L. Joseph Parker, MD

L. Joseph Parker is a research physician.

Doctors or criminals? How misleading narratives hurt innocent lives

Physician

May 25, 2024

When it comes to journalism and health care prosecutions, today’s “papers” are so yellow that they could damage vision like a 580 nm laser. I have personally seen and suffered from this unbalanced approach to reporting and felt a need to provide a counternarrative based on reason instead of hyperbole. After studying hundreds of cases, I will argue that in roughly fifty percent of these, the government has paid hundreds …

Xylazine: the lethal ingredient hiding in your pills

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

May 21, 2024

Xylazine has been found to be adulterating pills in America, and doctors will need to understand this new threat. First, xylazine is not “krokodil,” although it produces somewhat similar-looking skin ulcers. Krokodil is a pseudonym for desomorphine, which is created from a precursor chemical called alpha-chlorocodide. Desomorphine is dihydrodesoxymorphine and was developed in Germany in 1932. It is a very fast but short-acting, semi-synthetic opioid used mainly in Russia. Xylazine …

The hidden dangers of mislabeling pain patients: a medical crisis

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Physician

May 15, 2024

I am very concerned about the mislabeling of patients who suffer from pain that is being carried out in a wholesale fashion by some in the American medical community. This mislabeling is the result of the most dangerous combination in the world: good intentions and avarice. These two have recently combined to create distortions that are now to the point of wholesale fraud. Calling something what it is not can …

AvertD: Can a simple test help reduce opioid addiction?

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

May 8, 2024

When I heard about the new AvertD genetic test, pronounced like “averted,” I was compelled to contact the CEO of SOLVD Health, the maker of AvertD, and ask him to answer some of my questions. To my surprise, he was willing to do so, and here is what I learned from the training documents that will be mandatory for all prescribing MDs.

First, AvertD is not for use in patients receiving …

DEA shuts down pharmacy for fulfilling addiction treatment prescriptions

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Physician

May 1, 2024

On August 8, 2023, DEA agents shut down the Oak Hill Hometown Pharmacy in the Southern District of West Virginia. Their crime? Having filled more than 2,000 prescriptions for Subutex over more than two years “in the face of obvious red flags of drug abuse and diversion,” according to the U.S. Attorney for that district. I guess someone needs to explain to the government what the heck Subutex is prescribed …

Doctors beware: Your credentials could land you in prison

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Physician

April 23, 2024

I hate to say that we should follow the Fox Mulder School of Paranoia on this one, but the evidence is clear. You can go to prison for what others do with your credentials. Being a doctor comes with incredible privileges, or at least it used to. Now, with the corporate takeover of medical care, we get to work ourselves to death and be hung out to dry if someone’s …

Elite access vs. public scrutiny: Medication disparities exposed

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

April 16, 2024

A recent New York Times opinion piece detailed a lack of available pain medications. While the DEA claims that it is not purposefully restricting legitimate medication availability, even the names of its own operations belie this statement. On Halloween 2023, the DEA launched Operation “Bottleneck,” serving immediate suspension orders to six large pharmaceutical supply companies. These companies were accused of having failed to account for “a million doses” of …

Gene therapy’s impact on incurable illnesses

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Conditions

April 11, 2024

Gene therapy has been used recently to cure previously incurable diseases, including sickle cell anemia. It is a horrible disease that I have seen so many times in the ER that it haunts me at night, especially one patient. He was a sweet man with a loving and patient demeanor who tolerated the agony he suffered on a weekly basis with saintly patience. My daughter was helping out in the …

A crisis of alcoholism is surging in the United States

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Physician

April 2, 2024

The CDC is trying, desperately, it seems, to pound a square peg into a round hole, blaming COVID-19 for a surge in alcohol use and ignoring a glaring problem with the evidence. That’s not something you generally expect from scientists. However, I would argue the CDC is no longer controlled by scientists. While dedicated scientists still work there, the CDC is now controlled by politics. Founded as the Communicable Disease …

Real pain deserves real treatment

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Conditions

March 29, 2024

When a patient comes to us and describes confusing symptoms that don’t seem to fit into any immediate category, we can see it in two different ways: as a challenge, we can rise to, a riddle to solve … or we can see it as an opportunity to denigrate the patient, to imply that they are malingering or that it’s “all in their head.” This tendency is amplified when we …

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Real pain deserves real treatment

Topoisomerase inhibitors and chronic pain

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

March 23, 2024

Topoisomerase inhibitors emerged in the American medical landscape in 1971, thanks to the discovery by Dr. Jim Wang of the E. coli omega protein. Topoisomerase I, an enzyme identified by Dr. Wang, plays a crucial role in DNA unwrapping from supercoiling. Supercoiling involves tightly wrapping DNA for storage and protection, requiring unwrapping for reading, a process in which topoisomerase is indispensable.

