Posted on 07/11/2005 2:08:52 PM PDT by Know your rights
The federal government's war on drugs has turned into a witch hunt for doctors who legitimately prescribe legal painkillers, says a California physician who claims he was the target of an unethical federal investigation.
"The war on drugs has become a war on sick people," Dr. Frank Fisher said Friday. "The war on drugs has morphed into a war on patients, and the doctors are caught in the crossfire."
Fisher said the battle has erupted in Billings, where the Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating neurologist Richard A. Nelson. Nelson treated multiple chronic-pain sufferers with opioids, or narcotic painkillers, until federal agents raided his West End clinic three months ago.
Fisher, whose general practice clinic near Redding, Calif., was shut down in 1999 by the DEA, spoke during a press conference in Billings on Friday.
"My patients were tossed into the street and told to fend for themselves," Fisher said. "Up at the county clinic, they thought they were addicts, and they detoxed them."
Fewer than 10 percent of Fisher's patients suffered from chronic pain, which he treated with narcotics.
Prosecutors charged him with five counts of murder, alleging that five of his patients died because of the medication he prescribed for them. One of them died after the vehicle in which she was a passenger crashed.
According to Fisher, the charges came after undercover agents posing as patients failed at least seven times to get him to write them prescriptions for fake symptoms.
Ultimately, the murder charges and 91 misdemeanor counts of medical fraud were dismissed. A jury acquitted Fisher of eight more fraud charges.
Fisher said it was all an attempt by the DEA to stop him from prescribing narcotic painkillers.
And it worked.
"I would like to treat chronic-pain patients," he said. "But it's too dangerous. It's suicidal."
Fisher and Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network, said the DEA has brought its scare tactics to Montana.
"This situation developing in Billings is going on all over the country," Reynolds said during Friday's press conference. "Patients in pain are being summarily removed from care through action taken against their physicians."
When the DEA revokes a doctor's prescription-writing privileges - as it did in Nelson's case - people in pain are often left with nowhere to turn, she said. Many of Nelson's patients have said they cannot find another physician to treat them.
"People assume everyone is getting what they need, so if people turn up without meds, it must be because they did something wrong," Reynolds said. "People who need meds can't get them."
To that end, Reynolds, who lives in New York City, has spearheaded a petition drive in Billings asking the state's congressional delegation to initiate a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into the DEA. She delivered 330 signatures on Friday to the office of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
Reynolds said the Pain Relief Network is in the process of opening a Billings office.
"We are going to keep on bringing it up until ( these people ) are no longer victims of predation by the DEA," she said.
Jan Johnson, a patient of Nelson's, said on Friday that shutting down legitimate sources for painkillers - such as Nelson's clinic - forces people to find the drugs another way.
"The entire thing is supposed to be stopping the illegal sale of drugs, but what it's doing is promoting it," Johnson said. "People are going to do that because they are in a lot of pain."
The DEA has not said why it is investigating Nelson, although the agency maintains that doctors who are doing nothing wrong should not fear investigation.
Fisher traveled to Billings this week to see for himself whether Nelson was a legitimate doctor or a drug dealer. After examining medical records and meeting with patients Friday morning, Fisher said Nelson was doing nothing wrong.
"I can tell you there's not a drug addict among them," he said of Nelson's patients. "He used ( narcotics ) cautiously and sparingly, and, from what I can see, he was doing a good job."
The federal health care monopoly is precisely why health care costs have risen from 1.5% of GDP in the 1950s to 15% of GDP today, and rising.
The exorbitant cost of medicinal drugs can also be laid at the feet of the War on (Some) Drugs. The DEA has an explicit policy of encouraging manufacturers to raise their prices to match the street price of drugs.
All you rabid war on drug mongers are going to get exactly what you deserve someday when your entire life savings are devoured by health care costs.
If the Federali's would have expended as much time and effort on intelligence and protecting our borders as they do in abusing our citizens with their War on Drugs, the war on terror would be over. What a waste!
