PRN Takes on WA State Opioid Guidelines – 07/12/10

PRN Takes on the State of Washington; Press Release; Pain Relief Network; 2010-07-09. Contact: Siobhan Reynolds – Rathronan@gmail.com Arguments in Federal Court Seattle, and Press Conference: 2010-07-12 at 1:00pm

Permalink: http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/archive/prn-takes-on-wa

See also:
PRN Sues State of Washington – D. Blankinship; AP; 2008-06-25
PRN Tort Claim vs. WA State – L. Cooper, Esq; 2008-07-08

Responding to what doctors and patients are calling a dangerous crackdown on people with chronic pain, Pain Relief Network is seeking the protection of the courts, hoping to have the deadly disease of chronic pain declared a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Siobhan Reynolds, President of the Pain Relief Network and defender of people in pain sees Washington State as the patient’s last real opportunity to stop the War On Drugs from completely destroying a free and voluntary doctor/patient relationship, “Between Obamacare, The War On Drugs and the media’s rapacious focus on celebrity addiction, people in pain who merely want to live their lives and take care of their families are instead being herded like cattle into “safety programs’ which are anything but safe.”

She goes on to say, “despite Washington State’s contentions that they are merely looking out for the welfare of citizens in pain, the data does not demonstrate that a public health crisis in overdose and addiction even exists. What the data does say is that some 25 to 33 percent of the American people suffer from the deadly disease of chronic non-cancer pain.”

Laura Cooper Esq. General Counsel for PRN and the lawyer who will be arguing on behalf of the doctor/patient relationship in Washington State from her wheel chair said, “Physician assisted suicide is now legal in Washington State but pain treatment is no longer supported in the law. So it’s ok for doctors to prescribe Controlled Substances to kill us but not to allow us to live. The courts have said they will step in if such a state of affairs comes to characterize pain treatment in the US and I am afraid that we are here.”

A recent article in Time Magazine¹ explains the groundlessness of the state’s claims that a ‘wave of deaths by opioids’ necessitated this crackdown. According to one of the top medical experts in the world, the science around cause of death by opioids in people who were otherwise critically ill is far from exact. Dr. Steven Karch called the acceptance of the state’s word on the cause of death when pain medicines are present, “a giant miscarriage of justice.” He goes on to explain, “You can die from a drug and you can die with a drug, When you have four orders of magnitude separating either end of the curve, many of these deaths may not have to do with drugs at all.”

Footnotes