Sep 9, 2003 Press Release Painreliefnetwork.org

Calling the FDA’s attention to the public health catastrophe in pain care caused by a recent 800% increase in Federal prosecutions of legitimate physicians treating pain, Pain Relief Network’s Executive Director, Siobhan Reynolds spoke before the Anesthetic & Life Support Drugs Advisory Committee Meeting of the FDA Tuesday and called for the body to suspend cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice.

PRN charges that the U.S. Department of Justice is ignoring the current scientific understanding of the necessity for pain care and is using out of date criteria to prosecute physicians who treat pain. Pointing to the U.S. Department of Justice prosecution of Dr. Deborah Bordeaux in connection with the Comprehensive Care Clinic in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Reynolds testified that Government attorneys misled jurors when they convicted Dr. Bordeaux of trafficking in drugs because she followed universally accepted principles of pain management.

As nationally renowned expert, Professor David Brushwood reported on the Breaking News page of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics web site last week, “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 criteria used by the government to bring prosecutions against physicians who treat pain with opioids are, according to Professor Brushwood, “identical to the criteria health care providers use in identifying appropriate pain management practice.” **

So the Red Flags used by the government to bring a clinic or physician under investigation for drug diversion are actually indicators of quality medical practice. Hundreds of legitimate physicians have been misidentified by the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. The result has been the shutting down of pain care throughout the United States.

After misidentifying the compassionate physician as a drug dealer, the U.S. Government then prosecutes the physician by presenting outdated and prejudicial expert testimony that directly contradicts current established medical standards. In doing so the U.S. Department of Justice has succeeded in confusing juries and the public about matters settled in the U.S. Constitution. “The Assistant U.S. Attorney in South Carolina represented to the jury, in word and deed, that they (the U.S. Department of Justice) are the rightful judges of what is and is not legitimate medical practice. The Constitution specifically leaves that determination to the states, but nobody told that to the jury.” Moreover, PRN charges, the standard of care, as represented by the DOJ was “just plain wrong.”

PRN is calling on the FDA to suspend its advisory role on controlled substances until a thorough Congressional investigation of the cases pending against physicians has been made.

The apparent refusal of Ashcroft’s Justice Department to defer to the authority of medical practice has led, according to PRN’s Reynolds, to a public health catastrophe. Terrified physicians, unwilling to treat pain at such great personal risk to themselves, have simply put down their pens. “What has ensued,” said Reynolds “would have been unthinkable under any other administration. The sickest and most vulnerable segment of our population has been attacked by our own government.

“When the U.S. Department of Justice prosecutes a physician, they directly deprive thousands of seriously ill people vital medical care,” Reynolds said, “those people are not able to find other help. The U.S. Attorneys in these cases have been told repeatedly, by advocates, by hundreds of patients in some cases, that they are going after the good doctors, but they do it anyway. It’s mind-boggling.”

PRN (painreliefnetwork.org) is currently supporting the defense teams of seven targeted physicians across the country.