ve been debating for a decade, which has been largely fueled by prescription drugs, has now managed to bend the survival curve for middle aged white males in America. And there’s plenty of blame to go around. There’s the pharmaceutical […]

CDC Methodology: Explaining The Rise In Autism Spectrum Disorder Prevalence.

Mike Magee The results of the recent 2014 CDC survey of childhood developmental diasabilities, on first glance last week, turned more than a few heads. The dramatic, but simplistic take-away was that lifetime prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) had jumped from 1.25% based on data from 2011 to 2013, to 2.24% based on 2014 […]

When Knowledge Creates Potential for Demand: MRI Detection of Silent MI’s.

Mike Magee In the November 10th issue of JAMA, devoted to cardiovascular disease, David Bluemke, NIH Director of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, and his team, revealed a set of findings certain to draw mixed reviews from health economists and policy professionals. It seems that quite a few more people than we had realized are walking […]