Comments on: The ‘Bounds of Medical Practice’ and the ‘Standard of Care’ http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/index.php/archive/bounds-med-standard-of-care/90/ The blog of the PAIN RELIEF NETWORK Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:34:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Bill http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/index.php/archive/bounds-med-standard-of-care/90/#comment-11 Bill Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:06:33 +0000 http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/index.php/archive/the-bounds-of-medical-practice-and-the-standard-of-care/90/#comment-11 <p>Absolutely dead on. Physicians need to be able to treat their patients without fear. Too many doctors make decisions regarding pain medication based on fear which is all federal law enforcement wants. It plays directly into the 2 most important benchmarks they think they have. Number of investigations per year and decrease in the number of certain prescriptions written. Both benchmarks are the essence of the “chilling effect.”</p> <p>The marketing machine that belongs to the "War on Drugs" has so successfully demonized pain medication and pain patients that many doctors, faced with either, act out of fear and suspicion instead of education, experience, compassion and empathy.</p> <p>What if somehow this had been done with insulin or birth control or any myriad of other necessary treatments? Aren't we all sort of "addicted" to insulin? Isn't too much of it harmful or even fatal? How many EMS calls and/or ER visits per year are due to profound hypoglycemia? Has anyone ever been criminally prosecuted after a patient suffered a DVT/PE after taking birth control? Isn't that harmful and dangerous? Seems silly just mentioning it doesn't it?</p> <p>The notion that prosecutors and investigators have, that the practice of “pain management” serves only to purposefully "addict" pain patients so they will have to come back, is not well founded in science as far as I know. It is very retarded thinking but seems to be at the root of current strategy within the US Attorney's Office, the DEA and maybe more of the DOJ. This needs to be exposed by those in the beltway. Congress needs to inform the medical community how medications approved by the FDA can be disapproved by the DOJ simultaneously.</p> <p>Bill</p> Absolutely dead on. Physicians need to be able to treat their patients without fear. Too many doctors make decisions regarding pain medication based on fear which is all federal law enforcement wants. It plays directly into the 2 most important benchmarks they think they have. Number of investigations per year and decrease in the number of certain prescriptions written. Both benchmarks are the essence of the “chilling effect.”

The marketing machine that belongs to the “War on Drugs” has so successfully demonized pain medication and pain patients that many doctors, faced with either, act out of fear and suspicion instead of education, experience, compassion and empathy.

What if somehow this had been done with insulin or birth control or any myriad of other necessary treatments? Aren’t we all sort of “addicted” to insulin? Isn’t too much of it harmful or even fatal? How many EMS calls and/or ER visits per year are due to profound hypoglycemia? Has anyone ever been criminally prosecuted after a patient suffered a DVT/PE after taking birth control? Isn’t that harmful and dangerous? Seems silly just mentioning it doesn’t it?

The notion that prosecutors and investigators have, that the practice of “pain management” serves only to purposefully “addict” pain patients so they will have to come back, is not well founded in science as far as I know. It is very retarded thinking but seems to be at the root of current strategy within the US Attorney’s Office, the DEA and maybe more of the DOJ. This needs to be exposed by those in the beltway. Congress needs to inform the medical community how medications approved by the FDA can be disapproved by the DOJ simultaneously.

Bill

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