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DrugBuyers
Administrator
Reged: 11/18/01
Posts: 1226
Loc: DrugBuyers.Com
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20025-2003Sep29.html
Federal prosecutors yesterday likened a Northern Virginia pain doctor who was indicted on drug trafficking charges to a "street-corner crack dealer" as they tried to keep him jailed until his trial.
William E. Hurwitz, a prominent advocate of using potent narcotics to treat intractable pain, was charged last week with distributing drugs that ended up on the black market. Prosecutors allege that Hurwitz's prescribing practices led to the deaths of three patients and fueled the abuse of painkillers such as OxyContin. Hurwitz's attorney has argued that the doctor was practicing good medicine.
Hurwitz's arrest is part of a nationwide effort by the Justice Department to stem prescription drug abuse, and authorities recently have focused on doctors. Hurwitz, 57, of McLean is one of the first doctors nationwide to be accused of widespread illegal distribution.
Hours after Hurwitz's court appearance, a group of advocates for doctors and pain patients decried the government crackdown, saying it is keeping pain sufferers from getting the help they need.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lytle said in court that Hurwitz should not be treated any better than a crack dealer simply because he has a medical degree. Lytle said there is evidence that Hurwitz was providing dealers with drugs to sell. "This is a case of a defendant who wears a white coat and with the power of a pen" distributes drugs, Lytle said. "This is not a case about malpractice or whether a doctor exercised bad judgment."
Lytle said Hurwitz should be held without bond until his trial on charges that could yield a life sentence. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry R. Poretz deferred a ruling on bond until a hearing this afternoon.
Wearing black-and-white-striped prison garb to court, Hurwitz blew kisses to family members. He later shook his head as prosecutors said they had taped conversations between him and his patients. On one of the tapes, Lytle said, Hurwitz talked about a co-conspirator's drug dealing in Tennessee and then issued him more prescriptions.
Lytle also alleged that Hurwitz might have tried to hide the assets of his pain practice, saying authorities have not been able to find almost $2 million of his reported earnings for the past five years.
James Hundley, Hurwitz's attorney, said Hurwitz has done nothing wrong, arguing that the doctor followed accepted medical guidelines for the use of opioid therapy.
"There's a world of difference between him and a crack dealer," Hundley said. "He is a licensed doctor. The illegality happened down the road from him. If patients choose to misbehave, he can't control that."
Yesterday, advocacy groups for patients with chronic pain attacked the prosecution of Hurwitz and what they said was a trend by federal officials to target doctors who specialize in pain management.
Speaking at the National Press Club, group representatives said millions of Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to find doctors who will treat chronic pain because doctors don't want to risk their licenses by prescribing controlled drugs. They said the trend is especially disturbing because, in recent years, medical research has supported the long-term use of opioids as the best treatment for many patients with chronic pain.
"We are here to say we support Dr. Hurwitz and others targeted like him," said Kathryn Serkes, spokeswoman for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a nonprofit group that represents doctors. "These prosecutions should not be occurring, and we will help Dr. Hurwitz become a doctor again when this is over. . . . These doctors who treat chronic pain patients are heroes, not criminals."
Siobhan Reynolds of the Pain Relief Network, whose husband has been a patient of Hurwitz's, said the "Justice Department is misidentifying pain doctors all over the country as drug dealers. What they are enforcing is a national public health catastrophe in pain."
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We also found this somewhere else:
Quote:
"Something is terribly wrong with the way some criminal justice authorities have begun to enforce the law against physicians and pharmacists who prescribe and dispense high dose opioids to treat chronic pain. The necessary balance in pain policy... has tipped drastically in the direction of ruthless drug control and away from compassionate collaboration. This is a recent development. The past five years has generated an unprecedented list of health care providers charged with murder for allegedly providing inappropriately large quantities of opioids to pain patients."
