rape victim asked me to share this

Posted on December 26, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

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Panama City doctor arrested on sexual battery charges

PANAMA CITY, Fla. – A Panama City doctor has been arrested on charges of sexual battery.

Dr. Bryce Jackson, an OB/GYN, was arrested by Panama City Police early Thursday morning.

According to a news release from Panama City Police, “During the early morning hours of November 3, 2016 the Panama City Police Department responded to a report of a sexual battery. During the investigation, the adult female victim disclosed to Detectives that she had approached Dr. Bryce Jackson in an effort to seek help, after seeing him in the parking lot of his office.

“The victim further explained that during the ensuing encounter with Dr. Jackson, she was sexually battered within his office at 1937 Harrison Avenue, in Panama City. Based on the information provided, Detectives obtained and executed a search warrant on the property, known as the North Florida Medical Plaza, in an effort to obtain physical evidence of the reported crime.”

Jackson had his first appearance Thursday before a Bay County judge. His bond was set at $30,000. When reached by phone, Jackson’s attorney, Waylon Graham, told WJHG/WECP “Dr. Jackson is pleading not guilty to these heinous, atrocious accusations. He and I both look forward to our day in court.”

Jackson was arrested by Panama City Police on drug charges November 29, 2015. Police pulled Jackson over for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in downtown Panama City. Police searched Jackson’s car and found what they thought was crack cocaine on the car’s floorboard. A Bay County Sheriff’s Office K9 alerted on an odor and the substance field tested positive for cocaine. Jackson was arrested and charged with cocaine possession.

However, a report from Florida Department of Law Enforcement cleared Jackson of possession of a controlled substance in February of 2016 and the state dropped the case. Graham told WJHG/WECP back in February he thought it was a case of police being over anxious in searching for drugs.

“Often times they see something that may look suspicious and instead of looking at the big picture and giving everybody a fair shake they tend to jump to conclusions, make up their mind before having all of the evidence and that can lead to a result like this,” said Graham. (LINK) — 11/03/2016

In other news…

FDLE report clears Panama City OB/GYN of drug charges

PANAMA CITY, Fla (WJHG/WECP) – A Panama City doctor who has maintained his innocence since being arrested in November on possession of cocaine charges, has been exonerated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Dr. Bryce Jackson, a Panama City OBGYN, has been cleared on charges of possession of cocaine. An FDLE report says whatever it was that police found in Jackson’s car when he was arrested wasn’t cocaine or anything illegal.

The state dropped its case against Dr. Bryce Jackson on Wednesday. In paperwork obtained by WJHG/WECP, the state indicated a lab report from FDLE found nothing illegal about what police identified as crack cocaine.

“The lab report indicated no controlled substances per FL statutes. Therefore, the State will be unable to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the State Attorney’s Office announced a Nolle Prosequi in this case,” said the paperwork which was filed by prosecutors Wednesday morning.

A Nolle Prosequi means the charges have been dropped.

“Dr. Jackson was adamant that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he did not have drugs in his car,” said Jackson’s attorney Waylon Graham, “And when he retained me he had the same attitude. So I sent him to the lab and we did some lab work on his urine, and his blood and his hair and we found absolutely no drugs in his system.”

This started back on the night of November 29, 2015. Police pulled Jackson over for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in downtown Panama City. Police searched Jackson’s car and found what they thought was crack cocaine on the car’s floorboard. A Bay County Sheriff’s Office K9 alerted on an odor and the substance field tested positive for cocaine. Jackson was arrested and charged with cocaine possession.

Graham said he thinks the police were being aggressive in their search for drugs.

“Often times they see something that may look suspicious and instead of looking at the big picture and giving everybody a fair shake they tend to jump to conclusions, make up their mind before having all of the evidence and that can lead to a result like this,” said Graham.

We reached out to Panama City Police for a comment. Lt. Mark Laramore declined to do an on-camera interview but did say the police department believes it made the correct choice and charges at the time and invite anyone with questions on the matter to reach out to them.

Jackson is an OB/GYN at North Florida Obstetrics and Gynecological Center in the North Florida Medical Plaza on Harrison Avenue in Panama City.

Graham said the false accusation has destroyed Jackson’s business over the last three months.

“This is a good example for me and other lawyers and prosecutors. It’s a reminder that not everybody arrested is truly guilty,” said Graham.