Topoisomerase comprises two main types, aptly named types I and …

DEA overreach: a threat to doctors’ freedom in American medicine

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

March 19, 2024

Today, doctors’ liberty and property are at risk when they choose to treat a patient. Not because of some new law but because of the misapplication of old ones. The current opioid panic has essentially given the DEA free rein to target any physician whose medical practice they disagree with. This has created a serious problem in American medicine and a unique danger to health care providers in this country. …

Doctor charged after treating a DEA agent

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Physician

March 14, 2024

As I wait for the next patient to be brought in, I start reviewing their chart. Past medical records have been received and scanned in per protocol, I see. This won’t be the first time I’ve seen his chart as he had to submit medical records and be approved before he could get an appointment to see me.

A forty-something African American male has been complaining of chronic back pain for …

Ultrasound shows promise as new pain treatment, targeting a specific brain region

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Conditions

March 6, 2024

A recent study published in PhysicsWorld documented a possible new treatment for pain. Something most physicians would be surprised to hear. Ultrasound. That’s right, low-frequency ultrasound waves, when directed to a specific area of the brain called the insula, have been shown to give some pain relief to persons who were being subjected to a standard contact heat evoked potential (CHEP). In this test, brief pulses of heat are …

The opioid crisis: profits, lawsuits, and pharmaceutical influence

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

February 29, 2024

The absolute belief in a vast conspiracy is often associated with an unbalanced mind. People suffering from some forms of mental illness are prone to these beliefs, seeing the invisible hand of the CIA behind the music choices on their radio stations. But that’s not always the case. Dr. Andrew Wakefield was born in 1956 and completed his medical degree in 1981, becoming a fellow of the Royal College of …

Beyond opioids: a new hope for chronic pain relief

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

February 21, 2024

Opioids work through the mu opiate receptors throughout the body and brain, dampening pain signals being sent through the peripheral nervous system and spinal cord. It also acts on the ventral tegmental area, causing the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, creating a sensation of euphoria. It is this euphoric effect that seems to be most related to addiction potential. Opiates mimic our endogenous endorphins and have been used …

The unseen battle: America’s veterans and the crisis of chronic pain

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

February 16, 2024

Since the Civil War, there have been seventy-four wars and conflicts America has fought in. But as bad as previous wars had been, there has never been anything in American history like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. While America’s direct intervention against Germany and Japan lasted less than five years, the war on terror went on for decades. Extended time in extreme circumstances will cause extreme adaptations in the human …

Can we finally say goodbye to opioids? There may be new pain relief on the horizon.

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

February 13, 2024

In an article I recently wrote about a new calcium channel-blocking medication that could be effective in treating central chronic pain, I mentioned that medications like lidocaine block sodium channels to prevent the transmission of pain through the peripheral nervous system. I also said that these medications have limited use, usually just in the ER, because they are short-acting and injected, though there is a lidocaine patch that some …

Do parasites predispose to dangerous behaviors in humans?

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Conditions

February 8, 2024

Those of you who have followed the game or series The Last of Us will recognize the name Cordyceps. This is the fungus that causes a global pandemic of zombies to break out and start attacking their fellow humans. The writers, in this case, did a good job by using this infection in their story.

Cordyceps is a genus of over 600 fungal species spread around the world called endoparasitoids, meaning …

Gene therapies for chronic pain?

L. Joseph Parker, MD

Meds

February 1, 2024

Gene therapy is starting to come into its own, and it will change medicine more profoundly than anything that came before. Just like when antibiotics were discovered almost exactly a century ago, we are on the cusp of another revolution in medicine. One that is orders of magnitude greater than antibiotics.

Recently, in China, five of six children born with an autosomal recessive otoferlin deficiency deafness were cured by the injection …

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Gene therapies for chronic pain?