New govt report on painkillers: 15,000 deaths in 2008

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta just issued a report on what it calls an "epidemic", the abuse of opiate narcotic pain medications and the overdoses that contributed to 15,000 deaths in 2008.

from nydailynews.com:

Prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone led to the deaths of almost 15,000 people in 2008, including actor Heath Ledger. That's more than three times the 4,000 deaths from narcotics in 1999.

Such painkillers "are meant to help people who have severe pain," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which issued the report. "They are, however, highly addictive."

Wow, including Heath Ledger? I mean 15,000 deaths that's terrible but when they mention Heath Ledger that really lets you know the gravity of the situation here. But seriously, it seems every couple months or so we're hearing about how terrible these pain meds are and how they need to be more tightly controlled. New reports are coming out all the time about the abuse potential and how terrible they are.

I propose that nothing be done about it at all. There's millions of people who genuinely do need these pain medications to cope with their severe pain. Any further tightening of access to these medications only harm those who need them the most. About those overdoses? Each and every one of those people knew the addictive nature of the drugs and made a decision to take a lot more than necessary. Nobody abuses drugs on accident. How many people do you think overdosed on these meds who were taking it the way it was prescribed? None of them. I don't mean to be harsh but once someone decides to take something in excess to get high to the point where it's a lethal dose, the consequences fall on them, not society. And why treat legitimately suffering patients like criminals? Because that's really what more regulation and tightening will do.

We've always had drug abuse and we've always had drug overdoses. And for comparison sake, the CDC reports that from 2001-2005 there were 79,000 deaths a year due to alcohol abuse. Where's all the talk about the alcohol abuse epidemic like we hear with pain medications? After all, the death toll is over 5 times that of pain meds.

People are going to choose the types of lives they want to live. Some people have a strong desire to succeed, others have given up and want to get high. It's not our role to tell people how to live their lives. At the end of the day we're all going to the same place anyway. I argue that anyone who overdoses and dies from taking too many pain pills was likely bound to kill themselves in one way or another. If it wasn't oxycodone it would have been heroin or alcohol. You're never going to stop drug abuse; any efforts to do so only wastes taxpayer money and inconveniences those who really do need the medication for health reasons.

Meds IV = Advanced Specialty Pharmacy = MedWorksRx = PalliRx

If you need to get caught up on the latest news and developments concerning Meds IV, please read the news article here, and our entries here here here here and here. 9 people have died in Alabama following an nutrition IV solution that was made by compounding pharmacy Meds IV.

Update 1: It's been confirmed that Meds IV doesn't just happen to have the same ownership as Advanced Specialty Pharmacy. Meds IV is actually Advanced Specialty Pharmacy dba Meds IV.


They're one in the same, the only difference is marketing and being able to not have the 9 deaths effect Advanced Specialty Pharmacy's reputation. But it absolutely should.

We're seeing an effort by those behind Meds IV to remove as much information about themselves as they can. And we think the reason they're doing this is because they go by several other names and they don't want people to associate the bad press with other names they're going by. They don't want people to make the connection. But we're going put as much as we can here so it doesn't matter what information they try to remove. This post will be updated as we receive more information.

The bottom line is this:

Meds IV is run by the same people as Advanced Specialty Pharmacy, the same as MedWorksRx, which is the same as PalliRx. Meds IV was only created a year ago. How convenient would it be for them to just close up Meds IV after this incident and continue on without anyone knowing they're still around through their other companies.

Let's start with Advanced Specialty Pharmacy. Advanced Specialty Pharmacy is owned by both William Rogers and Tim Rogers. That can be illustrated here where Tim Rogers is listed as the co-founder and here where William Rogers is listed as the owner, and Tim as manager. Also, Anthony Cingoranelli is a principle owner in Advanced Specialty Pharmacy. On their website, they've recently removed their Birmingham location and now only their FL location is displayed. That location is 102 Oxmoor Rd. Birmingham, AL, which brings us to our next company: PalliRx.

PalliRx was listed on Tim Roger's LinkedIn page as a company he's partnered with. Where's PalliRx located? 102 Oxmoor Rd. Same as Advanced Specialty Pharmacy.



Finally there's MedWorksRx. MedWorksRx is also listed as a partner on Tim Roger's LinkedIn page, and is owned by Edward Anthony Cingoranelli. Here we come full circle as Cingoranelli is the owner of Meds IV, and Tim Rogers is the president.

From al.com:

The hospital system says in its suit that it had attempted to contact the Meds IV to ask it to preserve the evidence, but had not gotten a response. Cingroranelli is identified in the suit as the owner of the company, while Rogers is identified as its president.

We're already seeing efforts to take down all links to Meds IV and wash away the blood from their hands. No doubt they've invested a lot into Advanced Specialty Pharmacy and wouldn't want the deaths from Meds IV to tarnish whatever good name they had before. MedWorksRx and PalliRx are fairly new "entities" and we hope as people begin to make the connection will steer clear of everything relating to Rogers and Cingroranelli. We haven't fully looked into Cingroranelli yet but Rogers's background is mostly wholesale - which means just selling products you bought from someone else with no value added (not actually making anything). It's easy to think you're an expert at pharmaceuticals when you're wheeling and dealing them but compounding and manufacturing are a different story and we get the feeling the people running this operation are completely unqualified.

If you have any information on these companies or Rogers and Cingroranelli, please send us an e-mail at peoplelikingpeople@yahoo.com.

Meds IV: More Sites Being Scraped

As we try to look more into the people and the company behind the 9 deaths in Alabama, we're seeing an effort to erase important information on several websites. We saw this with Tim Rogers's LinkedIn profile, and now we're seeing it with Advanced Specialty Pharmacy (owned by Tim Rogers, William Rogers, and Edward Anthony Cingoranelli), where they've completely removed their Alabama location. Here's the before and after:

Before:


And After: