Charles LeBaron is a former CDC scientist and researcher where he worked for more than twenty-eight years as a medical epidemiologist. He is author of a non-fiction account of his first year at Harvard Medical School. His book The Untold Story of CDC’s Disastrous War on Opioids: A CDC Physician’s Personal Account (2024) chronicles his experiences as a physician prescribing opioids in Appalachia and treating gang members in prison attacks, as well as his own ordeal as a patient receiving opioids for severe pain. Dr. LeBaron concludes that the "opioid war" has resulted in cruel, lethal paradoxes that are self-inflicted: really a war upon ourselves.