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“Ms. Treadway’s conduct in the case has been nothing short of shocking and ruthless; she has in fact displayed the kind of ‘win at all costs’ mentality that you have publicly stated your department will no longer tolerate,” Reynolds wrote in her June 18 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder… The ACLU has taken up the Reynolds defense in the grand jury proceedings, claiming in initial court papers that subpoenas sought by a “frustrated prosecutor seeking to silence a dissenting advocate” have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.

In pain medicine we have the deeply disturbing situation that what most doctors do (medical community norm) is at odds with, and clearly below, the medical standard of care. Literally, in the treatment of chronic pain, an ethical physician attempting to practice in good faith, according to the clinical literature, is an outlier deviating from how most reputable physicians would practice.

Many physicians are concerned that prescribing opioid analgesics in chronic pain treatment is accompanied by an unacceptable risk of unwarranted prosecution. The validity of this fear is evaluated by examining the standards through which physicians are targeted and prosecuted. Prohibition law is identified as an error in social policy that distorts medical standards.

I am very glad to see physicians, who have themselves been savaged by the government, publishing their stories. Consider Dr. Jackson’s article, Conviction without a Crime, to be a companion piece to Dr. Rottschaefer’s article discussed in the previous item here, The Criminal Criminal Justice System. Together these two articles will give the reader a good sense, I think, of the utter breakdown of professional ethics, common sense, and fairness in any case involving controlled substances.

criticisms and description of federal prosecutorial behavior rings true to me from my experience and knowledge of war on docs/pain crisis cases. Our justice system is withering, ‘the drugs exception to the Bill of Rights’ has gone from being a tragic lawyers joke to business as usual, and we now routinely apply asset forfeiture and RICO laws, intended by Congress to combat drug cartels, to individual pain-treating physicians. Doctors and sick people are easy, profitable prey for law enforcement and federal prosecutors pandering to the electorate through a media willing to be exploited for their share of the spoils.

Update on the case of USA v Dr. Martinez in Washington state. Martinez has been acquitted of all drug crime charges. The fraud charges remaining after her 2007 fed trial have also been dismissed, but the govt can bring the fraud charges anew. Also examined is a recent Yakima Herald article announcing “new” charges that are not, in any reality-based sense, “new” at all.

Excerpt: “As usual, the academics ignore the elephant in the living room. Regarding review articles that wring their hands about the lack of long term evidence of the safety and efficacy of opioid analgesic therapy, they never discuss the impossibility of measuring the efficacy and safety of a therapy that almost no physician is comfortable doing properly. For an excellent analysis of what we might call the “new academic opiophobia,” see the Pain Relief Network’s 2008 “WA State Tort Claim” pages 34 – 37.”

A federal judge on Thursday denied the government\’s efforts to gag defense attorneys, family and supporters of a Kansas doctor accused of unlawfully prescribing medication. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Monti Belot said the government had not shown a compelling government interest in restraining speech.

Academic quality, fully footnoted, article on why untreated or undertreated chronic pain is a medical emergency.

Talk given by Frank Fisher, M.D.; Drug Cops and Docs, Cato Institute Conference; 2005-09-09. Introduction — The undertreatment of chronic pain is an ongoing public health disaster. The means to reverse this disaster is a class of medications known as opioid analgesics. The pain crisis exists for just one reason. Physicians don’t prescribe enough of these medications. I’m going to explain why we don’t. — The war on drugs has become a war on legal drugs. This exposes physicians to the risk of unwarranted prosecution. In response to this threat, the academic pain establishment has developed a set of standards …

This Resource Is an article discusses the failure of the ‘barriers to pain care’ literature to analyze those barriers from an ethical POV. The author relates this to ‘the collective failure of the profession to recognize the ethical implications of undertreated pain.’

Blog entry about typical drug war Trash Journalism – this time regarding the federal indictment of Dr. Stack in Utah on drug charges. “Stack was arrested in May for investigation of dealing large quantities of narcotic pain killers to people without a legitimate medical reason.” And so on. No cognizance we’ve only heard one side of the story so far, that Warren Stack is innocent until proven guilty. This isn’t journalism, it’s a press release for the government.

The invocation of the WHO “analgesic ladder” concept of progressive pharmacological treatment of pain, in state investigations of physicians, is sometimes unfair. On the one hand the guidelines are interpreted as rules… On the other hand, state rules and regulations are often at odds with the spirit and specifics of the WHO guidelines, and of ethical medicine.

Blog entry about the distortion of medical ethics and of medical practice of pain management using opioid therapy by drug war imperatives on physicians to value catching drug abusers over providing compassionate and rational medical care to their patients.

Dr. Frank Fisher relates a chilling experience with a hospitalized friend in horrifically under-treated pain to a recent New York Times article on torture and American foreign and domestic policy, “Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics” by Frank Rich, New York Times, 2007-10-19, and includes generous excerpts.