Juggling Figures, and Justice, in a Doctor’s Trial

NY Times ^ | July 3, 2007 | JOHN TIERNEY

[neverdem]

On April 14, 2005, the day Dr. William E. Hurwitz was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Karen Tandy called a news conference to celebrate the sentence and reassure other doctors. Ms. Tandy, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, held up a plastic bag containing 1,600 opioid pills.

“Dr. Hurwitz prescribed 1,600 pills to one person to take in a single day,” she announced. This bag showed that he was “no different from a cocaine or heroin dealer peddling poison on the street corner,” she said, and made it “immediately apparent” that he was not a legitimate doctor.

“To the million doctors who legitimately prescribe narcotics to relieve patients’ pain and suffering,” Ms. Tandy said, “you have nothing to fear from Dr. Hurwitz’s prosecution.”

Next week, Ms. Tandy will have another photo opportunity, when Dr. Hurwitz is again sentenced in federal court, after the reversal of his conviction and a retrial this year. But this time, Ms. Tandy may want to skip the show-and-tell.

Counting pills is a prosecutor’s trick, not a proper gauge of medical practice, and the trick didn’t even work at the retrial.

Dr. Hurwitz was cleared of most of the charges on which he was previously convicted, including the one involving the patient who received the prescription brandished by Ms. Tandy. The defense successfully argued that the patient was not a drug dealer and that Dr. Hurwitz never intended to give him 1,600 pills a day — that number was the result of a clerical error, not a plot to sell drugs. None of the jurors I interviewed considered Dr. Hurwitz anything like a street drug dealer, and they were appalled to learn after the trial that he...

--snip--

The only lesson for doctors I can see in Ms. Tandy’s bag of pills is, “Be afraid.”

[Logophile]

I wouldn’t feel safe until doctors’ prescribing practices are judged by state medical boards, as they were until the D.E.A. and federal prosecutors started using criminal courts to regulate medicine.

The next time I need medication, perhaps a DEA agent or federal prosecutor will prescribe it for me.

[stinkerpot65]

Sadly, the prosecutors are now the criminals.

[diogenes ghost]

Yet there are many FReepers who wholeheartedly support the war on drugs, even though scenarios such as this are a foreseeable, and frequent, consequence.

As are the results of no-knock raids by SWAT teams. Of course, the police are ALWAYS acting in our best interests.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Imo, Karen Tandy and the DEA are more hazardous to our health than your average coke/heroin/pot dealer.