One Hand Jerking (30 page)

The Justice Department is particularly concerned with Vicodin, Dilaudid and—America's most abused pain pill—OxyContin. Just ask Rush Limbaugh and Courtney Love. There are even doctors' offices now with signs on the wall, warning, “Don't ask for OxyContin” and “No OxyContin prescribed here.”

Dr. Ronald Myers, president of the American Pain Institute, stated, “Such is the climate of fear across the medical community that for every doctor who has his license yanked by the DEA, there are a hundred doctors scared to prescribe proper pain medication for fear of going to prison.”

A major protest at the National Mall in April 2004 was organized by the National Pain Patients Coalition, to bring attention to what some experts regard as the number one health issue in the nation—the undertreatment of chronic pain—in the hope that state leglislators will pass bills guaranteeing patients' rights to alleviate their suffering.

San Francisco attorney Patrick Hallinan said that honest doctors all over the country are being targeted by the DEA under the supposition that their patients were violating the law without the doctor's knowledge by selling their prescriptions on the street, and that the agents are using the same tactics against them that are used against narcotics dealers.

“There isn't any doubt,” he added, “that these prosecutions are increasing under the Bush administration. It is like busting a car dealer because somebody runs off the road and kills somebody.”

The campaign began under Janet Reno and has increased in intensity under John Ashcroft—storming clinics in SWAT-style gear and ransacking doctors' offices.

Here's a case history of a family physician I know. He practices in a small town and calls himself “a country doctor.” I'll call him Dr. L. I first met him at the height of the Anthrax scare, right after envelopes containing Anthrax had been sent to ABC and NBC. Tom Brokaw ended the evening news by saying, “Thank God for Cipro,” referring to the antibiotic that would counteract the effects of Anthrax if not the hysteria. Before I could even tell Dr. L. my medical emergency—an attack of diverticulosis causing severe stomach pain—he said, “I suppose you want a prescription for Cipro.” He had already gotten several requests for the drug that week.

I explained the purpose of my visit, but he acted as though I was faking it in order to obtain a painkiller. When he determined that my condition was real, he prescribed antibiotics and a painkiller. Ultimately we became friends, and I learned the reason for his suspicious approach.

Dr. L. was once convicted for what he sardonically describes as “the heinous crime of prescribing tylenol codeine for the treatment of migraine syndrome in a couple of ladies.” They turned out to be undercover operatives for the Medical Board of California.

“This story is not unique,” he told me. “It is being repeated across the United States every day. Our country seems to be slipping into a fascist regime with dictatorial, uncontrolled coercive state power.”

Over a period of several days, the two women, who were wired, visited Dr. L's
office, complaining of symptoms that were consistent with migraine headaches. After listening to their history, he gave each of them 30 tylenol codeine tablets until he could obtain their previous records. He even called one of the physicians who had been listed in the intake form—a doctor in Oshkosh, Wisconsin—but an elderly telephone operator told him she had lived in that town for 70 years and had never heard of such a doctor.

Some weeks later, there was a melodramatic search warrant served by agents with drawn guns. They were from the DEA, BNA (a state agency comparable to the DEA) and the local police. This is a common practice of ass-covering, so that no single agency can be blamed if anything goes wrong.

The raid had a terrible effect on the economic health of Dr. L's family practice, a standard mix of obstetrics, pediatrics and internal medicine. A story was planted in the local media—via press releases from those government agencies—stating that he was a drug-dealing doctor and would lose his license. He was shunned by colleagues.

“Several weeks later,” he says, “I was arrested at my office while many startled patients watched in utter disbelief as their doctor was handcuffed and led away. The arresting officers would not let me take off my clinic coat or stethoscope—this picture was worth more with them on. I was booked and subsequently released on bail.”

His trial didn't come up until six years later. After ten days in court, he was found guilty, sentenced to six months in jail, fined more than $11,000, and required to perform 200 hours of community service. The case went to the Court of Appeals, and later to the California Supreme Court, where, on the last day of the session, a hearing was denied.

He was now in debt for legal fees of over $300,000. Moreover, In order to serve his sentence, he had to close his office. And, based on the felony convictions—at a hearing which he could not attend because he was in custody—his medical license was revoked.

An additional appeal resulted in a decision against the prosecutor, accusing him of lying, deceit, skullduggery, prevarication, you name it, and another hearing was ordered to be held by the Medical Board. Dr. L was placed on five years probation. But his nightmare continued.

“Subsequently,” he says, “Medicare, Medi-Cal and Champus certifications were revoked. In addition, my name was added to the nefarious National Practitioners Data Bank. Thus, no HMO would consider me for employment, no
malpractice carrier would insure me, and I was even ineligible for hire by a state prison because of my felonious status.

“Physicians are the number one target for prosecution by the DEA and the 50 states operating in tandem. This prosecutorial targeting of physicians which definitely includes entrapment and selective prosecution, has come about, I believe, because of an erroneous and nefarious assumption that our prescriptions are sold on the street to satisfy the needs of addicts. This fallacious exercise in logic is called ‘diversion' and the general claim had been made by the DEA that physicians bear the blame for the failed war on drugs.

“This circular illogic and self-fulfilling prophecy is used as a pretext for promoting the greatly undeserved Bad Doctor Syndrome. There are unlimited funds available for such government investigations. Often they are triggered by a complaint a local pharmacist registers with the Pharmacy Board about a physician he believes uses too many drugs for the relief of pain.”