We’re told that Jackson has retained a civil attorney and is mulling over his options about whether to file a civil suit against Panama City Police. (LINK) — 2/10/2016

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Opioid crisis started 40 years ago, report argues

Posted on December 26, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

Philadelphia To Open Safe Injection Sites In Effort To Combat City's Heroin EpidemicEfforts to fight the epidemic must focus on more than just the availability of certain drugs, the researchers say.

The current opioid overdose crisis is actually part of a 40-year trend that is still headed upward, and current efforts to fight it may not be anywhere near enough, researchers said Thursday.

A new analysis of drug overdose deaths shows that while the drug of choice may change, and the kinds of people affected may change, the trend is clear: The number of Americans dying of drug overdoses has gone up exponentially for decades.

It started before the availability of synthetic opioids, and may have only a little to do with the prescribing habits of doctors or the pushy habits of drugmakers, the team at the University of Pittsburgh found.

“The opioid crisis may be part of a larger, longer-term process,” the team wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

“The epidemic of drug overdoses in the United States has been inexorably tracking along an exponential growth curve since at least 1979, well before the surge in opioid prescribing in the mid-1990s.”

Health

New synthetic opioids are killing even more people, CDC says

The Health and Human Services Department released $1 billion this week to various agencies to use in fighting the epidemic, with funds earmarked for medications to help people stop using opioids and behavioral programs to help prevent relapses.

HHS said the number of opioid prescriptions has already dropped by 21 percent since January 2017.

But if the conclusions of the Pitt team are right, the epidemic will continue to worsen.

“If we try to address the opioid epidemic, we can probably make a difference for a while,” Dr. Donald Burke, dean of Pitt’s school of public health, told NBC News.

But there are several underlying factors in the ongoing epidemic, many of which have nothing to do with the drugs that are available, said Burke, who led the study team.

Burke predicts that new drugs and new routes of taking them will hit the streets, keeping the epidemic going. These include societal and cultural factors.

“This is a reason that U.S. society needs to pay attention to the loss of the sense of purpose, the widening economic disparities, the loss of community,” said Burke.

Nearly 48,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said Thursday that he wants to raise awareness of opioid addiction as a brain disease.

Opioids are still overprescribed by doctors, CDC says

July 7, 201702:53

The CDC has blamed doctors, in part, for prescribing opioids too freely for inappropriate reasons, and has urged Americans to treat their pain in less dangerous ways, including the use of analgesics such as ibuprofen, as well as with ice and stretching.

CDC data also shows that the introduction of unapproved synthetic drugs made to resemble fentanyl doubled death rates from overdoses from 2015 to 2016.

Death rates among younger adults have risen so much that they have reduced the overall life expectancy for the U.S. population as a whole.

But no one drug is to blame, Burke and his colleagues found.

Health

Surgeon general says everyone should carry opioid antidote

They traced back nearly 600,000 deaths starting in 1979 from each individual drug or drug class, including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and prescription painkillers.

Put on a graph, they all went up over time, but not in any coherent way.

Deaths were also seen in different communities.

“At first, the highest death rates were in the coastal big cities,” Burke said.

“Then that pattern changed to where the higher rates of death are no longer in the big cities. They are in the smaller towns and Appalachia,” he added. “The drugs and the locations and the demographics have changed.”

The team added all the deaths together and graphed them again.

“You take all these year-to-year death rates and plop them on a logarithmic scale, it is a perfect straight line,” Burke said. Death rates doubled about every nine years, the graph showed.

“This remarkably smooth, long-term epidemic growth pattern really caught our attention,” Burke added. “If we can figure it out, we should be able to bend that curve downward.”

On suicide: ‘Being asked is such a relief’

The findings jibe with what suicide experts have been saying — that many Americans are feeling increasingly disconnected and hopeless, which in turn is helping drive an increase in suicides.

Burke said it’s important to look at all the causes of drug overdoses. “I am not trying to shift blame anywhere,” he said.

“We need to do both: pay attention to the drugs that are causing the problem today, but at the same time, address the longer-term concerns.”

 

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Pts are nothing more than a medical statistic ?

Posted on December 23, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

This video is a little “heavy” on the medical jargon, but it seems to point out that especially in certain medical specialties… some pts may end up a collateral damage as the healthcare provider is responding to some part of the system (hospital, insurance, etc ) to meet or exceed some ‘”metric” of how many procedures they do and/or how much revenue that they generate per week/month.  The pt is no more – no less – than a conduit or commodity to achieve that production quota.

