Letter To George W. Bush
Apr 13, 2005
By: Siobhan Reynolds
Painreliefnetwork.org
Dear Mr. President,
This is to inform you that a major public health crisis is devastating our citizenry; a crisis caused by our government’s misguided regulatory strategy regarding opioid pain medicine. Tomorrow, in Alexandria, Virginia, Dr. William E. Hurwitz will be sentenced for his multiple convictions on drug trafficking; the United States Attorneys are seeking life imprisonment. As the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration are both under the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch, it is essential you be made aware of the manifest injustice occurring under your authority.
I observed much of Dr. Hurwitz’s trial as well as the trials of several other physicians brought up on similar charges. I have seen the same series of strategic maneuvers employed by the prosecutors in order to prejudice the judges in each of these cases. By announcing to the press at the time of arrest that the physician has killed several of his patients, and indicting him on dozens of felonies, the US Attorneys use their official power to give the court and the public the impression that they are bringing a hardened and ruthless criminal to justice. By the time the case reaches the courtroom, however, what we find is a well-intentioned doctor who has been duped by a tiny percentage of his patients, the government arguing that he should have known better. That the jury foreman in Dr. Hurwitz’s case specifically stated (Washington Post, December 21, 2004) that he did not believe Dr. Hurwitz was running a criminal enterprise, but convicted him of drug trafficking anyway, speaks to the shocking miscarriage of justice occurring here.
Mr. President, it has become clear to me that these convictions are being obtained by deception. While it is commonplace for attorneys to re-cast facts and circumstances to serve their prosecutorial theories, this takes us far beyond the common place. In these cases, prosecutors present nothing more than a semblance of a case to the jury; cobbling together evidence of malpractice (delivered by an “expert” government witness), thousands of exhibits (the doctor’s records and prescriptions) and the testimony of patients-turned-snitches, all delivered with inflammatory rhetoric and manifold distortions. What I have yet to see, in any of these cases, is evidence that any one of the accused physicians intended to divert drugs outside the course of his professional practice, or to profit in any way from such diversion. Rather, the US Attorneys present such a spectacular show (at extraordinary taxpayer expense) that the jury members apparently assume that something criminal must have happened in the doctor’s practice. Why else, they seem to think, would we be here?
Jury members cannot imagine that attorneys representing the United States would seek to convict a compassionate physician practicing medicine in good faith. Nor can they believe that a Federal judge would willingly preside over such a travesty, and apparently do nothing to stop it. Thus, rather than face the possibility that their government is perpetrating an elaborate fraud on the court, the jury members prefer to convict the physician. These are not legitimate criminal complaints brought against drug-dealing doctors, Mr. President. These are elaborate confidence games, being brought against the interests of 50 million Americans in pain, in the name of the United States of America.
What you must not realize is that these trials are happening within the context of a terrible society-wide misunderstanding. While most of us believe that effective treatment for chronic pain is readily available, I know from personal experience and from years of advocacy work, that it is nearly impossible for people in severe pain to find ongoing pain relief. As a result, the dignity, autonomy, and quality of care of the few patients who do find treatment, is severely compromised. Patients in pain want to live, they want to work, they want to take care of their families, and yet they are forced to relinquish their claims to a dignified life by virtue of our government’s policies.
Perhaps your administration has been pursuing these prosecutions and the ubiquitous surveillance of pain treating physicians under the mistaken notion that, as the DEA often says, legitimate patients will get their pain care. This is simply not the case, as physicians are understandably unwilling to run the risk of being federally prosecuted and ending up in Dr. Hurwitz’s position. As a result, people who could otherwise work and attend to their families are being sent back to their beds by the hundreds of thousands. In addition, millions of Americans are being kept from living the complete lives that adequate pain control can provide. The elderly, the terminally ill (both adults and children), our nation’s wounded veterans, and heads of households- all are finding it terribly difficult to access effective pain relief.
We implore you to support our call for Congressional hearings into the actions of the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Department of Justice attorneys and to search with us for lasting solutions to this terrible problem.
Currently, many excellent and compassionate physicians who were in perfectly good standing with their state’s medical boards have found themselves federally prosecuted anyway. This systematic trampling of the police power of the fifty states by the United
States Department of Justice is damaging to the health and safety of Americans in pain and to our system of Federalism itself. We look forward to working with your administration to solve this problem as quickly as possible.
Respectfully,
Siobhan Reynolds
President
Pain Relief Network
