FDA weaponizes ‘opioid’ label against kratom consumers
My take? If Dr. Gottlieb’s statement were a pharmacology graduate student’s written qualifying exam answer to a question seeking an objective assessment of kratom pharmacology and toxicology, I’d have no choice but to issue a failing grade … I say this all with great respect for Dr. Gottlieb, a physician and former Forbes contributor,
1. You failed to read 20 years of published scientific literature on alkaloids present in the kratom plant, Mitragyna speciosa.
2. You failed to demonstrate any mastery of current research on the biochemical pharmacology of opioids.
3. You were overly reliant on unpublished data from a computational model in the absence of direct, experimental confirmation.
4. You made safety conclusions based on confirmation bias and a poor assessment of adverse reaction reports where kratom or its constituents were present.
5. You also made safety conclusions in the absence of considering the impact on public health if kratom were banned.
6. You concluded that the substance has no medical benefit in the absence of a prospective clinical trial for any indication with a well-qualified kratom product or purified kratom alkaloid.
Original Article (Forbes):
FDA Weaponizes ‘Opioid’ Label Against Kratom Consumers
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