CDC Causes Patients to Endure Needless Pain and Suffering. Kennedy Can Help.

Increasingly, these pleas are not just about pain management but about finding ways to end their lives, as years of forced reductions or complete discontinuation of the opioid painkillers that previously allowed them to function have left them bedridden, in constant severe pain or both.

Many have become “pain refugees,” seeking doctors who will accept new pain patients. These are not addicts seeking a fix; they are ordinary people who suffered an accident or serious illness. They once had full, productive lives but now face unimaginable agony.

Patients seek doctors who can help manage pain

Newly confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has rightly called for a top-to-bottom reevaluation of U.S. public health agencies. One agency that badly needs an overhaul is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, especially because of its undue influence on how doctors treat pain patients.

In 2016, the CDC published a scientifically flawed opioid guideline built on weak evidence, misrepresented statistics and a fundamental misunderstanding of pain management with “suggested” opioid dosages. The CDC stressed that these guidelines are only recommendations, not “prescriptive.” Even so, when a government agency that people consider the premier authority on health matters makes a recommendation, it amounts to a de facto mandate.

By 2022, 40 states had enshrined the CDC’s 2016 guidelines into law. These state laws dictate the number of pills, their dosage and the duration that doctors can prescribe them. They impose restrictive opioid prescribing practices that undermine patient autonomy and substitute bureaucratic oversight for individualized medical decision-making.

Responding to criticism from scientists, physicians and patients, the CDC made minimal and meaningless changes to the guidelines in 2022.

Health practitioners who deviate from these restrictions do so at great risk − facing liability, regulatory scrutiny and even law enforcement action. Police department drug task forces may unfairly label doctors as “high prescribers” for treating patients requiring higher doses, leading to high-profile raids on their clinics.

Desperate, abandoned patients sometimes turn to street drugs, which adds to the toll of fentanyl overdoses.

Prescription painkillers aren’t the cause of opioid epidemic

The public, with help from the news media, still believes the myth that prescription painkillers are responsible for the overdose crisis. This is demonstrably false.

Prescribing peaked in 2012 and is now at 1993 levels – a reduction of about 50%.

Despite this, overdose deaths soared from approximately 40,000 in 2012 to 97,000 in 2024. Illicit fentanyl, often mixed with cocaine or methamphetamine, is almost always the culprit, not prescription pain pills.

The impact on the sick and powerless is staggering. One pain refugee cut off from medicine asked one of us if we knew how to test her street-bought pill − she took a small dose and vomited for 24 hours. A terminal cancer patient entered hospice, where doctors denied her oxycodone, causing pain and withdrawal. A mountain-climbing athlete was disabled by a serious accident and, now with brain cancer, sought advice on suicide due to unbearable nerve pain.

These are a few examples of the cruelty caused by the CDC’s misguided medical interference − an agony beyond most people’s comprehension. Even this tiny sample reveals the unimaginable torment caused by the CDC’s flawed foray into medicine.

Founded in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center, the CDC’s mission was to stop the spread of communicable and infectious diseases. After helping eradicate malaria, which was endemic in the southern states, the CDC then tackled scourges like tuberculosis and smallpox.

Over the years, the agency has undergone mission creep, offering advice on many private health and lifestyle choices. An agency that takes on too many responsibilities can end up doing none of them well.

Fortunately, Secretary Kennedy can address this issue. In the spirit of compassion, we urge him to reform the CDC, restoring trust by ending its interference with patient-physician autonomy and refocusing on protecting lives from communicable diseases and public health threats.

Unwanted involvement from an agency that was never qualified to engage in personal medicine has caused unspeakable harm. Any one of us is one accident or illness away from facing the same fate − suffering that we wouldn’t allow for our pets.

Secretary Kennedy has the power to change this.