Pain
and
the
Drug
War:
Sentence
Cuts
for
Myrtle
Beach
Pain
Doctors
3/31/06
The assault on doctors who treat chronic pain with opioids continues apace even if we don't report on it every week. This week, there is some small solace for a trio of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, physicians who were convicted in federal court of illegally prescribing pain medications. A federal judge has dramatically slashed their prison sentences. Drs. Ricardo Alerre, Deborah Bordeaux, and Michael Jackson operated the Comprehensive Care and Pain Management Center in Myrtle Beach until a DEA raid shut them down and prosecutors charged them as drug dealers whose medical practice was "a front" for a criminal operation. They were convicted in 2003 and Alerre got 19 years in prison, Bordeaux got eight, and Jackson got 24. But a federal judge Tuesday dramatically cut those sentences after an appeals court said he could use more discretion in setting sentences. US District Judge Weston Houck cut Alerre's and Bordeaux's sentences to two years and Jackson's to 2 ½ years. The trio of doctors steadfastly maintained they were prescribing opioids such as Oxycontin for severely ill chronic pain patients in compliance with contemporary medical standards, as have many of the hundreds of other physicians prosecuted under the federal Controlled Substances Act. But they failed to sway the jury, and on appeal, they failed to get their verdicts overturned. Meanwhile, Virginia pain specialist Dr. William Hurwitz remains in federal prison serving a 25-year sentence as a "drug dealer" after having been convicted in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, in November 2004. A federal appeals court heard his argument March 17 that the conviction should be overturned because the trial judge failed to instruct the jury that it should consider whether Hurwitz acted in good faith in prescribing large doses of opioids to patients, some of whom turned out to be drug addicts. A decision on his appeal is expected in a few weeks. And in Fort Pierce, Florida, prosecutors were finally able to convict Port St. Lucie physicians Dr. Asuncion Luyao on drug trafficking and manslaughter charges. An earlier attempt had ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors charge that Luyao had stopped behaving as a legitimate medical doctor and was acting as a "drug dealer" by recklessly prescribing opioid pain medications from her "pill mill" office in the old Village Green. Prosecutors charged that Luyao was responsible for the deaths of six patients who allegedly overdosed on opioids, but Luyao's defense argued that at least two had died of natural causes, the others could have been suicides, and she had been prescribing lawfully. In all three cases, the DEA and prosecutors have decided they know better than physicians what constitutes proper medical practice, and that disagreements over medical issues are grounds for major drug prosecutions, and they have managed to convince juries of as much.
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