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  Dear Karen,     I read the proposed FDA changes with a growing mixture of disbelief, horror, and revulsion.   Patients suffering from chronic pain already have terrible difficulty obtaining access to opioids and opiates that they need in order to function.  The proposed changes could make it impossible for the majority of doctors who currently prescribe such medications from doing so in the future.  Already, the state health departments and the D.E.A. point a loaded gun to the heads of doctors who prescribe Schedule II narcotics -- now, they would seek to make it virtually impossible for these doctors to prescribe these drugs.   I had hoped that the proposed elimination of the compound analgesics would be accompanied by a loosening of the restrictions currently imposed on doctors in terms of their abilities to prescribe Schedule II narcotics -- how incredibly naive I was in thinking that the US government would act in a manner that would help its vulnerable and suffering citizens.  It is almost as though our politicians are TRYING to make persons who suffer from chronic pain live in utter misery.   When the FDA was slow and reluctant to approve AZT (now known as zidovudine) to persons suffering from HIV infection, activists literally shut down the FDA building, barricaded the offices of prominent lawmakers, and resorted to illegal activities to force the issue.  Ultimately, these activists succeeded -- the FDA listened, adopted a fast-track process for the approval of anti-retroviral drugs, and made these drugs available to those patients who needed them.  I am now beginning to think that the only way of making it clear to the US government that patients suffering from chronic pain need their opiates and opioids is to resort to such illegal activities.   I am very, very glad that I no longer live in the US, and have no plans to return to the US.  I have watched those who oppose President Obama's plans to implement a universal health care package that would ensure that all Americans have access to healthcare describe the President's proposal as "socialized medicine", and I have seen some protestors actually display placards depicting President Obama as Adolph Hitler, complete with a small moustache.  These bastards seem to think that merely using the phrase "socialized medicine", and portraying President Obama as Hitler, somehow makes the problem of 50 million uninsured Americans go away.  There is a reflexive response to the phrase "socialized medicine" that shows just how ignorant those who use this phrase really are.  I now rely on the British NHS to help me deal with chronic pain, numerous medical complications of Marfan syndrome, physiotherapy, MRIs, CT scans, echocardiograms, etc.  - and I am both appalled and disgusted by the American attacks on the NHS - attacks that utterly misrepresent the NHS, using scare tactics invoking the spectre of healthcare rationing - completely overlooking the fact that healthcare is already rationed in the US, and that only those who are either independently wealthy or who have very generous health insurance actually have access to healthcare.  America may indeed have the best medical technology in the world, but it most certainly does NOT have the best healthcare system in the world, and those ignorant fools who keep banging the drum and insisting that America has the best healthcare system in the world are utterly misguided and utterly misinformed.  Commercials in the US currently defame the NHS, grossly and criminally misrepresenting the NHS and indoctrinating the American people with horror stories about long waiting lists and substandard medical care.  I have relied on the NHS for several years now, and have nothing but praise for a system that has taken care of me and addressed all of my medical needs without my having to pay a single penny - yes, I pay taxes, but my taxes in the UK are substantially lower than the taxes I used to pay in the US.   If the NHS represents "socialized medicine", then LET'S HEAR IT FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!   Should the FDA succeed in forcing these two changes upon the American people, I foresee a growing trend in which people suffering from chronic pain will turn to fraud and misrepresentation to obtain their medications, probably by travelling to Canada and / or Mexico to obtain their medications.  I would personally support these patients without hesitation.  Nobody should be forced to suffer from excruciating pain, day in and day out, because a nation has lost its way with respect to the "war on drugs", which has increasingly turned into a war on people.   I watch those who oppose President Obama demonize the NHS, and it makes me sick to my stomach to watch these false and ugly misrepresentations.  The visceral hatred that so many conservatives harbour for President Obama is unlike anything I have ever seen before in American politics - clearly, the neoconservatives cannot stomach the fact that THEY LOST, and lost BIG TIME!  The American people voted for a man named Barack Hussein Obama over the neoconservatives - something that the latter group cannot deal with and simply cannot handle.  THEY LOST, to a black man (horror!), whose name sounds like Osama! - and they cannot deal with this loss!   Karen, I can only say that I am deeply saddened, but am not in least surprised, by the materials to which you referred me.  Now, we have to decide how to respond to this.  If persons with HIV were able to obtain AZT and other much-needed drugs by resorting to civil disobedience, then person suffering from chronic pain may wish to resort to the same tactics.  When persons who suffer from chronic pain appear in court, as defendants, and tell juries about the excruciating suffering and pain to which their governments have condemned them, without due process and without an adequate reason, they may well receive sympathetic hearings (and equally sympathetic verdicts).   Try to imagine a world without Tylenol #3 with codeine, without Vicodin, without Norco, without Darvocet, without Percocet, and without generic versions of these drugs.  Then try to imagine a world in which almost no doctors would be authorized to prescribe drugs such as OxyIR, OxyNorm, OxyContin, Morphine Sulphate, MS-Contin, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, dipipanone, and the other Schedule II narcotics.  Then try to imagine suffering from chronic, unremitting pain of the severity that causes people to kill themselves.  This is indeed a form of legalized torture, made possible by another American "war on" something - in this case, drugs.   Let us both keep our ears to the ground and report back to each other on whatever we hear.  My email address is philipchandler domain earthlink dot net.   I look forward to hearing form you.     PHILIP CHANDLER