In an Al Jazeera documentary aired over the weekend, a Texas-based man, who the network identified as a pharmacist, alleges that an Indianapolis-based anti-aging clinic sent human growth hormone to Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning under his wife's name.

The veracity of the report hinges...

An Indianapolis anti-aging clinic supplied quarterback Peyton Manning with human growth hormone, a performance-enhancing drug banned by the NFL, a pharmacist who once worked at the clinic asserts in a new special report from Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit. 

The report,...

The Democratic presidential candidates were asked at Saturday night's debate how they would respond to the national heroin...

In the third Democratic presidential primary debate Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) apologized to his supporters...

WASHINGTON -- The implosion of a progressive public relations giant over allegations of sexual assault and harassment has shaken liberal Washington. But there may be a silver lining to a scandal that has caused so much pain.

Former clients of the firm, FitzGibbon Media, are signaling their...

WASHINGTON -- FitzGibbon Media, a prominent progressive public relations firm, abruptly shut down on Thursday amid allegations of sexual harassment and assault by the company's president.

Trevor FitzGibbon and his team worked with some of the biggest progressive organizations, including NARAL, MoveOn, the...

Nevada prison guards routinely shoot the people they are guarding, not in a rare and unfortunate case where a guard’s life is at risk, but as a matter of policy aimed at keeping the prison system under control.

That’s the startling finding of...

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that legalizing unlimited election giving to groups such as super PACs would have no corrupting effect on democracy because PACs are independent from the candidates. Luckily for Kennedy, he was not among those present at a 2013 meeting involving Harry...

WASHINGTON -- Around two thousand and sixteen years ago, a non-Christian Middle Eastern couple was in need of refuge for the night. There was no room at the inn, but the innkeeper dug deep into his humanity and offered the travelers, one of whom was pregnant...

WASHINGTON -- Former President George W. Bush was a lot of things, but one thing he wasn't was soft. He responded to the attack on 9/11 by invading not one but two countries, authorized the use of torture and indefinite detention and launched a mass surveillance program. When...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said 100,000 troops could be needed to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq, a coalition that would include 25,000 Americans.

WASHINGTON -- Al Franken, the best-selling author and comedian turned muted Minnesota senator, has inked a deal to write a nonfiction book about his time in Congress for at least $1 million, sources close to the process told The Huffington Post.

The book project, as yet untitled,...

BETTENDORF, Iowa -- At an event on Monday night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joked about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spending time in federal prison. 

Many in the GOP base consider it an article of faith that Clinton broke federal law by mishandling classified information. 

Cruz, who has been surging in...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The mass shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood has been widely condemned in the United States as a horrific act of domestic terrorism or, at minimum, the depraved action of a mentally ill loner.

In other parts of the world, though, it’s...

WASHINGTON -- David Courtwright, the nation's leading historian on drug use and drug policy, has published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that physicians must heed the lessons of the 19th and 20th centuries in order to successfully combat today's opioid epidemic.

The professor of history at the University of North Florida recounts how the medical and pharmaceutical communities had successfully worked to control the epidemic on their own by reducing the number of opiate prescriptions across the country. Doctors "had succeeded through primary prevention, creating fewer new addicts as existing addicts began quitting or died of old age," he writes.

Meanwhile, Courtwright adds, a prejudice that began more than a hundred years ago has yet to be fully defeated by modern science. As the first opioid epidemic was underway, some doctors and some municipal governments engaged in what would now be called a form of "harm reduction" -- an approach known as maintenance. Where an addiction was deemed to be unbreakable, at least at that moment, doctors would maintain the supply of narcotics so that addicts would avoid withdrawal, which can be deadly, and would not resort to crime or the black market to continue using.

As Courtwright recounts, the Progressive movement strongly condemned vice, and led the push for prohibition of the non-medical use of narcotics and alcohol. The federal government carried over that mentality, with the narrow blessing of the Supreme Court, eventually prohibiting doctors from prescribing for the purposes of maintenance. That bias against maintenance continues today within the U.S. treatment system, even as advances in science have developed effective treatments such as methadone and buprenorphine. Methadone was proven an effective long-term treatment decades ago.

"The key objectives — reducing fatal overdoses, medical and social complications, and injection-drug use and related infections — are difficult to achieve if abstinence-oriented treatment is the only option available," the historian writes. "Yet that remains the situation in many places, particularly in rural locales, where officials dismiss methadone and buprenorphine as unacceptable substitute addictions."

To help tell the contemporary history, Courtwright in his NEJM article cites a Huffington Post investigation into the treatment industry from January.

"We need more and better treatment for addicts, including medically assisted recovery, and that's where your article and mine really intersect," Courtwright told HuffPost. "I made the point that general prejudice against maintenance has spilled over and exacerbated the failure to provide adequate medically assisted recovery."

The HuffPost investigation showed how Kentucky’s scarce access to such recovery methods was exacerbating the current epidemic. In 2013, the majority of fatal overdose victims in the northern part of the state had tried an abstinence-only treatment -- which bars the use of medications like buprenorphine -- before their deaths. 

“What your article helped people to understand and what a lot of people still don't get, is there's a difference between an opioid addict who goes into treatment and somebody who's an alcoholic or a heavy cannabis user who goes into treatment, because the truth is that if that a cannabis user or that alcoholic comes out of treatment and relapses, they're probably not going to immediately kill themselves," Courtwright said. "Whereas the opioid addict comes out of treatment and because they've lost their tolerance and because they're overconfident about the size dose they can safely take, they're going to die.” 

The historian admitted that for a long time he had thought the extent of any opioid problem would be limited to those buying heroin on the black market. When he began his research in the 1970s, he did not dream that there would be another opioid epidemic -- one twice as prevalent as the one in the early 20th century. This fall, he recalled seeing an ad for a medicine that could relieve opioid-induced constipation. The ad had aired during an NFL football game.

“I fell out of my chair,” Courtwright said. “I was just astonished. It was certainly a sign of how common the condition has become in American...

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is acquiring a media outlet, sources involved in the negotiation and sale of the site tell The Huffington Post. 

True Blue Media, a newly formed company incorporated by Brock, has acquired progressive news website Blue Nation Review. BNR's previous...

Payday lenders make money by giving people loans they can’t pay back.

That fact has been apparent for years. A 2009 study from the Center for Responsible Lending found that people taking out new loans to repay old ones make up 76...

The payday loan industry was involved in almost every aspect of a pro-industry academic study, according to emails and other documents reviewed by The Huffington Post. The revelation calls into question a host of other pro-industry academic studies that were paid for by the same organization.

WASHINGTON -- His admirers often describe Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) as the Republicans' Barack Obama: a young senator with a few years of service, an inspiring life story, and an itch for higher office.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sees in Rubio echoes of a different...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has kept a famously clean mouth throughout his long career. But that doesn't mean the Mormon from Nevada doesn't appreciate a good cuss out every now and then.

Reflecting in his Senate office on his "special...