Do No Harm

Robyn Symon's masterpiece has brought stunningly beautiful showmanship to the tragedies of life and death in medicine. This film is heartbreaking and compelling. As a physician, I know firsthand that it has already saved countless lives of our country's healers - and its premiere is still to come.

Do No Harm is an eye opening documentary on the little known epidemic of physician suicide. Through the tales of suicide survivors, family members who lost their loved ones, and medical staff from all fields who are just surviving, we lift up the scab to see the festering wound which is our health care system. Any we come to discover that doctors, residents and medical students are as much victims of this system as the patients they treat. It exposes not only the inhumane conditions that our brightest and most compassionate are subjected to, but the process of institutionalization by which our healers deny themselves the very compassion that would help them to heal from this traumatic experience. Do No Harm should be aired in all the medical schools, and all the residency programs so that we may prevent more suicides. And it should be aired in all theaters so that the public may witness what their doctors go through on a daily basis.

We are now in 2023. I hope most understand how the pendulum has swung too far the opposite direction and into prohibition. Kolodny and Franklin who are selected "experts" for this one sided documentary are members of the anti opioid extremist group called PROP. Who were instrumental in the creation of the 2016 CDC Guidelines (that have been updated in 2022 due to inaccurately calculating prescribing OD from actual illicit fentanyl). Andrew Kolodny is a media junkie and was paid millions in litigation fees, spewing his made up garbage to promote the vilification of pain medication. Doing a disservice to the pain community and those with addiction.

Less that 2% of chronic pain sufferers (life impacting intractable pain, and a large % are disabled people) rely on legal safe pain medication for quality of life. Now, because of figure heads like AK, one sided vilifying docs such as this, we have skyrocketing overdoses, more than anytime in history from illicit fentanyl. While prescribing rates have fallen by 70-80%! That number continues to climb.

Targeting innocent patients and the doctors who care for them needs to end. Government overreach and missing the target, is resulting in people dying not only from overdoses but suicide from under treated pain. While there was wrong doings by the pharma industry that needed correcting, this same marketing translates with numerous other drugs. But it was the capitalizing on opioid that yielded the biggest bang for the buck. Billions in fact for states.

We know the data now, and yet not enough is being done about this over correction to the point our country has been complicit in human rights violations, and very corrupted players.

A compelling Masterpiece. This movie raises a call to address physician suicide, depression, anxiety and burnout especially in medical students.