To: The United States Congress, The Secretary of Health and Human Services, The Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention We, the undersigned, are chronic pain patients, family members, medical professionals, and concerned citizens. We demand an immediate and comprehensive congressional investigation into the misconduct, procedural corruption, and scientific bias that produced the CDC’s 2016 Opioid Prescribing Guideline. That flawed policy triggered a humanitarian crisis, including documented patient suicides, widespread abandonment by clinicians, and intolerable suffering. The evidence is clear: the process was rigged, the data were misleading, and the consequences have been fatal. The CDC’s 2022 guideline update is an inadequate response to a systemic failure that requires accountability. The case for investigation: corruption, bias, and harm The process was corrupted from the start, through deck-stacking and insider information
· Insider collusion: a CDC insider provided an advocacy group with advance, non-public access to the registration for the sole public comment hearing.
· Silencing patient voices: this advance access enabled the group to secure most speaking slots, excluding the patients most affected by the guideline. What should have been a public hearing became a staged event that produced a false consensus.
· A tainted foundation: a guideline born from a process that intentionally silenced patients lacks legitimacy and moral authority.
 The data used were fundamentally flawed and misleading
· Conflation of crisis causes: the CDC used overdose data that mixed legally prescribed opioids with illicit drugs such as heroin and illicit fentanyl. This conflation inflated perceived risks of prescription opioids and misled policymakers, clinicians, and the public.
· False narrative: by failing to separate these causes, the CDC scapegoated stable pain patients and their doctors for an overdose crisis largely driven by illegal street drugs. The agency has since admitted inaccuracies, yet the policies based on those numbers continue to harm patients.
The consequences have been catastrophic and fatal
· Patient suicides: numerous documented reports, and peer reviewed studies, link forced opioid discontinuation and abandonment to increased risks of overdose and suicide.
· Forced tapering and abandonment: a climate of fear has driven clinicians to forcibly taper stable patients, causing severe withdrawal, intolerable pain, and psychological devastation.
· Systemic undertreatment: the guideline has been enforced as a rigid ceiling in some places, leaving millions with untreated, relentless pain.
 Our demands: truth, accountability, and reform We do not seek a return to reckless prescribing. We demand science, integrity, and patient-centered care. A full-scale congressional investigation
· We request the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee reopen and expand their investigations into CDC misconduct. The scope must include the deck-stacking of public hearings, the role of the lead author and consultants, and the CDC’s use and presentation of flawed data.
Immediate correction of harmful policies
· The CDC must issue a formal public statement acknowledging the documented harms caused by the misapplication of the 2016 guideline, including links to patient suicides and abandonment.
· Congress must pass legislation protecting clinicians from punitive action when using clinical judgment to treat complex pain and explicitly prohibit forced tapering of stable patients.
Restoration of a transparent and balanced system
· Future federal guidelines must be developed through transparent processes with balanced panels that include a significant number of practicing pain specialists and chronic pain patients.
· The CDC must separate data on prescription opioid use from data on illicit drug use in all public reporting.
 The chronic pain community has been victimized twice: first by a corrupted policy process, and second by the medical neglect that followed. The 2016 CDC Guideline is not only a medical failure, it is a failure of democracy and ethics. You have the power to uncover the truth and stop the suffering. We will not be silent. We demand justice for lives lost and lives destroyed. Investigate, correct, and restore integrity to American pain care now.