DEA v. Pain Docs - the Damage Done

DEA v. Pain Docs - the Damage Done; by Siobhan Reynolds, Pain Relief Network; War on Doctors/Pain Crisis blog of PRN; 2007-07-05. Originally posted as Comment #17 in response to John Tierney’s The Bad Science Prize; TierneyLab; 2007-07-03.

Dear Mr. Tierney,

Thank you so very much for The Bad Science Prize. 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.
[See: Reynolds 2003 Testimony to FDA Advisory Panel on Anesthetic and Life-Supporting Drugs; and also: The Myrtle Beach Massacre collection]

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”.

One doctor supposedly asks another if she can have his truck if she’ll write prescriptions for patients. Another doctor is purported to say “I’ve got your back” when talking about patient care. The stunning thing was, the topic at hand was pain care, so the action, “the crime” was already a fact in evidence. All that remained, it was clear, was for the United States Department of Justice to smear the practice of pain medicine with insinuation; just a little here and there, seemingly innocuous details to color the picture a little smarmy.

Apparently, that is all it takes. The doctors are in prison. And that’s because the insinuation of wrongdoing triggers a kind of group dynamic, a moment of shared recognition, like what happens when, as a group, we laugh at a movie or a play. And what is that shared recognition that the jurors bond on? Well, that drugs are bad, and anyone that has anything to do with them must be bad too. And how do we know that drugs are bad? We know it because we learned it from our government.

This is a sordid business for our Federal employees to be engaged in, a sordid business indeed. And it would be comical, if it were not so deadly serious.

When Karen Tandy held up that bag of pills at the sentencing of Dr. Hurwitz at the conclusion of his first federal trial in 2004, she ensured that patients on high doses, people who needed those doses to live, would ultimately loose access to those medicines. Their doctors would tire of maintaining the moral courage to risk their own lives to save another, and of course, ultimately, they all did.

Many innocent, vulnerable Americans, including my 50 year old husband and co-founder of PRN, Sean Greenwood, have died unnecessarily since then, abandoned by a world gone mad.
[See: The Chilling Effect, a documentary movie by Siobhan Reynolds that focuses on the late Sean Greenwood, Richard Paey, and their families. Powerful Truth Highly Recommended.]

The House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee will be holding DEA oversight hearings on July 12th. I will be giving testimony and will be going into detail about what transpired over these last few years.

It would be wonderful if other people who have been hurt and offended by their government’s behavior were to lend their support and send their comments to their congressional representatives and a copy to info@painreliefnetwork.org. Thank you.

It is indeed time to get the licensure and regulation of medicine back to the states where it belongs. In fact, it is long, long overdue.

Sincerely,

– Siobhan Reynolds
President, Pain Relief Network