Pain Doctor Arrested
William Hurwitz, a McLean, Virginia, pain doctor who has survived past tussles with state regulators and the DEA, was arrested yesterday on federal charges related to his prescriptions of opioid painkillers. The charges include drug trafficking resulting in death and serious injury, engaging in a criminal enterprise, conspiracy, and health care fraud.
Hurwitz's attorney told The Washington Post: "Dr. Hurwitz is a legitimate medical doctor with expertise in the area of the management of intractable chronic pain. He was doing nothing but providing appropriate medical care. The government has come in and taken a medical issue and attempted to apply horribly twisted logic to it through criminal statutes."
In Reason's April cover story, Melinda Ammann reported that efforts to prevent nonmedical use of OxyContin, including the prosecution of doctors like Hurwitz, are having a chilling effect on pain treatment. In a recent essay, David Brushwood, a professor of pharmacy health care administration at the University of Florida in Gainesville, explains how aspects of a medical practice that look suspicious to regulators or prosecutors may in fact be signs of appropriate pain treatment.
[Link via the Drug Reform Coordination Network]
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…Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said. “We will continue to pursue vigorously physicians, patients and others who are responsible for turning OxyContin from a legitimate painkiller to a vehicle of addiction and death.”
I would be interested in seeing the statistics on this claim. Considering the track record of the DEA propaganda, it is probably no more harmful than say asprin or peanuts. So with this lingo, patients in extreme pain will remain in pain.
Ultimately, I think Ashcroft is still hurting from the finger the Oregon Right to Dyers gave him last year!
JSM:
If you ever do see statistics on this claim, examine them carefully. OxyContin is frequently prescribed for people with terminal illnesses. Based on the Drug Control folks previous tactics, they’ll probably say something like, “x number people have been prescribed OxyContin this year, a large percentage subsequently died,” leaving out the fact they would have died anyway.
Also, in the past I have posted derisive comments on the “Ashcroft/Nazi” tendency of many Reason readers. This is a *real* example of prosecutorial abuse. Unlike the PATRIOT Act, this is a prosecution beyond the original intent of the law.
STATS has at least two recent articles on this issue, as well:
Media No Help to Pain Sufferers
http://www.stats.org/record.jsp?type=news&ID=455
Drug War Hurts Pain Sufferers
http://www.stats.org/record.jsp?type=news&ID=456
Good God, I love it when people spell “judgment” correctly. It’s like the feeling I get when I eat a York Peppermint Patty.
One can only hope that, when they fall sick, the drug warriors responsible for this are treated by doctors who they have cowed into undermedicating pain.
Glenn, my sentiments exactly. Something lacking in the article is medical history and toxicology reports of those that died. Even though the article projects the doctor as a drug peddler, I hold judgement until all facts are reviewed.
Chronic pain is hell. It’s no exaggeration to call someone like Ashcroft a Nazi if he’s into denying anesthetics to pain patients.
So, in order to “regulate commerce among the states,” the feds persecute doctors treating pain. Woe is us! Our system is damned. What if someone wiped out Washington D.C.? Would it be good or bad? If something like that happened, perhaps the states could kind of get together to form some kind of simple, straightforward alliance for defense and some of the other purposes of the original Constitution. We’re getting to the point where, with the present “Federal Government,” we’ve got so little to lose.
I’m as anti-government as the next guy. But in all fairness, society’s misgivings about painkillers are based on a very legitimate reality. Nobody — Ashcroft or otherwise — is against the idea of soothing pain. Rather, their concern about opiates is in fact based on a fear of creating pain: the hellish misery of withdrawals.
There’s nothing evil about addiction per se. “Addiction” is simply a compulsive quest to eliminate pain. The only thing that’s bad about “addiction,” at this point in human history, is that opiates build tolerance, so you need more of them to feel like you did yesterday. And then you need more. And more. And then the eventual cessation causes withdrawals — horrid, nightmarish withdrawals.
If you’ve ever tried to kick even a mild Vicodin habit, you know the wrenching agony that results. There’s an additional factor: Current science remains uncertain about the longterm effects of opiate use. Researchers continue to debate whether such use ultimately destroys the body’s ability to create natural opiates on its own.
But humans are smart little creatures, of course, and we’ll find a solution. Like this one: There’s a company that is now in Phase III trials with a drug called Oxytrex. Essentially it’s an opioid painkiller — like oxycodone or hydrocodone — with a special twist: It’s not addictive.
I’m not sure of the exact chemistry involved, but it has something to do with the inclusion of naltrexone, which keeps tolerance from building (and also discourages recreational abusers who like to stick needles in their arms, because apparently injecting naltrexone feels like sticking rat poison in your blood).
Science will soon get us to the point where painkillers will kill pain without the ever-looming threat of withdrawals. It is then, I pray, that the opiate stigma will disappear. That is when drugs like Oxytrex, and whatever follows it, will better the human condition without all the bullshit that accompanies “drug use.”
Medicines like that will be a godsend not only for those in physical pain, but for those with debilitating mental pain. Opiates fight depression better than anything else out there. I can’t wait for the day when we can all toss away our Prozac and obtain relief via stuff that truly does make us feel better.
Cool, refreshing chocolate-coated snacks aside,
http://www.bartleby.com/61/34/J0073400.html gives us:
“The American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
judgment
SYLLABICATION: judg?ment
PRONUNCIATION: jjmnt
VARIANT FORMS: also judge?ment”
So, one can say “potato” or “potatoe.”
Chemicals that are “non-addictive” sound like universal solvents or perpetual motion machines. They may be solid improvements over what we have now, but after some years of actual use, we may find that some people are at least psychologically dependent on their new fix. By all means, though, let’s keep trying to find that magic bullet. When I’m on death’s door, I’d gladly risk either type of “addiction” in order to avoid the type of pain chronically ill people go through. Prescribing M.D.’s need to be allowed discretion in these matters, or else people suffer needlessly.
Kevin
Guess what, there aren’t many of these OxyContin patients with “years of use.” That’s what terminal means – they’re going to die. Ending up a junkie is the least concern of someone with pancreatic cancer and 6 months to live. The main problem for the gov’t is that there are white trash druggies willing to mug sick old granny or knock over a rural hospital pharmacy to get what’s termed “hillbilly heroin.” But blaming the doctors, drug maker, and especially the patients is irrational and disturbing.
The wrenching pain of a vicodin addiction? Please. The addiction rates are much lower than Mr. Asscrack lets on. Yeah, in the meantime, just live with a blown disk or something like that. As a doctor once said to me when my hip was rotated and L3 was literally sticking out of my back: “Walk if off”.
FUCK HURWITZ I HOPE HE ROTTS IN JAIL 4EVER AND CHOKES ON AN ASPRIN
FUCK HURWITZ I HOPE HE ROTTS IN JAIL 4EVER AND CHOKES ON AN ASPRIN
EMAIL: draime2000@yahoo.com
IP: 62.213.67.122
URL: http://www.enlargement-for-penis.com
DATE: 01/27/2004 02:30:36
John Bradford, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins
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DATE: 05/20/2004 11:02:55
Anyone can learn from pain.