This may help to explain why our healthcare system – that is suppose to be the best in the world – is reported to cause 250,000 – 400,000 deaths from medical errors each year.  That is 0.1% of our total population that dies every year from medical errors.  Up to TEN TIMES the number of (legal/illegal) opiate OD’s each year – and that is considered a CRISIS !

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FDA warns some antibiotics can cause fatal heart damage

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

FDA warns some antibiotics can cause fatal heart damage

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-warns-some-antibiotics-can-cause-serious-heart-damage-n950606

Certain antibiotics can cause painful and sometimes fatal damage to the body’s main artery, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday.

Fluoroquinolone antibiotics might raise the risk of an aortic dissection, and people who are already at risk should be cautious about taking those antibiotics, the FDA said.

“A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review found that fluoroquinolone antibiotics can increase the occurrence of rare but serious events of ruptures or tears in the main artery of the body, called the aorta. These tears, called aortic dissections, or ruptures of an aortic aneurysm can lead to dangerous bleeding or even death,” the FDA said in a statement.

“Fluoroquinolones should not be used in patients at increased risk unless there are no other treatment options available. People at increased risk include those with a history of blockages or aneurysms (abnormal bulges) of the aorta or other blood vessels, high blood pressure, certain genetic disorders that involve blood vessel changes, and the elderly.”

The FDA said the new risk guidance will be added to the labels and prescribing information of fluoroquinolone drugs. The agency has already warned that the powerful drugs should only be used when absolutely necessary because they can cause other side effects involving tendons,

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2-minute CLINICIAN OPIOID TAPER SURVEY

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

https://lnkd.in/epVRiYY

Physicians, NPs, PAs, pharmacists, PLEASE HELP! Take the 2-minute CLINICIAN OPIOID TAPER SURVEY AT https://lnkd.in/epVRiYY … Share with other prescribing clinicians!!!

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A report from Human Rights Watch accuses Tennessee of regulating opioids to the point of depriving patients in pain

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

Human Rights Watch Accuses Tennessee Of Over-Regulating Pain Management

https://www.nashvillepublicradio.org/post/human-rights-watch-accuses-tennessee-over-regulating-pain-management#stream/0

A report from Human Rights Watch accuses Tennessee of regulating opioids to the point of depriving patients in pain. Along with Washington State, the analysis focuses on Tennessee because of its new prescribing regulations, which are considered some of the strictest in the nation.

In its 109-page report, Human Rights Watch interviewed patients who were involuntarily weaned off of high-doses of powerful painkillers. Tennessee’s new law doesn’t directly impact so-called chronic pain patients, but it seems to have had a chilling effect. Several tell the advocacy organization that their doctors feel pressure to lower everyone’s dosages.

Gail Gray of Celina, Tennessee, tells HRW that her primary care physician cut her pain medication nearly in half but still felt like he could get in trouble. So Gray was forced to a clinic an hour away, which she worries might be a “pill mill” since they only take cash.

“I’m not comfortable with this. I feel like he [my primary care doctor] has pushed me into doing something that’s not right, and I don’t want to break the law,” she said.

More: Tennessee Doctors In Training Mode As Nation’s Tightest Opioid Restrictions Take Effect

HRW also interviewed clinicians, like a nurse practitioner from Vanderbilt’s hematology department who tells of her difficulty with insurance companies denying heavy prescriptions for a sickle cell patient.

A doctor in Knoxville describes how a new state law requiring physicians to try alternatives before turning to opioids has resulted in risky decisions. At times, he’s recommended surgery as a first course of action, just to avoid flack from regulators.

“It’s really against everything I was trained to do, but it’s the will of the legislators and regulators,” Dr. Joe Browder said.

The state did not respond to the study, which was funded by the U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee, a nonprofit with ties to pain management and the pharmaceutical industry. But Human Rights Watch says its top recommendation is for states to just limit the unintended consequences of cracking down on opioid prescribing.

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7 y/o DIES: doc claimed symptoms …”were all in his head”

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

‘Widespread and dangerous’: Facing medical uncertainty, some doctors tell patients it’s all in their heads

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/21/health/medical-uncertainty-diagnosis-afm/index.html         VIDEO ON LINK

When 7-year-old Bailey Sheehan arrived at a hospital in Oregon partially paralyzed, a doctor said the girl was faking her symptoms to get her parents’ attention because she was jealous of her new baby sister.

