American Pain Foundation Shuts Down As Senators Investigate Prescription Narcotics
As the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation Tuesday into makers of narcotic painkillers and groups that champion them, a leading pain advocacy organization said it was dissolving "due to irreparable economic circumstances."
The American Pain Foundation, which described itself as the nation's largest organization for pain patients, was the focus of a December investigation by ProPublica in The Washington Post that detailed its close ties to drugmakers.
The group received 90 percent of its $5 million in funding in 2010 from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides for patients, journalists and policymakers had played down the risks associated with opioid painkillers while exaggerating the benefits.
It is unclear whether the group's announcement Tuesday evening -- that it would "cease to exist, effective immediately" -- was related to letters sent earlier in the day from Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the finance panel chairman, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to the foundation, drug companies and others. In the letters, the senators cited an "an epidemic of accidental deaths and addiction resulting from the increased sale and use of powerful narcotic painkillers," including popular brand names like Oxycontin, Vicodin and Opana.
Growing evidence, they wrote, suggests that drug companies "may be responsible, at least in part, for this epidemic by promoting misleading information about the drugs' safety and effectiveness." The American Pain Foundation's website carried a statement Tuesday night saying its board had voted May 3 to dissolve the organization because it couldn't stay "operational." The foundation did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Sounds like the same guys that ran "The Tobacco Institute" and the "Heartland Foundation." Don't mind us...We're just shilling for the pharma companies that make the stuff that Rush Limbaugh buys... But now the Senate lifted up the rock, and within hours they shut down and scurry as the light comes in... And a few more job-creators bite the dust...
