CONVICTED OF A CRIME THAT
NEVER OCCURRED: A TRUE STORY
Michael Jackson, MD,
Author
Dr. Jackson will be a featured speaker at the
NATIONAL PAIN RALLY, Monday,
April 19, 2004, during the "America's In Pain!"
- MARCH ON WASHINGTON -
"Silent No More!", April 18-20, 2004, National Mall
- US Capitol,
Washington, DC.
ABSTRACT: Doctors,
especially pain management specialists, are being
accused of being "drug
dealers", by the DEA.
Statistically, a very small number of patients of
any medical practice,
especially in pain manage-ment ,"doctor shop" for pain
medications, with
the purpose of selling them for enormous
profits.
The typical scenario is as follows: legitimate patients present
the same
medical/surgical records to several doctors in different cities.
The
records are usually extensive and support the etiology and diagnosis for
protracted, severe pain that has been unresponsive to conventional
treatments. Each physician in turn, after careful evaluation of the medical
records and a focused physical examination, arrives at the same diagnosis.
He then, initiates the appropriate multi-disciplinary treatment plan, which
invariably, includes the closely monitored use of long-acting opioids. The
problem is, this small group of patients do in fact, take their medication
for pain but, divert (sell) the "extra " pills. Now, the DEA gets involved;
they arrest these patients and send them off to jail. However, the new
approach to the "war on drugs" is to arrest the treating physicians on
charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and labeling as unscrupulous
drug dealers!! This new strategy is unfathomable, and the doctors in most
cases, don't even know each other!
MY STORY as it relates to the
above scenario: I am an African-American,
born in Bronx, NY in 1946. At the
age of 10, my family moved to the
infamous "projects" of Brownsville,
Brooklyn. My parents, neither of whom
finished high school, told my sister
and I that the only way out of the
ghetto, is by getting an education. With
their constant support and by the
grace of God, I was accepted into college
at the age of 16. My education
was interrupted by the Viet Nam "conflict"
(Air Force) and I did not return
to college until the age of 29 and thereby,
proceeded to earn three college
degrees with honors in chemistry, biology
and a doctorate in medicine, over
the next 13 years while working full time
and raising a family.
In January 1998, I received a phone call from
Jackson and Coker, a
physician recruitment agency. They presented two
employment opportunities
with the same salary and benefit package. One
opportunity was in Florence,
SC and the other was in Myrtle Beach, SC. The
choice was easy, Myrtle Beach
provided the added incentive of a two year
training program to qualify for
board certification in the relatively new
specialty of pain management. At
the time, I kept a daily journal and every
day since my interview, I
thanked God for "the opportunity of a lifetime"! I
began my training April
15, 1998 and subsequently passed my board exam two
years later, then
returned to Alabama to start a practice in pain
management.
In April 2000, I was offered a position by Pinnacle
Healthcare Services ,
to head up a brand new pain management / primary care
center back in Myrtle
Beach for one year, then return to Alabama to open a
subsidiary clinic in
my home town. My change of location registration with
the DEA was approved,
and I began practicing on May 1, 2000.
In June
2001, I received a phone call from the DEA in South Carolina,
requesting
that I help them determine which of the prescriptions they had
in their
possession, were signed by me and which had been forged. I met
with them and
cleared up the matter and after the two hour session, they
thanked me, then
proceeded to inform me that they were revoking my DEA
registration, alleging
that I was dealing drugs out of my office from April
1998 to March 2000.
They say that the practice had been under investigation
since 1996, yet they
never warned me and seven other doctors who went there
to train over the
next five years, that we were in harms way and could be
judged "guilty by
association". The fact of the matter is, as I illustrated
above, a small
number of patients were selling their medications, wholly
without the
knowledge of the treating physicians. However, we all were
arrested on
completely trumped up charges, then railroaded through the
"justice" system
, convicted by a confused jury of our "peers" and
sentenced to long prison
terms without possibility of parole! NOTE: I
don't believe the jury
understood the concepts of chronic pain management
and the long term use of
opioids or the definition of legally prescribing
controlled substances
during "the course of professional practice".
The average age of the
doctors involved was 53 years of age , without prior
criminal records. Also,
if we were truly guilty, then our average "take"
amounted to 49 cents a day
before taxes! We would all have to be mentally
incompetent to agree, at the
time of our employment interview , to write
illegal prescriptions for mere
pennies a day!
Presently, I face going to a Federal penitentiary for the
next 24 years and
four months without the possibility of parole for a CRIME
THAT NEVER
HAPPENED. My family is devastated, not only because I am facing a
prison
term, but they witnessed what my wife of 21 years, and I went
through,
during the grueling years of my medical training ,at such an
advanced age.
It makes no sense, that I, as a 53 year old physician would
suddenly get
involved in the drug trade when I have spent years lecturing to
students
against the use of drugs, teenage pregnancy, getting an advanced
education
(which doesn't have to be college) and how to manage a budget.
Also, as
Chief of Staff of a hospital and as a Lt Col and Chairman of the
Alabama
Army Medical Board, I encouraged a sense of pride, honesty and
excellence
in my office staff.
The goals of this article are
fourfold: 1) to serve notice to the people,
especially patients suffering
from chronic intractable pain, that as long
as the pain specialists are
being arrested, they are at risk of being under
treated or not treated at
all, because of the fear by their doctors, that
they may be the next
casualty of the "War on drugs," 2) to put our
political leaders on notice,
that there will be a MARCH ON WASHINGTON,
April 18-20, 2004 to emphasize our
request for an congressional hearing to
address the over zealous and
mis-directed attack by the DEA on physicians,
pharmacists, and other
healthcare providers, 3) request that the Federal
Government mandates, that
pharmacies across the nation be inter-faced by
computer to detect and
identify multiple prescription requests for the same
controlled substances
by a particular patient, and 4) I implore anyone
reading this article to
send donations to API (American Pain Institute,
P.O.Box 269, Belzoni, MS) to
be placed into their legal defense fund, to
represent physicians such as
myself ,who have exhausted all of their assets
and saving as a result of not
being able to practice medicine for up to
three years, while awaiting the
"delays" by the DEA and the Justice
Department, to bring cases like mine to
trial. Please, lend your support,
not only for our sake, but for the seventy
five million severe pain suffers
throughout the nation.
Thank you for
your attention to this urgent matter,
Michael D Jackson ,
MD
INTERNET SITES FOR MORE INFORMATION AND DONATIONS:
American
Pain Institute (API) ....www.americanpaininstitute.org
Pain National Pain
Patients Coalition (NPPC) ....www.paincoalition.us
"Don't give up the
fight!"
AMERICAN PAIN INSTITUTE
Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., M.D., Founder
& President
202-331-8864 662-247-1471
662-247-1384 Fax