DiCinema

Randy Ramseyer (John Hoogenakker) and Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) discover that many articles promulgating the notion that opiates are not inherently addictive or that "less than 1% of patients become addicted to Oxycontin" cite only one "study": the so-called "Porter-Jick Study." Dopesick depicts them going through a long research process to attempt to find this elusive study, only to discover that it was in fact not a study at all; it was just a brief letter to the editor of a medical journal. This element of Dopesick adheres closely to the historical facts: in 1980, the New England Journal of Medicine published a five-sentence letter from Jane Porter and Herschel Jick, MD, of the Boston University Medical Center. The letter outlined their observations of 11,882 patients who received opiate-based narcotic pain killers; they noted that under hospital supervision, only four of those patients who had no prior history of addiction became addicted. This was very far from being a peer-reviewed study (the scientific standard for evidence-based medical reports), but it was nonetheless cited as evidence of opiates' supposed nonaddictive qualities and used as the premise for the claim that Oxycontin was safe. In 2017, the New England Journal of Medicine published an analysis of the more than 600 times the Porter-Jick letter has been misleadingly cited to convince doctors and hospitals that addiction was not a concern. In a 2017 Associated Press interview, Dr Jick clarified that his short letter should never have been construed as scientific proof of anything, much less of a concept as deeply inaccurate as the idea that opiates are safe and nonaddictive: "'I'm essentially mortified that that letter to the editor was used as an excuse to do what these drug companies did. . . . They used this letter to spread the word that these drugs were not very addictive.' Jick said his letter only referred to people getting opioids in the hospital for a short period of time and has no bearing on long-term outpatient use."

Film

Nessun dato in archivio

Persone

Nessun dato in archivio

SerieTv