“Opium: Sinner or Saint”Short film 22 of 50 in the LIFE Before Death documentary series about the global crisis in untreated pain and the dramatic life changing effect palliative care services can deliver to patients and their families around the world. In this short film we discover that opium can be used both for great good and misused to cause great harm but that a balanced approach must be adopted to assess its overall usefulness to society. “The reason why opioids are important is because they are our best pain-killing drugs – we need them,” states Dr Cynthia Goh (Singapore). “We need them to control the very bad pain that you see in cancer, HIV disease and many other chronic conditions. The problem with opioids is that people are so scared of them because they associate them with addiction, they associate them with crime and things like that.” “Opium, or morphine, is part of our body. It is there chemically even normally within our system,” explains Dr MR Rajagopal (India). “It’s part of us. Like the rest of our body and mind we could abuse it.” “Because the drugs we use to treat pain are controlled substances and because they’re abused, the opportunity for pointing out their negative factors is becoming increasingly more frequent,” continues Dr Kathleen Foley (USA). “And so we get this term ‘bad medicine’. Does that mean insulin is bad because some people die when they take it?” “I think it’s more a saint than a sinner — by far,” reflects Dr Stephen Connor (USA …
Video Rating: 4 / 5