Drug laws hurt cancer patients

摘要

Overzealous regulation of opioids is having a painful knock-on effect on eastern Europeans with cancer. Opioid-type drugs are potent painkillers. The World Health Organization lists two of them, codeine and morphine, as "essential medicines" that ought to be available worldwide. Nathan Cherny of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel, and colleagues asked cancer pain specialists, including doctors, from 40 European countries plusrnIsrael, to review access to opioids in their countries.