NIH Panel Opioid Payments

Calley Means tells a story about how pharmaceutical companies manipulated an NIH panel on opioid recommendations through strategic payments.

"I was a junior employee and we had a list of doctors in front of us. We reached out to the dean of Stanford Med School, who was a pain specialist. We funded him directly with consulting payments and made a donation to Stanford of $4 million from opioid companies to study ethics and pain management.

We worked with our allies at the NIH, which is funded by pharma and has a total revolving door. We helped set up a panel. The NIH in 2011 did a panel to make recommendations on opioids. The dean of Stanford Med School, who just took money from opioid companies, was appointed to the blue ribbon panel. He chose 19 other elite academics - 15 of the 19 had direct payments from opioid companies that we very strategically steered to them.

That panel in 2011 recommended that concerns about addiction were overblown, basically said to stay the course, that pain was a huge problem. Then opioid prescriptions continued to go up. That's how it works."