The Future of Physician Prescribing: An Historical Perspective

Mike Magee The right to prescribe medicines has been a privilege granted by our society with near exclusivity to physicians. It has been actively protected from encroachment by physician organizations usually on the basis that the physicians education and training is clearly superior to others and translates into better prescribing decisions. This privilege has also […]

Testosterone: Another Case of Physician Enabled Drug Abuse

Ad From MedicineNet.com Mike Magee Is testosterone the next Oxycontin? It certainly has many of the same earmarks. It’s widespread abuse is being aided and abetted by sloppy prescribers. Its’ benefits are being exaggerated and its’ risks understated. It is associated with heavy marketing by pharmaceutical companies and a range of profit seeking intermediaries. And […]

Iglehart and Thompson: Does the AMA Need “A Different Model of Advocacy”?

John Iglehart and Jeff Thompson MD The AMA’s vigorous opposition this week to the FDA’s consideration of mandating training for opioid prescribers to curb the current opioid epidemic (which the AMA’s liberal policies toward specialty designation and pharmaceutical underwriting helped create), called to mind the words in 2009 of Gundersen-Lutheran neonatologist and CEO, Jeff Thompson in […]

AMA’s New Sunbeam Crisis: The AMA Federation’s “Trojan Horse”

Source:Wikipedia Mike Magee In August, 1997, the leadership of the AMA ignited an existential crisis by agreeing to loan their imprimatur to the Sunbeam corporation. The imprimatur, along with an AMA endorsement, was to be assigned to Sunbeam products in nine home-care categories including heating pads, vaporizers and blood pressure cuffs. In return, the Florida […]

The Man-made Opioid Epidemic: Part 5 – Quality Control of AMA Federation Societies.

CDC: Rx Drug Overdoses Mike Magee “Since the desire of man to alter his state of consciousness is as old as human history, and technology continues to provide a breathtaking array of drugs capable of producing everything from oblivion to nirvana, I think it safe to assume that we may never win a ‘war’ against […]

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: 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 […]