-- Dr. David Brushwood, Mayday Scholar with the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, September 4, 2003
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If you wish to let those in power know how you feel:
https://drugbuyers.com/activism
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"Whosoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others." Dr Albert Schweitzer
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cypress434
Old Hand
Reged: 04/14/02
Posts: 422
Loc: The Deep Southern US
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Having been a member of a chronic pain mailing list in the past, I have heard of people so desperate for relief of pain that they will travel to him and stay for 2-3 days until he finds what works for their pain. If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was Dr. Hurwitz who was cleared by his states' board of medicine, and that new patients must go to one of "their" clinics first to be 'cleared' before Dr. H was allowed to treat their intractable chronic pain.
(These idiots put a man whose body was amputated up to his torso through the ringer!!)
Of COURSE, if people can find someone compassionate to treat us pain sufferers, people will go in DROVES to see him (while they thank GOD that there is at least ONE doctor out there that will take them and their pain seriously enough to HELP them!)
If a doctor happens to have MANY patients - that has now, automatically been equated to "RED FLAG! DRUG DEALER!! ARREST HIM/HER!" when these idiots (who have NO medical degree yet find themselves justified to question a doctor with YEARS and YEARS of experience) - they just don't GET it!!!
People who suffer so much that they will do ANYTHING for relief are the people sitting in his office - so of COURSE it will be packed, as ANY doctor's office would when it is a doctor who treats pain compassionately and treats a patient with dignity! When will the "drug cops" and the NARC pharmacists get this through their sick/thick skulls?!?!
It seems like the day is coming where ALL doctors who EVER prescribe ANY decent pain medication to ANY patient will be threatened with "life in prison" for being a drug dealer, instead of simply trying to obey the Hippocratic Oath they took to "first, do no harm". What can be worse than taking the relief away from someone who is in so much pain, that they've considered TOO many times that perhaps putting a gun in their mouth to be the only way to be finally relieved of the pain once and for all? Dr. Hurwitz saved MANY peoples'
lives, but as they say, no good deed goes unpunished .
Seems to me like medicine is going backwards, rather than embracing the future - and the future of medicine SHOULD be to allow those of us to suffer to be treated appropriately and NOT be treated like drug addicts.
There will always be idiots who sell their drugs. I have never been, and will never BE, one of those people - my meds are worth more to me than GOLD - and it isnt' because I'm addicted, but because I think that the "pursuit of happiness" (that is supposed to be the RIGHT of all Americans) seems to be only for those who are healthy, and that people like us who can't help and did not ASK for the hand we were dealt (the PAIN) will always be at the mercy of those who have no idea what it's like to live in our shoes, with our pain.
I hope I see a change of this horrible situation in my lifetime - but with the sound of things, that life might not be as long as I wish it could be. A person can only stand so much pain before death becomes more and more attractive, ESPECIALLY when something as simple as ADEQUATE pain control could completely turn around our lives and make us TRULY want to live again. Do they think we WANT to be a burden to others? NO! We just want to be able to feel as normal as we can.
I know *I* don't care about getting high. I just want to sweep the floor, do grocery shopping, play with my CHILD, and even do something as mundane as washing a sink of dirty dishes without tears (and having to stop after less than a minute to rest and cry until the pain subsides enough to continue.) Most of the time I don't even TRY because, even with the minimal pain control I have, to do these things will make me suffer for days afterward. 
If you pray...pray for Dr. Hurwitz, and all the other doctors who are out there who WANT to help us, but find themselves getting into trouble when they can't control what a drug dealer does... They lie and do whatever they can do to get treatment (and it seems like they have their own handbook on 'how to act to get the drugs you want so you can sell them on the street') but then either don't need pain relief at all, or, they overstate their "pain" to get enough drugs to sell on the street - but guess who is paying for it? The good doctors, and US!
What should Dr. Hurwitz, or ANY doctor do, who is doing the best he can with the information he is given by the patient? Doctors are not mind-readers, yet the feds THINK they SHOULD be. Funny...I didn't think being a psychic was part of getting a medical degree.
This just makes me sick....
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Cypress434
Character is what you do when no one is watching.
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cheska
Newbie
Reged: 12/15/01
Posts: 32
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I read these articles and they just make me sick! Literally, sick! So unbelievably angry and leave me feeling so helpless too. Helpless because the government will just keep pushing and pushing while more people suffer.
