Health Supreme

If you wanted to buy a product, and the main source of research on the product was the company selling it, would you automatically assume the product was safe and effective? 

But you see, that’s the just the beginning of the problem.

Suppose the company’s research was cited thousands of times in the press, as the authoritative standard of proof—and anyone who disputed that research was labeled a conspiracy theorist and a quack and a danger to the community and an anti-science lunatic. 

Would you begin to suspect the company had some awesome media connections? Would you suspect some very powerful people were backing the company? 

This is exactly the situation with the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC)...

According to a January 2016 CDC report, over 47,000 Americans fatally overdosed on prescription opioid pain killers in 2014.

This is a stunning fact. But almost as stunning is the apparent lack of concern expressed by the world's media when reporting it. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, for example, thought it worth a mere 214 words. NBC News was obviously more excited and pushed their coverage to a hefty 223 words. And even those who pushed their word totals up slightly higher ignored the real stories hidden behind the headlines. 

With that in mind, let's take a look at the CDC report in detail--which virtually no news service did--and then explore the backstory that was pretty much ignored outside of a couple of surprising journalistic players. And finally, I want to take a look a stunning twist to the story that absolutely no one looked at but that to my mind is really the most important takeaway from the whole debacle.