In addition, the advanced government oversight is leading to a condition which I call "Sovietski Medicina," where the doc essentially has several 55 gal. drums of government authorized medications in government authorized doses.
Here the doc sits with a long line of patients stretching to the horizon. He's telling the first one in line "Here, take three of these. If you're not feeling better in the morning, die!" (KGB Agent standing next to him nods approvingly.)
Having to watch a loved one die of bone cancer or some equally painfull death and not be able to get them pain relief in their last hours because the government doesnt want them to become adicted would be enough to drive many over the edge..
This is no longer a govt of the people and by the people..
Buttle or Tuttle...we have turned into Brazil..the movie
It's good to know that a guy carrying a badge and gun with a degree in law enforcement from a community college knows more about medical treatment than a doctor.
America, what a country!
Well, since he's under investigation for illegally dispensing medication to patients, I guess we can take his word for it, eh?
Don't need to take his word for it when the law is plainly tyrannical, do we?
Probably about the same time that an insurance adjuster got the ability to know whether a given patient needed a given test or not.
I really have ambivalent feelings at the 4th of July. I'm very glad it's over. I don't want to diss the country while there are men fighting and dying for me, and I guess I'd still die for it. But the idea of this being a free country, at least for me, is becoming a sick joke, just something you say. It doesn't feel free. It feels shut down and paranoid, and everybody looking to trip everybody else up. It's not a good time to be looking for a job because every employer is cautious and suspicious.
Single males are looked upon with mistrust. Whites are the scum of the earth. Your property is not safe. Smokers are criminals. Muslims are sacred cows -- potentially murderous ones. Life is cheap. Russia isn't a threat. But the threat is still there! It's happened! And the politicians lie and blow smoke and doubletalk up our butts. The illegals pour across the border and the communists rule with a hegemony that dares not speak its name.
Freedom? Don't sh!t me. I don't know what freedom is, but this ain't it.
The law isn't tyrannical, unless you happen to think that everyone has a god-given right to get jacked up on Haloperidol. And someone who's under investigation usually isn't afforded the luxury of profound moral authority concerning the matter they're under investigation for.
Either you have the right to determine the contents of your own body, or you are the property/slave of the state. There is no middle ground on this one.
Given a law that says you are the property of the state, the tyranny of that law is self-evident.
Ultimately, the murder charges and 91 misdemeanor counts of medical fraud were dismissed. A jury acquitted Fisher of eight more fraud charges.
Whatever profound moral authority was afforded seems to have been horribly misplaced.
Haloperidol, or Haldol, is an anti-psychotic drug not noted for having potential as a drug of abuse. This casts doubt on your ability to comment intelligently on this subject. Narcotic drugs are in fact the treatment of choice for some sufferers from chronic pain. I'm not a libertarian extremist who advocates an end to all drug laws, but it appears that the government is completely out of hand, and its behavior is criminal in many instances.
Mark my words. The "free" citizens in the USofA are pushed every day further and further by the ever increasing encroachment of the marxist bullshit being spewed every day from the steps of the congress and the senate.
BITS is what I see.
I have updated my FMCDH (From My Cold Dead Hands) sign-off with the addition of (BITS).....Blood In The Streets, which I foresee coming soon, due to the enormous increase of the Marxist progressive movement being shoved down the throat of this failing REPUBLIC through the Judicial tyranny of fiat law, the passing of unconstitutional laws by the Legislative and Executive branches of our government and the enormous tax burden placed upon the average American to support unconstitutional programs put forth by Marxist ideology.
I do not advocate revolution. I only think of what I foresee.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.-- C. S. Lewis
FMCDH(BITS)
Once again, the big-government Drug Warrior argument is based on falsehoods. "Ultimately, the murder charges and 91 misdemeanor counts of medical fraud were dismissed. A jury acquitted Fisher of eight more fraud charges."
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