“Given the sweeping nature of the subpoenas here, their chilling effect on First Amendment rights, and the circumstances under which they were obtained – a frustrated prosecutor seeking to silence a dissenting advocate – this Court should quash the subpoenas as an unjustified infringement on Ms. Reynolds’ and PRN’s First Amendment rights,” the ACLU wrote in its pleading.
AUSA Treadway wants to drag Ms. Reynolds before a Grand Jury for, get this, obstruction of justice! in the case of U.S. v Dr. Schneider. If we were not talking about the mockery of American justice Bush appointees routinely make in cases like Schneider and Shaygan this would be really funny. Siobhan Reynolds is obstructing justice? Utter nonsense. It is prosecutor Treadway for the USA who, if not obstructing justice in this case, is surely doing everything she can to delay it.
I am republishing these “Principles of Opioid Management of Pain“, by Dr. Joel Hochman, et al., because of the explosion of deeply flawed and misguided “Guidelines” for pain management in recent years. This document stands alone in meeting the (textbook, ‘responsible physician’) for pain management while not violating core ethical obligations of the doctor-patient relationship and is useful, I think, for comparison when studying promulgated Guidelines. [See also: The Distortion of Medicine and Confusion of Standards]
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.
Take a moment to scan one or two of these Highly Recommended documents… good background reading for any serious student of the war on docs and the pain crisis.
A Critical Assessment of the Impact of Drug Testing Programs on the American Workplace is a good review of this important related drug war topic that is currently in the news (govt push to drug test high school students);
War on Drugs, War on Doctors, and the Pain Crisis in America — this is probably THE CORE document; if you only …
I spoke to Billy’s wife briefly, recently, and am very happy to be able to report that Dr. Hurwitz is no longer in federal prison. He is currently in a half-way house in D.C. and will be transitioning to house arrest as part of his parole and probation requirements… He is in a sort of “titration to house arrest” best I understand it. Meaning, he is starting to get overnight visits with his family – YEA! – and more and more of that till he sort of “stabilizes” on a regimen of maintenance house arrest. (Is house arrest a substitution therapy for …
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. [...]
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.”
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 …
Network, protesting a scandalous article by the paper about PRN’s involvement in the Dr. Schneider case. Excerpt: “In our movement to reestablish rule of law and to normalize the doctor-patient relationship, we are constantly faced with desperate patients who ask us what do after they have been turned away from care dozens of times. I explained to the reporter that these people were once prosperous, had full lives, and dreams and hope. But merely by suffering a crushing accident or a cancer diagnosis, they find themselves in chronic severe pain and in need of ongoing opioid therapy. They then find …
AP article about vague and silly allegations by federal prosecutor Tonya Treadway against Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network. Reynolds said, “There is nothing wrong, unethical, illegal, immoral about any of this. … This is an attack on my fundamental liberty to do our work,” Reynolds told The Associated Press. “I’ve developed some opinions after 15 cases of seeing innocent doctors going to prison for doing absolutely nothing but practicing medicine.”
Blogged analysis by DeLuca about a confused opinion article in Wall Street Journal regarding the relationship between law enforcement imperatives on doctors and the resulting routine undermedication of pain patients. [...]
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.
Patients of a Kansas doctor charged with illegally prescribing painkillers say they have been repeatedly turned away from other medical providers. The eight patients say the doctors fear similar federal prosecution. The patients held a news conference this morning outside the federal courthouse in Wichita. They wanted to draw attention to their plight and the civil lawsuit filed against the government last week on their behalf. [...]
13 May 2009 |
