The Untold Story of the CDC’s Disastrous War on Opioids (Amplify Publishing) is OUT TODAY!

BALTIMORE, 22 August 2024 /PRNewswire/ — When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that overdose deaths had quadrupled in a decade, reaching a record 90,000 in 2020, opioid researchers across the country expressed their dismay with terms like “huge” and “unprecedented.” They might have saved a few adjectives, as overdose deaths rose to 100,000 in 2021 and 110,000 in 2022. Each year, there are now twice as many overdose deaths as breast or colon cancer, and more deaths than cars and firearms combined. Overdoses have killed one million Americans in the past two decades. Over the next decade, at the current epidemic rate, another million are expected to die.

In a series of vividly personal vignettes Greed to do good tells the untold story of how the CDC, the federal agency charged with fighting epidemics, implemented a misguided strategy that contributed to an explosion in opioid overdoses. No other book offers a comparable firsthand insider look at the world’s leading health agency.

To provide a unique, first-hand perspective on the human consequences, the author shares his experiences as a doctor prescribing opioids in Appalachia and treating gang members during prison raids, as well as his own near-death experience as a patient receiving high-dose opioids for severe pain. Drawing on his 28 years as a disease control specialist at the CDC, Dr. LeBaron concludes that we have the tools to get out of the cruel, deadly paradoxes of this self-inflicted opioid war—which is really a war on 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). During his time there, he authored over 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 a co-recipient of the CDC’s Charles C. Shepard Science Award for the best scientific manuscript published by CDC authors. As a Captain in the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service, he received the Meritorious Service Medal and over ten other individual and unit awards. A graduate of the Princeton University And Harvard University Medical SchoolHe is a specialist in internal medicine and pediatrics and the author of a non-fiction book about the first year of his medical studies. He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Greed to do good is now on sale from Amazon, Barnes & NobleAnd Boost the publication.

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