BALTIMORE, Aug. 6, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) announced that overdose deaths had quadrupled in ten years,
hitting a record high of 90,000 in 2020, opioid researchers around
the country expressed shock with terms such as "huge" and
"unprecedented." They might have reserved a few adjectives since
overdose deaths grew to 100,000 in 2021 and 110,000 in 2022. Each
year there are now twice as many deaths from overdoses as from
breast cancer or colon cancer and more deaths than from automobiles
and firearms combined. In the past two decades, a million Americans
have died of overdoses. In the next decade, at the current epidemic
rate, a million more are projected to perish.
In a series of vividly personal vignettes, GREED TO DO
GOOD recounts the untold story of how CDC, the federal
organization charged with controlling epidemics, implemented a
misguided strategy that helped detonate an opioid overdose
explosion. No other book has given a similar frontline, insider
glimpse into the world's premier public health agency.
To provide a unique, first-person perspective on the human
consequences, the author chronicles his experiences as a physician
prescribing opioids in Appalachia and treating gang members in
prison attacks, as well as his own near-death ordeal as a patient
receiving high-dose opioids for severe pain. Drawing on
twenty-eight years as a CDC epidemic control specialist, Dr.
LeBaron concludes that we do have the means to emerge from the
cruel, lethal paradoxes of this self-inflicted opioid war—which is
really a war upon ourselves.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
For more than twenty-eight years,
Charles LeBaron worked as a medical
epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC). While there, he was the author of more than fifty scientific
studies published in peer-reviewed journals, including first- or
senior- author papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and
the Journal of the American Medical Association. He was
co-recipient of CDC's Charles C. Shepard Science Award for best
scientific manuscript published by CDC authors. A Captain in the
Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service, he
received the Meritorious Service Medal, as well as more than ten
other individual and unit commendation awards. A graduate of
Princeton University and Harvard Medical School, he is board certified in
both internal medicine and pediatrics, as well as the author of a
previous non-fiction account of the first year of medical school.
He currently lives in Atlanta,
Georgia.
GREED TO DO GOOD is on sale now from
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Amplify
Publishing.
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/greed-to-do-good-the-untold-story-of-cdcs-disastrous-war-on-opioids-amplify-publishing-is-out-today-302228861.html
SOURCE Amplify Publishing Group