Posts Tagged With: trash journalism

Blog post about an example of war on doctors Trash Journalism, which is analyzed. Excerpt: “So what is the message? Well one clear message to me is that the line between pain patient and ‘addict’ – that pitiable dregs of humanity; the walking dead; that criminal scourge; is thin and vague. In fact it is presented as the slippery slope if not an inevitability – people on chronic opioid therapy are, or will become, addicts. Pain patient, drug addict, who cares? Drug are bad, people who use them are bad, you and I are better than that; they deserve what …

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. (See: More Indictments, Arrests of Doctors). I think this makes three unrelated doc scalps for Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett in a neat seven days. Wow. Impressive.

Blog post about Pennsylvania Attorney Tom Corbett’s attacks on substance misusing physicians are 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 …

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.

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.’

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.

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?

The usual reporter-as-prosecutor-conduit drug war reportage about the conviction of Dr. Martinez for “health care fraud resulting in death. The only other doctor convicted under the 1996 act was Dr. William Hurwitz, December 2004.