Hershel Jick
Hershel M. Jick (born 1 December 1931) is an American medical researcher and Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, where he was formerly the director of the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1956. He is known for researching the negative and positive effects of pharmaceutical drugs. For instance, a 1977 study by him and his assistant Jane Porter reported that no more than 1 patient per 3,600 died because of incorrect drug prescriptions.[1] He is also the author of the book A Listener's Guide to Mozart's Music.[2] In 1980, Jick and Porter published the letter "Addiction Rare in Patients Treated With Narcotics", which has been cited to argue that opioids are rarely addictive.[3] Jick himself has said that this study had multiple limitations, such as that it only pertained to patients in the hospital, and did not assess the risk of addiction when opioids were prescribed in outpatient settings.[4][5]
References
- Cohn, Victor (28 February 1977). "Study Lowers Estimate Of Prescription Drug Toll". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
- "Hershel Jick". The Lancet. 357 (9264): 1302. April 2001. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)04418-4.
- Associated Press (1 June 2017). "How drug companies used 1980 doctor's letter to usher in widespread opioids use". CBS News. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
- Meier, Barry (25 November 2003). "The Delicate Balance Of Pain and Addiction". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
- Quinones, Sam (21 April 2015). Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic. Bloomsbury USA. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-62040-250-4.