A nearly 40-year-old letter from a Boston doctor published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980 is getting blamed for sparking America’s addiction to painkillers.
Dr. Hershel Jick, a drug specialist at Boston University Medical Center at the time, sent a letter to the editor analyzing files of patients given opioids in the hospital over a very short period of time. He found that of the nearly 40,000 patients given opioids during a brief hospitalization at the Medical Center, only four developed addictions, reports the Associated Press.
The letter concludes that the “use of narcotic drugs in hospitals” is not strongly linked with addiction. The medical community subsequently used the letter, which consists of only one paragraph, as a source for subsequent writings arguing that painkillers do not cause addiction.
“It’s difficult to overstate the role of this letter,” Dr. David Juurlink, a professor at the University of Toronto who analyzed the letter, told the AP. “It was the key bit of literature that helped the opiate manufacturers convince front-line doctors that addiction is not a concern.”
Canadian researchers found that the letter is cited more than 600 times in various medical reports and is often misrepresented. Jick notes that the letter applies only to painkillers used during a hospitalization, not for outpatient treatments and long-term use. The New England Journal of Medicine published an editor’s note to the 1980 letter Wednesday with the updated research.
“I’m essentially mortified that that letter to the editor was used as an excuse to do what these drug companies did,” Jick told the AP Wednesday. “They used this letter to spread the word that these drugs were not very addictive.”
A record 33,000 Americans died from prescription painkiller related overdoses in 2015, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. Opioid deaths contributed to the first drop in U.S. life expectancy since 1993 and eclipsed deaths from motor vehicle accidents in 2015.
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