U.S. lawmakers demand UN health agency change opioid guidance
The Associated Press
Two U.S. lawmakers are calling on the World Health Organization to withdraw pain care guidelines that include what they say are false claims about the safety of prescription opioids.
They say the guidelines could lead other countries toward the same kind of addiction and overdose crisis that has plagued the U.S. in recent years.
The members of Congress say a 2011 manual and 2012 guidelines on opioids were influenced by people with financial connections to Purdue Pharma, the company that makes the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin.
“We have come to believe that Purdue has leveraged its financial ties to successfully impact the content of the WHO’s guidelines,” Reps. Katherine Clark, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, say in a letter to the health arm of the United Nations. “As a result, the WHO is, in effect, promoting the chronic use of opioids.”
Clark said the report was put together because the WHO did not change its guidelines after a 2017 letter from her, Rogers and other members of Congress raised concerns that Purdue’s international arm was aggressively marketing opioids abroad.
“We have received the most recent letter from Congress and are reviewing it point by point,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said in an email Wednesday.
Purdue, which operates only in the U.S., called the report an attempt to “vilify” the company and noted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved OxyContin as safe and effective for treating chronic pain. “Purdue is deeply concerned about the impact of opioid abuse and addiction and we remain committed to simultaneously supporting efforts that help pain patients in need and create real solutions to this public health crisis,” the company said in a statement.
The company also says it discloses any potential conflicts of interest.
A spokeswoman for Mundipharma, an international drug company owned by the Sackler family, which also owns Stamford, Connecticutbased Purdue, said the company would not comment on the report.