I would lay odds that none of these people have neither suffered in pain nor have they had to watch someone close to them suffer.
I'd worked as an oncology nurse for over three years before watching the death and suffering got to me so badly i had to change to another specialty. Not one person (i hope and pray) would be able to watch someone suffering with bone cancer, leukemia, brain cancer.....(the list could go on and on) and say that these people are drug seekers because they want pain relief. And that is just cancer.......that doesn't even touch on the hundreds of thousands of other diseases and disorders that cause pain.
I have watched a woman who's doctor did not adequately treat her pain be admitted to our floor for pain control. I have never (and hope to never again) see anyone suffering so needlessly ever again. I actually overheard a doctor and some nurses complaining that she was nothing but a drug addict. This woman was beyond screaming in pain. She was rigid in bed, unable to move, barely able to speak, lying on her side with a death grip on the side rail. I couldn't pry her hands loose. Every muscle in her body was tensed, sweat poring off of her, her breath shallow, ragged and labored, her eyes glazed with pain. I had to get on my knees beside her bed and speak sharply to her over and over again just to get her to look at me, to remind her to try to breathe. The nurses and pharmacist were scrambling (and arguing) with doctors to try to get her on our chronic pain protocol (one that gives them pretty much free reign to do what is need to get the pain under control). It took hours. And as her pain slowly came under control, then the screaming and moaning started. She hadn't even had the energy to cry before.........
I wish it would be mandatory for those that are on this "pain doctor" witch hunt to have to stand by the bed of someone like this woman and i would dare them to tell her it's all in her head. (BTW it was found out a few days later that the cancer had spread everywhere.....her bones were literally crumbling in her body) But hey, she was just a "drug seeker" right? Her doctor had been prescribing her vicodin 1-2 every six to eight hours. But hey.....he was better than the doctor (internal medicine-not oncologist) that had prescribed a man with bone cancer one HALF of a vicodin every eight hours. (no, i'm not joking)
Sorry to go off on a tangent. I just read these articles and i get SO angry. Is the government going to try to tie the hands of all the pain doctors in this country? They say all these narcotics are killing people. How many more deaths are attributed to alcohol or tobacco? But hey, those are legal right? And those companies have the riches to lobby (and bribe) those in the government that make the laws. Not to mention all the taxes the government collects on them. It's all a vicious cycle. All these diseases that are becoming more prevalent by the day and causing more pain and suffering. But instead of spending OUR tax money on treating these diseases or finding cures.....they are spending it to convict and condemn those that are treating them.
I don't like being in pain. I would choose to take no medications at all if i could function without them. Oh, i'm just so angry. When i think of the two (yes, only two) pain doctors that we have in this area and then think of some beaurocrat trying to convict them for treating people like that patient whose pain and suffering will be forever etched in my mind (and in my nighmares)..........
What is happening to our government!!! Sure there are drug users out there. There always has been, there always will be. But taking out the people that are treating legitimate suffering??? The drug users can turn to the street.....but where are the others suppose to go? What do they do when the only choices they have are to suffer or die? And i know because i've seen it firsthand, those whom their pain is not treated often choose to just give up and die. What quality of life can they have? I wonder "what will i do" when my pain becomes unbearable and i have nowhere to turn? When i was diagnosed my doctor told me that i would just "need to get used to the pain, because it was only going to get worse" that it didn't need to be treated because i had to get used to it. Where will i be when they target OP's? where will any of us be that have nowhere else to turn?
Sorry to vent so much.........i am so grateful that i found DB, grateful to all of the compassionate people here. And so thankful for the OP's and all they do. I'm able to function most days. And when i say that, i mean function. That's all i do. My previous life is over, but i am grateful that i CAN do things like laundry, go for a walk, pick up and hold my cat...or any of the things "normal" people who are not in pain take for granted every day.
Thanks for letting me get some of this out, i know carrying around this anger just makes me even more tense. But it's impossible to read these articles and not get mad. We'll just have to keep these Dr's and their patients in our thoughts and prayers. And those legitimate OP's that so bravely help all of us here.
Take care all, God bless.
Teresa
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