AAPS Press Release - Price of Liberty

01/07/09

AAPS DOCTORS: Sen. Kerry owes 48 million pain patients an apology

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Dems don’t “feel your pain”

Washington, DC – Kathryn Serkes, policy counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), issued the following statement in response to comments made by Sen. John Kerry during the Democratic debate on October 9, 2003:

“Sen. Kerry owes an apology to the more than 48 million Americans who suffer chronic pain. Few of them would see the humor in his flippant remarks about a desperate patient’s attempts to relieve a devastating medical condition – nor do we.

“Substitute ‘mental retardation’ or ‘cancer’ in his remarks, and the level of outrage would be voluminous and loud. According to the audience reaction of laughter, the Democratic party that ‘felt our pain’ under Bill Clinton now finds it fodder for jokes.

“Courageous physicians are being prosecuted for prescribing legal pain treatment. This ‘war on drugs’ has turned into a war on doctors and the legal drugs they prescribe and the suffering patients who need the drugs to attempt anything approaching a normal life. Patients are having difficulty finding doctors to treat them as a result of misguided drug policy, law enforcement, and overzealous prosecutions.

“The result of recent prosecutions of dozens of leading pain specialists is that doctors are afraid to prescribe opioids, and patients can’t get the drugs they so desperately need. Physicians are being threatened, impoverished, delicensed, and imprisoned for prescribing in good faith with the intention of relieving pain. And their patients have become the collateral damage in this trumped-up war.

“Some patients require very large doses, sometimes literally hundreds of pills in each prescription – a number that may seem alarming to people unfamiliar with current treatment standards in pain management. Other patients report that they have resorted to lying about being heroin addicts in order to get pain medication at methadone clinics.

“The situation has become so critical that AAPS has sent out a warning to doctors:

“If you’re thinking about getting into pain management using opioids as appropriate -- DON’T. Forget what you learned in medical school -- drug agents now set medical standards. Or if you do, first discuss the risks with your family.” (See http://www.aapsonline.org/painman/advice.htm)

“If this continues, pain patients will be back in the Dark Ages of ‘pain clinics’ that basically told the patients they had to learn to ‘live with the pain’ – except possibly if they had cancer and then they wouldn’t have to live with it for very long.

“Prosecutors hell-bent on targeting career-making, high-publicity cases on the backs of patients and doctors. Recent actions show prosecutors have little concern about the trail of destruction left by their actions as patients face crippling pain and gut-wrenching withdrawal.

“If this continues, there won’t be one doctor left willing to prescribe the drugs that patients so desperately need.”

(See this site for a list of prosecutions against doctors and information on “Project: Communicate and Cooperate” to halt drug diversion and stop prosecution of physicians.)

"PROJECT: COMMUNICATE & COOPERATE"

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have developed the 3-point "Communicate and Cooperate" campaign to encourage physicians and law enforcement to work together to prevent prescription drug abuse.

Work together to track and report potential drug abusers.
Joint reviews of potential cases before charges are filed.
Mutual training to advise law enforcement of current trends and cutting edge treatments.
REPORTING. Physicians and pharmacies report potential "drug-seeking" patients to law enforcement, yet are never advised by law enforcement which patients it believes are "drug seekers" trying to take advantage of physicians or pharmacies. Currently, communication is only flowing in one direction. Law enforcement should set up a notification process to advise physicians of suspicious behavior by patients (using more than one pharmacy or more than one physician for prescriptions, contact with known dealers or addicts, etc.).

REVIEW BOARD. Physicians are willing to work with law enforcement officials and the Department of Justice to review potential cases before charges are filed. The DOJ should establish a procedure to assess a physician's practices by a review board of medical professionals, rather than relying upon their own laymen's judgments.

MUTUAL TRAINING. Attitudes toward, and the treatment of pain are rapidly changing. What was unacceptable a few years ago is now considered appropriate, both in medicine and in public opinion. For example, investigators frequently look at the volume and duration of drug use as the primary trigger for an indictment. This is no longer appropriate, as accepted treatment has changed, and leads to indictments of pain specialists simply due to the volume of their prescriptions. And finally, in the art of medicine, investigators must be able to distinguish between a difference of opinion in what is proper treatment, and specific criminal intent.

Editor's Note: While we at "The Price of Liberty" do not support drug prohibition in any form, we find the efforts of this organiation to combat the persecution of doctors well worth reporting and supporting. If we lose even the imperfect mechanism we currently have for treating chronic pain, the entire insanity is escalated and we all lose.

If you, like me, are one of the many thousands who must use presecription pain medication daily, please talk with your doctor frankly about this problem and make sure he or she understands that you appreciate their courage and dedication to patient rights. If we do not support them and encourage them in this, we may soon find that we have no legal recource for relief of our own pain.

Susan Callaway, Editor