But that doctor was proved wrong when an MRI showed that the girl had acute flaccid myelitis or AFM, a polio-like disease that’s struck hundreds of children since 2014.

After a mysterious illness paralyzed her son, this mom turned to polio survivors for answers

After a mysterious illness paralyzed her son, this mom turned to polio survivors for answers
Erin Olivera, mother of a child with AFM and founder of a private Facebook page for parents of 400 children with the disease, says Bailey’s experience is hardly unique. She estimates that based on postings by parents, as many as 1 in 10 children were told that the paralysis was all in their heads when they first sought medical care.
Experts who study the art and science of diagnosis say the problem goes beyond this one rare disease. They say that in general, when presented with a puzzling disease, physicians too often leap to a diagnosis of a psychiatric problem.
“Mental disorders become the default position to deal with medical uncertainty,” said Dr. Allen Frances, former chair of psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine. “It’s widespread, and it’s dangerous.”
Dr. Mark Graber, president emeritus of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, added, “It’s a tendency that physicians have when they can’t find a physical cause.
“It’s bad. It’s very bad.”

Bailey’s story

Bailey was a healthy little girl until October 28, 2014, when she suddenly couldn’t move her neck or her right shoulder or leg.
A rehabilitation expert at a children’s hospital said Bailey wasn’t really paralyzed, according to her mother, Mikell Sheehan.
The doctor said the paralysis was an emotional reaction to her sister’s birth four months earlier. He diagnosed Bailey with a mental condition called conversion disorder.
Sheehan told the doctor off.

Bailey Sheehan was diagnosed with AFM after her mother disagreed with an initial diagnosis.

Bailey Sheehan was diagnosed with AFM after her mother disagreed with an initial diagnosis.
“I said, ‘You’ve been with my child for 15 minutes, and you think it’s psychological? Get out of my face,’ ” she remembered.
Sheehan said the doctor hinted that she was unstable.
“He said, you know, ‘moms with new babies don’t get enough sleep,’ ” she said.
Bailey’s regular pediatrician, who’d known the girl since birth, disagreed with the diagnosis and pushed for further testing. That’s when the MRI showed that she had AFM.
Armed with the correct diagnosis, Bailey received treatment for AFM, including extensive physical therapy, and four years later is walking again.
“We were lucky that her pediatrician was such an advocate for us, but I don’t know if everyone’s that lucky,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan says she understands why doctors didn’t immediately think of AFM for her daughter, because the disease was not well-known four years ago. But there are several other causes of paralysis in children, and she wonders why her daughter didn’t get a full round of testing for those.

Record number of cases of polio-like illness AFM in US this year

Record number of cases of polio-like illness AFM in US this year
Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, a neurologist who’s seen cases of AFM across the country, said that even this year, when AFM has made headlines nationally, parents have told him that doctors have missed the disease and suggested that their children were faking their paralysis.
“The stories I can tell are maddening and saddening,” said Greenberg, associate professor of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Four years later, Sheehan says, she still feels the scars from her daughter’s misdiagnosis.
“You feel violated and wrongly accused,” she said.

The dangers of false certainty

Though there’s no data indicating how frequently doctors misdiagnose physical conditions as psychiatric ones, experts in the field of diagnosis say they see it all too often.
It typically starts when a patient has a perplexing illness and doctors feel a need to come up with a diagnosis.
“Doctors are uncomfortable with not having answers,” Frances said.
The consequences can be “catastrophic,” he said, because a misdiagnosis can lead to a patient receiving treatment for a disease they don’t have and missing out on treatment for the disease they do have.
“False certainty is much more dangerous than uncertainty,” he said.
The American Medical Association and the American College of Emergency Physicians declined requests for comment.
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Graber, who is also professor emeritus of medicine at the Stony Brook University in New York, said part of the problem is that medical students are taught that physical symptoms sometimes have a psychological basis. That’s true, he said, but doctors need to thoroughly test for physical problems before defaulting to a psychiatric diagnosis.
“Physicians have an obligation to do a thorough workup before turning to a psychological explanation,” he said. “When a doctor can’t find a cause, that’s a great time to get a second opinion or consult with a specialist.”
Frances added that it’s OK for a doctor to simply say “I don’t know.”
“Doctors need to learn to embrace medical uncertainty,” he said.

