Archive for: May 2007

Blog post reviewing the bizarre developments in Salt Lake City in the wake of the federal raid on Dr. Warren Stack. Much effort is being put into registering “addicts” into government clinics. Zero effort has been made, or concern expressed, for the abandoned pain patients who are to be treated as “prescription drug addicts who could turn to heroin at any time” according to the District Attorney.

Blog post about the case of Dr. Volkman, a highly credentialed and experienced physician, a vocal critic of the DEA, who has been actively fighting them in the courts for a year and a half. But this isn’t part of the Associated Press press coverage which have been pure drug war trash journalism giving a very one-sided prosecutorial view of the case. This post provides background on Dr. Volkman and the history of his struggles with the DEA, all ignored by the Associated Press.

Comment in response to a TierneyLab blag post by John Tierney of the NY Times. Dr. Volkman characterizes DEA as ‘a criminal organization’ with a primary interesting in cleaving pain patients from their legitimate physicians.Two months later the government charged him with federal drug crimes.

Wow. “Drug addiction” must be as bad as being “gassed at Aushwitz, slaughtered in Armenia, raped in Rwanda.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. It. Isn’t. Oh how we love to dramatize “addiction.” Everybody is an expert – and exactly to that extent the word and concept have become meaningless. Which doesn’t stop drug war prosecutors putting juries with no medical training in the position of deciding life and death, literally, on the basis of a distinction not even medical experts can make with assurance: the difference between a ‘drug seeker’ and a ‘pain patient.’

Excerpt: “Veterans in chronic pain average less than 4 Percosets a day from the compassionate care-givers of the Veterans Administration… [Such low-potency opioids] are indicated for mild to moderate acute pain, not chronic moderate to severe persistent pain… Oxycodone is a short acting opioid in this preparation, with an effective duration of action of about three hours. One pill every six hours of oxycodone/acetaminophen for chronic pain guarantees that the patient will be in unacceptable pain 50 percent of the time, at best. That’s not treatment, it’s under-treatment; it could not possibly be adequate.”

Associated Press article. “They call it the coming tsunami, veterans returning from Iraq who will suffer chronic pain years from now…. The idea: Block the agony faster, and the body’s pain network may not go into the overdrive that sets up the injured for lingering trouble long after they’re officially healed.”

Blog post about the raid on pain doctor Warren Stack and the initial media smear which is analyzed as a common tactic in the War on Doctors. Links to other examples of this are given.

Brief blog post offering suggestions on writing Letters of Support for Dr. William Hurwitz. Judge Brinkema will pass sentence on July 13, 2007. Letters should be addressed to her but sent to Richard Sauber, attorney for Dr. Hurwitz.

A call for letters supporting Dr. William Hurwitz to be addressed to Judge Brinkema and sent to Richard Sauber, attorney for the Hurwitz defense. Instructions and addresses included in the post.

The headline: “Five Moms Target Cough Medicine Abuse” caught my eye, but the article actually frightened me a little. “Five moms across the nation this week launched a campaign against the trend of teens abusing cough medicines to get high. The effort is called the ‘Five Moms’ campaign and was developed by the nation’s cough medicine makers. It is designed to alert parents to a growing substance-abuse problem that most probably don’t even know exists.” Jeez! How many times have I told you to NEVER, EVER! alert me to problems I don’t know exist?

Blog post about Attorney General Brownlee’s announcement of the Purdue OxyContin guilty pleas and fines. Includes the poem, ‘The Truth About OxyContin From a Medical Point of View’ by Alex DeLuca, and links to a collection of documents about the trials of Dr. Cecil Knox and Beverly Boone – another pathetic example of Prosecutor Brownlee’s work.

What Rep. Harrell has succeeded in creating is a prescription monitoring program (PMP) – a networked computer database system linking prescription-originating physicians offices with dispensing pharmacies… [She] would have spent the people’s time and money far more effectively had she mandated a prescription monitoring program where it would do significant good, inside hospitals where 0.32% of all admissions suffer fatal Adverse Drug Reactions. And hospitals would be far better able to protect against needless invasion of privacy than a loose network of doctors and pharmacies linked “through the private enterprise system,” as reassuring a ring as that might have to …

Blog post about ongoing excellent journalistic coverage of retrial of Dr. William Hurwitz on drug trafficking charges. Lots of links by Szalavitz, Balko, Tierney and to Ken Moore’s recent Pain Doctor’s Trial, and to collections of related resources including reader comments in response to Hurwitz coverage.

Blog post referring to Radley Balko’s ‘Hurwitz ReConvicted.” Some of Mr. Balko’s war on doctors work, especially regarding Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer is reviewed and linked to. The ominous ramifications of these trials on access to relief for chronic pain sufferers is considered.

Letter from the Hurwitz family to the Pain Relief advocacy community reviewing Dr. Hurwitz’ retrial in great detail, noting the excellent work of their pro bono attorneys Sauber and Rollins and their offices.