Administration Declares War on Doctors
          - Vows to Treat like Taliban
        - Doctors Fight Back

     The Administration delivered on its threat to treat doctors
"like the Taliban" last Thursday when federal prosecutors
indicted and imprisoned William Hurwitz, M.D. of McLean, VA.,
for prescribing legal pain relief supervised and approved
by the Virginia Board of Medicine. Trial attorneys think doctors
should pay dearly for abuse of medication by patients after they
leave the doctors' offices. But why is Bush Administration
jailing doctors for the misdeeds of their patients? Assistant
U.S. Attorney Gene Rossi declared to a reporter that "our office
will try our best to root out [certain doctors] like the Taliban.
Stay tuned." And earlier this month, the President pointed to
physician prosecutions as the example of how he wants to pursue
terrorists. As promised, the Bush Administration seized Dr. Hurwitz's
assets under drug forfeiture laws, reserved for kingpins such as the
Colombia cartel - all without any finding of guilt. Then, in front
of his two young children,about twenty armed agents seized the good
doctor himself and imprisoned him without bail on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

This is a national disgrace - doctors throughout the country are being
targeted by egregious law enforcement for helping patients manage crippling
pain with controlled, legal drugs. "Physicians are being threatened,
impoverished, delicensed, and imprisoned for prescribing in good faith
with the intention of relieving pain," says Kathryn Serkes of the
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons(AAPS), explaining why
AAPS has decided to support Dr. Hurwitz, as well asother doctors such as
Cecil Knox, currently on trial in Roanoke, VA. The "war on drugs"
has turned into a war on doctors - and lawful drugs andthe patients
who take them. Prosecutors make careers out of high-publicity cases
involving the hot "drug du jour" such as OxyContin. But this war is
causing enormous collateral damage and deaths from "friendly fire.
"Physicians have been drummed out of practice, sent to jail, and even been
driven to suicide in the face of these 21st century witch hunts.
The public wants prosecution of terrorists, not doctors who relieve pain.
Instead, the Department of Justice is using its inflated powers to encroach
on state jurisdiction and terrorize unarmed, honest professionals. If this
continues, not one doctor will be willing to prescribe the drugs that
patients so desperately need.

AGENDA: AAPS will expose the deceitful tactics employed by law enforcement to
snare doctors & prosecutors' manipulation of the legal system to frighten
doctors and patients who might be willing to testify on behalf of the
wrongfully accused doctors; announce a national campaign to stop Rx drug
abuse & recommendations for legal remedies to protect doctors from
overzealous prosecutions. Patients will give first-hand accounts of the
devastating impact of this "war" on their access to the drugs that enable
them to carry on their lives. Also available will be a partial list
of other prosecuted physicians.

NOTE: The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons is a non-partisan
professional association of physicians in all specialties, dedicated since
1943 to protection of the patient-physician relationship. AAPS is dues
supported, and accepts no government funding, or pharmaceutical or other
corporate underwriting.