Anyone watching Dopesick? (title edited by MNHQ at request of OP)

Doctors have no obligation to provide off-license drugs to anyone. Furthermore, they must not go beyond their expertise and GPs are not qualified endocrinologists. Consenting to treatment does not in any way relieve a doctor of their clinical responsibilities.

I can also recommend the Netflix series Painkiller about the activities of Purdue Pharma/The Sackler family and the FBI investigation against them (including the corruption within the FDA, that is also very pertinent to the matter of drugging so called gender dysphoric children). The brilliant Barbara Kingsolver novel, Demon Copperhead*, is also an excellent account of how drug companies target poor, rural areas.

*It is a modern reworking of David Copperfield, and an utterly wonderful novel, despite the bleak subject matter.

there was also significant overlap between pharmaceutical companies who made opioids and did Covid vaccines, so I could understand why so many Americans, particularly in communities hollowed out by opioids, were so desperately skeptical about the vaccines and the “reassurances”.

Absolutely. It's really opened my eyes to this. Not something I was aware of before. Made me realise how people with concerns were generally portrayed as stupid. So many sides to this issue. I also watched the Louis Theroux programme on heroin - same area, also touches on oxycontin and fentanyl and domestic violence. What a mess.

Another thing it mentions is the patient group they fund that makes it look like there is grassroots support. Drug companies do that in the UK too though often more subtly. B-interferon for MS is one such drug. But anytime you see patients on the BBC promoting some drug they have been on a trial of and how marvellous it is, there is likely to be a drug company in the shadows. The patient themselves is probably genuine (like the patients in the OxyContin ad in Dopesick) and some of the drugs may well be effective but there is the company behind them.

Not in the UK they don’t.

Agreed. I think there are some wonderful doctors out there who do genuinely care - all the doctors who resigned in protest from the Tavistock spring to mind. But so many over our doctors are over worked and understandably scared to make a fuss.

I believe most drs don’t question what they’re told via official channels, but at the same time think they are doing the right thing by their patients.
Those that do question and call out tend to be vilified and called conspiracy theorists.

It really does show that they create a drug and then create a market for it. We tend to believe that they start with a problem and look for a cure, but the reality is that they simply want to make money by any means necessary.

I think with puberty blocking drugs like Lupron they were actively looking for new markets. I was briefly given it for endometriosis and it was the worst experience of my life - talk about a sledgehammer to crack a nut!

But the thing that struck me most about Dopesick was that some of the doctors who were prescribing it genuinely thought they were helping. Seven years of medical training and they didn't realise that a heroin-type drug was going to be addictive. And this is what we're up against with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. There are some health care providers who just don't stop and think for themselves, and as consumers we are often too trusting.

Doctors believed that 'study' that proved Oxycontin was non addictive, yet the evidence was just a letter published in a journal. The evidence for gender affirmative 'care' is also incredibly shaky but in the US they are saying that the science is 'proven'.

Thank goodness for the Cass review.

I haven't seen the series of Dopesick, but can recommend the book. The percentage of Americans on some kind of medication is astounding.

Pharmaceutical companies prioritising money over patients is how they operate.
Whilst the UK appears to be more regulated there is still far too much pharm involvement in training medics and vets, and too much incentivising to encourage use of their drugs.
Anyone watching Dopesick or Painkiller is naive to believe that the approach to testing, approving and marketing OxyContin is a one off.
A large proportion of FDA funding comes from pharmaceutical companies.
The whole thing is unethical.

There is another interesting programme to watch on iPlayer.

Panorama, The Antidepressant Story. Subtitle; the companies trying to conceal concerns about their antidepressants.

Want to post more but now time.

It's worth noting that "inclusion" comes from the "social model" for disability. This is about making society more accessible for those with disabilities.

I find it very ironic that gender affirming care is seen as A Great Idea and then "trans" is all about inclusion. As it's completely at odds with true inclusion- which is about changing environments, not the individual. They're "fixing" the individual to look different and inline with gender stereotypes.

Obviously there are some issues and positives with both the medical model and social models for disability, context is key. medical approaches are certainly needed within the context of disability- hearing aids, certain medications and aids. But in other contexts, such as accessing a theatre for example, the social model says that the "problem" is the theatre not the individual with needs. And that can be changed.

Gender stereotypes are socially (and consumer) driven ideals. The idea that women must take medication to be masculine and vice versa is all based on gender stereotypes.

Gender stereotypes are also at the heart of violence against women.

There's obviously more to say there about the interplay between males id as women and women's safety.

It's very much a medical model of health care rather than a social model. Gender affirming care is a medical model.

I recently read a really interesting article from a book about mental health - a woman's MH issues were the subject of some tv programmes around 15 years ago and she was told her brain was different and therefore meds would help

Apparently MH is moving away from such quick use of anti depressants to more social models of MH support. Ads have a place but not in the same way as was touted before

The article explains it so much better!

www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/13/i-was-the-poster-girl-for-ocd-then-i-began-to-question-everything-id-been-told-about-mental-illness

I read an interesting substance recently from a Canadian doctor about the change in pain management, leading to the issues with OxyContin, from the 70s when he was in medical school up through to the 2000nds. It was really interesting to see the evolution, some changes seemed to be about research, but there was always, it seemed to me, an underlying element of medical and social culture around how people thought about pain.

One of the things that struck me, and it had before with regard to some of the things we hear around gender affirming care, or psychiatry in general, is that there has come to be a real sense that suffering of any kind is really unbearable, and needs to be relieved by any means necessary. I don't think that's from the medical culture, I think it's from the larger culture.

And also a sense that if there is a problem, there must be a solution. There is no acceptance of the idea that some problems may not have complete solutions.

I do think there are some similarities with this and gender medicine, and I'd also say I saw a lot of the same in the way COVID was approached. Evidence based medicine wasn't exactly at the forefront.

I don't know about this. Canada has a system very much like the NHS but also had similar problems with opioids to the US.

I can sort of see your point but to me the issues are very different the opioid crisis was caused by misleading evidence motivated by greed. puberty blockers are not licensed the way use has always been restricted in the wider NHS and never seen as ‘mainstream’. Maybe the ideology is attempting this but I don’t think they have been successful clinically in convincing people like Purdue pharmacy were.

I watched it when it came to Disney with my mouth open in shock and horror and was immensely grateful for NICE.

there was also significant overlap between pharmaceutical companies who made opioids and did Covid vaccines, so I could understand why so many Americans, particularly in communities hollowed out by opioids, were so desperately skeptical about the vaccines and the “reassurances”.

Demon Copperhead is an excellent story around the impacts of the opioid crisis in rural Kentucky.

Started watching

Early line:

"You don't chase the market you create it."

Aka Pride month. Inclusion and diversity. Twaw. Trans joy.

It's chilling to watch. I knew a lot of medical students around 1995-2000 and they were often being taken out for big dinners by pharmaceutical companies.

I was also gaslit about the non side effects and non addictiveness of seroxat around the same time, but couldn't come off the damn stuff for a long time. (Was put on it before they checked bloods for other health conditions which is what eventually was found to be 'the issue.')