Conversely, a California jury recently awarded $1.5 million to the family of an 85-year-old man whose doctor
failed
to treat him adequately for pain for a few days as he lay dying of lung cancer. That verdict was only the third in American history for the
undertreatment
of pain, and the first against a doctor. It was also the first time a jury awarded such a verdict under elder abuse laws instead of a medical negligence lawsuit.

Kathryn Tucker, director of legal affairs for Compassion in Dying Federation, pointed out that this case could serve as the catalyst for better pain management by the medical profession and educate the public that it should take action when these needs are ignored. Nor is there any shortage of potential lawsuits. A study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association
found that 40 percent of nursing home patients with acute or chronic pain are not getting pain treatment that brings relief.

Dr. L shakes his head as he contemplates the overwhelming irony.

“I spent six months in jail,” he observes, “while now one gets a malpractice lawsuit for inappropriate relief of pain. What a most interesting and contravening juxtaposition in such a few years. I do not really think that we have a system of justice—merely a system of laws.”

Recently, Dr. L's medical license was reinstated, and his family practice clinic can now be diagnosed as vigorously healthy.

 

Postscript
: Dr. Tad Lonergan was killed in a car accident on July 4, 2005.

Bob Wilson's books include
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
(with Robert Shea); the
Cosmic Trigger
trilogy,
The New Inquisition
, the
Schrodinger's Cat
trilogy,
Prometheus Rising
,
The Walls Came Tumbling Down
,
Wilhelm Reich in Hell
,
Natural Law
,
Sex, Drugs & Magick
and
Everything is Under Control: An Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories
.

He is also the subject of a feature-length documentary movie by Lance Bauscher,
Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson
, featuring 23 different Bobs, Tom Robbins, R.U. Sirius, George Carlin and myself. For more information, go to
maybelogic.com
. Wilson continues to explore his consciousness and communicate his ideas and causes, with passion, wit, imagination and insight. This interview was conducted by the electronic magic of e-mail.

 

A. It's rather obsessive-compulsive, I think. I write the first draft straight, then rewrite stoned, then rewrite straight again, then rewrite stoned again, and so on, until I'm absolutely delighted with every sentence, or irate editors start reminding me about deadlines—whichever comes first. Hemingway and Raymond Chandler had similar compulsions but used the wrong drug, booze, and they both attempted suicide. Papa succeeded but poor Ray didn't and just looked like a sloppy alcoholic. (He tried to shoot himself in the head and missed.) Faulkner also had obsessive components and died by falling off a horse, drunk. I don't think booze is a very safe drug for us obsessive-compulsives. Almost as bad as becoming known as a Sage. By the way, Congress should impeach Dubya and impound [then drug czar] Asa Hutchinson.

Q. The piss police read
High Times.
What would you like to tell them?

A. “You are all equally blessed, equally empty, equally coming Buddhas.” But some of them are such assholes it will take a long time to get from there to here.

A. I thought you'd never ask. Long before I needed WAMM, Valerie Coral, the founder, came regularly to my
Finnegan's Wake
reading/rapping group, and I considered her incredibly bright. As I learned about her WAMM activities, distributing pot to terminal cancer and AIDS patients, sitting with them, giving love and support during the death process, I decided she was also a saint. I never thought I would become another WAMM patient. My post-polio syndrome had been a minor nuisance until then; suddenly two years ago it flared up into blazing pain. My doctor recommended marijuana and named WAMM as the safest and most legal source. By then, I think I was on the edge of suicide; the pain had become like a permanent abcessed tooth in the leg. Nobody can or should endure that. Thanks to Valerie and WAMM, I never have that kind of torture for more than an hour these days. I pop one of their pain pills and I'm up and back at the iMac in, well, if not an hour, then at most two hours. By the way, Congress should impeach Dubya and impound Asa Hutchinson. Or did I say that already?

A. Well, it bears repeating.

A. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” I didn't invent that; I found it in the back of my dictionary, in a dusty old historical document called “U.S. Constitution,” which Dubya seemingly has never heard of, but it's supposed to be the rules of our government. I wish more people would look at that document, because it has a lot of other radical ideas that seem worth thinking about. Look it up before the Bush Crime Family forces dictionary publishers to remove it. Congress should impeach Dubya and impound Asa Hutchinson. Or does this begin to sound like an echo chamber?

Q. How does all that tie in with your book,
TSOG
? First, what does TSOG mean, and how do you pronounce it?

A. TSOG means Tsarist Occupation Government and I pronounce it TSOG, so it sounds like a monster in a Lovecraft story. The book presents the evidence that ever since the CIA-Nazi-Tsarist alliance of the 1940s, the Tsarists have taken over as the “brains” of the Control System and America has become a Tsarist
nation, with the Constitution only known to those who peek in the back of their dictionaries, like I did. Hell, we even have an official Tsar and he has the alleged “right”—or at least the power—to come between my doctor and me, and decide how much excruciating pain I should suffer before dying. What next? Is he going to rule on controversial questions in physics and astronomy? In mathematical set theory? In biology? Believe me, there's no Tsar mentioned in the Constitution. Personal doctor/patient matters are left to the individuals. You see, this was supposed to be a free country, not a Tsarist despotism.

A. Their rigidity. All rigid Belief Systems (B.S.) censor and warp the processes of perception, thought and even empathy. They literally make people behave like badly-wired robots. Philip K. Dick noticed this too, and worried a lot about the possible robots among us. Some people think he was crazy, but I've never met anybody with rigid beliefs who seemed fully human to me. Phil got it right: a lot of them do act like robots. Especially in government offices and churches. Gort, Dubya barada nikto, dig?