Dear Friends, colleagues
This text is about your important show on
opioids that will be on the air and in Wash Post on Sunday. We are in the same
business as you, we are two PhD´s (my wife and me) that have studied the
painkilling substance and opioid – that now is forgotten - (Dextro) Propoxyphene
DXP ( Brands: Darvon and Darvocet) since 1994. We are behind the decision to
ban DXP all over the world, in US 2010. Our CV http://bit.ly/2tsVOPL
I was just aware of your investigation a
couple of hours ago and I was very happy about what I now have read about your
investigations. It looks great. We have been fighting DXP since more that 20
years now - and the drug is now banned all over the word, and we have done a
lot to make this possible. We were the whistle-blowers in Sweden, UK, European
Union (EU) and US.
(Just now I am on a trip to Stockholm, we
usually live in a small town nowadays Katrineholm, after living in the university
town of Uppsala since 1965. I became very eager to write to you as soon as
possible, but my research data are at home and I will now write “from my memory”,
so to say. I hope you will excuse me when my words are not so exact and the
structure of my words may not be the same it would be when I write and have all
my research at hand. Thanks.)
My spontaneous thoughts after reading
about your program:
If you want to solve a problem of today –
the opioid-epidemic – you have to know something about its history. The big opioids-problems
didn´t start yesterday, maybe it started more than 50 years ago with the
painkilling substance (Dextro) Propoxyphene (DXP). It is an opioid and quite
close to Methadone, but it was more toxic than any other drug.
The substance was synthesized 1953 and it
took FDA four years to approve after a really bad article from Eli Lily to FDA.
The drug was tested on animals, not any human being . In the early 60s it started to appear scientific
articles that show how fatal DXP was.
After studying the substance since 1994 we
have lots of important data to share with you, primary from the largest county
in USA – Los Angeles county – with the coroner system – and the FDLE - Florida Department
of Law Enforsement – and they have the Medical examiner system. These systems differs
a lot from each other, in LA they search/scan for illegal drugs but in Florida
they search for prescribed drugs. In LA they did not find one since case with
DXP, but in Florida the found o lot – after studying our published scientific
articles.
We have important data from these two
places over a period of ten years.
We also have consumption data from INCB –
The International Narcotic Control Board in Vienna (WHO) since 1980´s for DXP.
This organisation appreciated our research so they helped us twice with lots of
data.
We have also prescription data concerning
DXP during the years 2000-2012.
In Sweden we got a new system in the
forensic medicine 1992, a couple of years before we started our research. This
system – was the most updated and modern in the whole world. In US you have
these two different systems, The Medical Examiners and The coroners – which mostly
is old organization. One example; in Sweden we always screen for prescribed
drugs – that means of course DXP. When a person dies outside a hospital you
will be brought to the forensic medicine system and almost every test for all
legal drugs I done. Therefore our data are extremely good. We publish seven
scientific articles about our DXP-research and also wrote – as we mention in our
CV two doctoral dissertations.
Nobody in the whole world have studied DXP
as long and wide as we had. We did our work within the academic world - with
all that means, referees and so on. I started my PhD study when I became 50
years, my wife was 44. We founded our research by teaching about alcohol and
drugs in the Public Health, you can name it pro bono.
In US you have around 3200 counties in the
country and all of them decide they decide for themselves if there will be any
blood test or not. “Bloodtests cost money” . And the two systems are so
different.
Our articles and dissertations was also examined
in a proper way. Before DXP was banned the FDA presented a report about the
banning. This report was written “from the inside”, and as you know how strong
the pharmaceutic industry is. When I read this report I became quite sure that
there would be no trials about the victims of DXP – and unfortunately I was
right. I do not know this is so well known, but I wrote to the court in Kentucky
where the trial supposed to be. The judge would be Danny C Reeves.
There were some thousand plaintiffs who
sued 70-80 different companies, some hundred lawyers worked in many years – and
suddenly the court told me that there will be no trials.
I have visited US and DC several times
during our work, I met with David D Dorsey twice who worked for senator Kennedy,
I met people from Public Citizen: Larry Sasich Pharm Dr, I was also in contact with Sid
Wolf, MD at Public Citizen. He told me once that he had tried in many years to
ban DXP but he did not succeed. Now when we how your data I think we will succeed.
We were invited by Sid to cosign the two letters that Sid Wolf wrote to FDA.
There was also a congressional hearing about
DXP, I think it was 1985, I have the protocol at home. I also met with Nora
Volkov at NIDA at one of my visits, I was once invited by the Swedish ambassador
Gunnar Lund some year ago - I met him in Sigtuna in Sweden at a semiar for Dag Hammarskjöld
– it was 100 years since he was born 1905 and at that meeting one of the ambassador
coworker Magnus Härviden asked me if I wanted to meet a journalist at
Washington Post, his name was Nis Bruzelius. It was a great memory for me to
visit the Post and meet Nils, whose father came from Sweden.
Four years ago I visited The National Press
Club and had a press-conference there. See my tweet:
My Press-conference at the
National Press Club (NPC) in Washington DC about Darvon 10 th Sept 2013 http://bit.ly/1PAAMUg
I have now written down some thoughts and wonderings I got after reading
about your up coming show and Post article.
I am working with
the last article about DXP, where I will present data from Los Angeles and FDLE.
It is very difficult to estimate the number of deaths, due to poisoning from
DXP, but as we have really good data from the modern Swedish forensic medicine.
We have also estimated the numbers of death from using DXP. DXP was on the
market 53 years, and to compare the consumption of DXP in Sweden with the consumption of
DXP in US we were able to make an estimate.
The numbers of
deaths during this period (1953 – 2010) - was around 6 000 fatalities every
year, some 300 000 fatalities all together, probably even more. Nobody have
ever spoken about this.
I think that
some people have this knowledge, even some in the official business, and I also
think that this is a nightmare, a bad conscience, but most people dare not to
talk.
You are really
doing a great job, and I think we have some very good information that cold ne
of great help for you. You can dig ever deeper.
I am also
planning to write two debate articles about our latest data; my headings are: (
I just happen to have this text with me to work with)
No trials at
all about Darvon/Darvocet victims in court in Kentucky East
Thousands of
plaintiffs had to wait – in vain. Decision after six years of waiting
Opioid-related
mortality increases, heroin epidemic kills more and more – but do not forget
The Propoxyphene
era (1953-2010 - 57 years)
I found in my
paper the following:
”All cases in
the 2_11-md-2226 have been closed and there will be no trials”
-
I got this answer on a mail from Susan Conner, Case Coordinator, US district
court, Easter District to Kentucky, 2016-08-25 – 21.05. The same day I asked
her when the trials about the painkilling substance propoxyphene would start.
Good Luck with the program I will watch it
of course
I look forward to hearing from you
Kind regards
Ulf Jonasson
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Doctor in Public Health (PhD) and Journalist
Stortorget 6, SE-641 30
Katrineholm, Sweden
Phone: + 46 (0)730-23 26 00, + 46(0)150-10290
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