Posts Tagged With: opiophobia

I spoke to Billy’s wife briefly, recently, and am very happy to be able to report that Dr. Hurwitz is no longer in federal prison. He is currently in a half-way house in D.C. and will be transitioning to house arrest as part of his parole and probation requirements… He is in a sort of “titration to house arrest” best I understand it. Meaning, he is starting to get overnight visits with his family – YEA! – and more and more of that till he sort of “stabilizes” on a regimen of maintenance house arrest. (Is house arrest a substitution therapy for …

***Pain Relief Network files State Tort Claim vs. WA State***; Laura Cooper, Esq.; [Pain Relief Network][prn]; 2008/07/08. [**Full text PDF**] **Permalink:** http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/archive/prn-tort-claim-vs-wa/ **See also:** [**PRN Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, and Damages**][d1] – 2008 and, [**WA's Interagency Guideline on Opioid Dosing for Non-Cancer Pain**][d2] – 2007 —- SUMMARY: Nature of Relief Sought: This lawsuit is the result of grossly misinformed prejudices about opioid(1) pain medications held by high-level Washington public health officials. Those prejudices are identified in medical literature …

The nonprofit Pain Relief Network (PRN) says the guidelines for prescribing narcotics, written by the Washington state Department of Health and published in March 2007, have influenced pain treatment across the country and have made doctors afraid to give opiate prescriptions. Siobhan Reynolds, PRN president, says the group decided to target WA because the state has been a leader both in pain treatment and in restricting doctors’ prescriptions of pain relief medication. [...]

Excellent article by Dr. Forest Tennant explaining and demystifying chronic opioid therapy for chronic pain.

On the off chance that people remain unconvinced that there is indeed a terrible pain crisis, I will offer some thoughts which might help shed light on this situation. The World Health Organization has said that undertreated pain is the number one health problem in America.

In this full text medical journal article, Joranson, in response to Paulozzi (below), describes a basic public health approach to the ‘drug abuse crisis.’ One wonders whether the combined brain power of the NIH, CDC and FDA would not have accomplished this, except for the imperatives of the drug war. Hurwitz 2005 (see below) is an example of the sort of creative analysis we should expect, but never get, from our academic and federal patriarchs.

The Pain Relief Network has a webpage at which pain patients of Dr. Schneider\’s can sign up so that we can stay in touch with them. As part of that contact info form, there is a space for optional comments. Below are comments extracted from the ten most recently received forms.

Associated Press article about PRN\’s lawsuit against the State of Kansas, the Kansas medical board, and Attorney General Mukasey and the Department of Justice. The article focuses on the continuing plight of the legitimate pain patients of federally indicted and imprisioned Dr. Schneider. The patients claim no local doctors or hospitals will treat them properly for chronic pain out of fear of becoming targets of drug war zealotry, like Dr. Schneider.

AP story about pain patient of indicted Dr. Schneider being unable to find ANY medical care – they have been completely abandonded. This is the chilling effect. This is opiophobia. THIS IS WRONG, AMERICA.

Experience of chronic pain patient with gross undertreatment of pain, and substandard medical care in general, at the hands of VA medical providers.

Blog post about a Letter to the Editor (LTE) to an Alabama paper entitled, ‘Answer to methadone is God’. Begins, “What is interesting about the LTE reprinted in full below, is that the writer, a nurse, is describing behavior that any reasonable person can imagine, and would excuse, a chronically undermedicated person with severe chronic pain for displaying. [...]”

Newspaper article focusing on Siobhan Reynolds, founder and President of the Pain Relief Network (PRN) and her life experience of trying to get decent medical care for a husband in chronic pain, while raising a child and founding a movement for social change – the Pain Relief advocacy movement.

Editorial from the Washington Times about DEA’s war on doctors and the pain crisis in America that has resulted in the casual and routine undertreatment of moderate to severe chronic pain. Article focuses on the tragic story of James Fernandez, a combat disabled vet of the first Gulf War.

TOC: Intro — Opiophobia and Opioignorance — Risk of Addiction in Chronic Opioid Therapy — Treatment and Outcomes — Undertreatment of Pain is a National Scourge — Footnootes

Excerpt: “You captured the absurdity of these trials beautifully. I remember when I watched my first one of these, the “trial” of Drs. Bordeaux, Allere, Jackson et al of the Comprehensive Care clinic in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. There, the prosecution could make no allegations of high pill counts or “addicted” babies, so instead, they added little dramatic touches into the statements the doctors supposedly gave to the DEA agents. These touches gave the scene, as portrayed by prosecutors, what theater artists call the “feel of reality”… The stunning thing was, the topic at hand was pain care, so the …

First of a series of blog posts regarding the trial of pain doctor William Mangino. Excerpt: “The prosecution asked only one question on cross examination of defense expert Dr. Tennant. The prosecution brought forth no further expert testimony. The defense felt Tennant’s testimony was sufficiently strong and his credibility and professional stature so huge relative to the prosecution expert, and that the prosecution had failed to make it’s case. And so on 2007-07-03, the defense choose not to call it’s second defense expert (myself) and choose not to put Dr. Mangino on the stand, and rested.”

Thanks to Alex Coolman of the most excellent Drug Law Blog for snagging yet another AG Tom Corbett war on doctors case that had slipped by me. I think this makes three unrelated doc scalps for Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett in a neat seven days. Wow. Impressive.

John Tierney (”A Taste of His Own Medicine,” column, May 6) hits the nail on the head when he suggests that drug war prosecutions, like those of Rush Limbaugh or Richard Paey, are more for show than for actual enforcement purposes. Unfortunately, these prosecutions also reinforce a medical culture that routinely hardens itself against the anguished pleas of people in serious pain. — An Internet study presented at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society last week in San Antonio, Tex., revealed that while 88 percent of those who visit emergency rooms do so because of out-of-control pain, only …

Blog post about Pennsylvania Attorney Tom Corbett’s attacks on substance misusing physicians as drug criminals. What Pennsylvanians need to understand is that AG Tom Corbett is mis-informing them and playing them for fools in a venal and socially destructive game, that at once creates, and then plays off of, Americans’ trumped-up fear of a ‘prescription drug crisis’ for which there is very little scientific evidence. What Pennsylvanians need to understand is that it is bizarre and unnecessary and a complete waste of taxpayer money for their Attorney General to attack what are, at worst, alleged substance misuing physicians who pose …

Blog post about the indictment of Dr. Jennifer Zampogna, and the initial media smear mounted by Attorney General Tom Corbett of Erie county, PA. One would have thought we\’d seen how low Attorney General Tom Corbett could go, in the Dr. Paul Heberle case, but apparently not. This Zampogna case is embarrassing – a pathetic joke. Here is the MAIN charge, the best they got… After that, the charges get too silly to bother with here. He\’s kidding, right? The good people of PA are going to pony up for a hideously expensive criminal investigation and trial to convict a …