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OREGON | PAIN REFUGEES, POLICY, & A PRESCRIPTION FOR HARM

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

https://youtu.be/dMZxmMwHeqU

Hello Everyone! PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! LET’S BE FRIENDS, FOLLOW ME EVERYWHERE MY LOVES: INSTAGRAM: http://www.instagram.com/cayleecresta TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/cayleecresta YOUNOW: cayleecresta PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cayleecresta & SEND ME LETTERS! PO BOX 234 Wilmington, MA 01887 For business inquiries: caylee.cresta@gmail.com Hello Everyone, Welcome to today’s video. I hope you’ll take the time to watch this documentary on the opioid policy currently being proposed in the state of Oregon. Pain patients face the potential for a severe loss of life & functionality if this proposal goes through. Regardless of overwhelming testimony, patient comment, and expert opinion, they continue to uphold the course of the policy. This is a story that truly needs to be seen to be believed, it is a story of dangerous ideology & the harm that can result when a policy is influenced by belief rather than data. As of now, Oregon patients continue to receive zero support from media outlets & have been forced to fight this battle alone. Please share as far & as wide as you are able so that we may protect the pain patients living today in fear. For more information please contact Oregon Pain Action Group on Facebook at www.facebook.com.group/oregonpainactiongroup/ Email Amara at oregonpainactiongroup@gmail.com Or amara4advocate@gmail.com Featured Article Links: https://www.foxnews.com/health/as-opi… https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcar… https://www.politico.com/story/2018/0… https://www.statnews.com/2018/12/06/o… https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation… https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/…

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CVS Pharmacy tech with cerebral palsy sues CVS, claims discrimination

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

Pharmacy tech with cerebral palsy sues CVS, claims discrimination

http://longisland.news12.com/story/39679576/pharmacy-tech-with-cerebral-palsy-sues-cvs-claims-discrimination     VIDEO ON LINK

ISLIP TERRACE – A pharmacy technician with cerebral palsy is suing CVS, claiming discrimination.

Dana Paladino, of Islip Terrace, says CVS discriminated against her because of her disability. Paladino, who has cerebral palsy, says she’s worked at the CVS in Islip Terrace for 15 years and earned stellar reviews. But Paladino says she’s being pushed out by a new manager who allegedly told her she’s a “burden” to the company because of her physical limitations.

Paladino is now taking CVS to court with charges of discrimination against the pharmacy giant.

In the federal lawsuit, Paladino claims her physical limitations were never an issue until May 2017, when CVS hired a new manager who told her, “Either you’re going to quit, or I’m going to get you fired.”

Paladino says another manager told her months later that she was a “burden to the company and a burden to the store.”

The lawsuit claims Paladino’s managers cut her work hours, putting her at risk of losing her health benefits. Her attorney, Justin Marino, says the ordeal has been traumatic for her.

Disability advocate Douglas King says the actions of CVS’ managers clearly violated the American With Disabilities Act.

CVS issued a statement saying: “We dispute the allegations in the complaint filed by our employee, Ms. Paladino. Since the beginning of her employment at CVS, we have provided her with accommodations and we continue to do so.”

Paladino’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, but she says there’s more to her court battle than money — she says she wants to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to anyone else in her position.

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FAKE NEWS: Paolo Antonio Argenzio Passed away on Monday December 10th 2018, from a self inflicted gunshot wound because of untreated pain

Posted on December 21, 2018 by Pharmaciststeve

Paolo Antonio Argenzio

https://everloved.com/life-of/paolo-argenzio/obituary/

Paolo’s obituary

Paolo Antonio Argenzio,
Passed away on Monday December 10th 2018, from a self inflicted gunshot wound. In 1999 Paolo graduated Boston University with a masters degree in Financial Management and would make use of until June of 2018. Having suffered a spinal injury after being struck by a drunk driver in October of 2014, Paolo endured chronic pain which increased after a failed back surgery in January of 2018.

Once his doctors without prior notice stopped prescribing Paolo pain medications, he would become bedridden and feel a burden to his family. Without finding alternative treatment for his pain, Paolo could no longer endure his suffering and in his final communication to his wife Teodara expressed his love for his family and wishes they remember him during his best days.

Paolo leaves behind a wife Teodara, three children Catherine, Edward and Mariana. His two siblings Angelo and Salvatore, nieces Liliana, Giselle, nephews Alberto and Ignacio.

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