FDA conflict of interest in promoting aggressive treatment of chronic pain

rather striking (and not surprising) article in MedPage Today about opioids. major issue is that the FDA commissioner is throwing around the statistic that 100 million americans are suffering from chronic pain (likely greatly exaggerated, per the article) -- and it was the undertreating of chronic pain, by the way, which was the basis for the initial IOM (institute of medicine) in the 1990s report that led to the dramatic increase in opioid prescriptions. a new IOM report in 2011 brought up the 100M number (the link to the report is in the article -- see URL below). turns out that 9 of 19 experts on the IOM panel that issued the report "had connections to companies that manufacture narcotic painkillers", some receiving opioid company funding or were consultants to the drug companies. the IOM panel chair, phillip pizzo, is from stanford univ, which received "educational grants and research funding from companies that make pain treatments", and "10 months before the pain panel began meeting, Pfizer gave stanford a $3M, 3-year grant to fund medical education". and, against their own policy, the IOM report neglected to disclose any of the financial links of the panel members. in fact 6 of the panel members were officers of advisory groups advocating for greater use of opioids, and they are now under senate investigation. the above comments are pretty much directly out of the report, and i would encourage you to read it. esp in light of the dramatic increase in both prescription opioids being dispensed and the numbers of overdoses/deaths/destroyed lives associated with that. the FDA commissioner's defense to aggressive treatment of the "100 million chronic pain patients" was in response to her recent approval of Zohydro.