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Excerpt: “Dr. Mangino has been unjustly prosecuted and convicted in Pennsylvania. His case is unusual. He is currently incarcerated at SCI-Cresson… Essentially, in PA and nationwide, if this conviction is allowed to stand on the grounds presented by prosecution, then any single opioid prescription can be deemed illegal.” — Dr. Mangino

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.

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.

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.

The article well describes the public health chaos this is the predictable consequence of clinical and public health authorities abandoning their real mission to uphold the medical standard of care for their citizenry, and instead focusing exclusively on the policeman’s agenda which prioritizes ‘catching a few addicts’ over providing adequate pain management for legions of innocent patients.

It seems to me an uncivilized and insane notion that just because someone in current moderate to severe pain had a history of an alcohol or drug problem, or even a current substance abuse problem, that you would deny them opioid therapy if that was the best medication to relieve their suffering. But this seems to be a point of confusion that increasingly comes up from patients, doctors, and regulators alike. So, in this post, let me make the medical standard of care in this situation perfectly clear. [...]

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

Testimony of Siobhan Reynolds, President of the Pain Relief Network (PRN), to Senator Biden and the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, March 2008. Concludes:

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.

[Comment on/Discuss this document on the Chronic Pain Forums of PRN]

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT – DISTRICT OF KANSAS PAIN RELIEF NETWORK, on behalf of patients of Stephen J. Schneider, D.O., Plaintiff,
[Uzo L. Ohaebosim, Attorney for Plaintiff; 510 N. Main; Wichita, KS 67214; 316-261-5400]
vs.
THE STATE OF KANSAS, THE KANSAS STATE BOARD OF HEALING ARTS, MICHAEL MUKASEY, in his official capacity as United States Attorney General; ERIC F. MELGREN, in his official capacity as the United States Attorney for the District of …

Blog post about Utah AG Brett Tolman, who has indicted several pain doctors as drug dealers, including Dr. Warren Stack, and now Dr. Ray Taylor, whose Initial Media Smear is just now beginning. Prosecutor Tolman has discovered what AG Tom Corbett (Pennsylvania) already knows very well: shooting doctors caught in the Controlled Substances Act barrel is just too easy, too profitable, too fun to forgo.

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.

A collection of cartoons, images, poems and a story, by or about members of the Pain Relief Network, about the war on doctors and the pain crisis in America.

Pain relief activist Christine Heberle on the bond hearing of Dr. William Mangino, Newcastle, PA, 2007-09-14. Excerpt: “First let me say for those unfamiliar with the case that this is truly a crime-less conviction. He was charged with the typical state charges of prescribing outside the bounds of a responsible segment of the medical community. Now I know that is not what the statute says, but it is how the prosecution phrases it. The prosecutions expert witness (Dr. Evanko) said that Dr. Mangino’s prescribing was not excessive, and the charts reviewed were of chronic pain patients who needed care. In …

Dr. Mangino’s comments on “bonding out of jail” – excerpt: “have ‘Bonded’ out of jail as of 5 P.M. today. I thank those several people who contributed the $ 3900 dollars I needed to be released. My attorneys also worked very hard…”