Yesterday, my visceral tweet on Purdue’s prosecution ignored a much bigger problem—the problem of using the gun of prosecution to solve a medical problem. Prosecution for prescribing opiate is to let ironsmith set a fracture with a hammer! Stop sacrificial lambs. MD’s slaughtered by the DOJ hurts patients and their families. The charges of abuse make the public think that bad actors are targeted but actually the community loses services. Insurers win by not paying for treatment, prosecutors win by getting their 15 minutes of fame and promotions, politicians win as they don’t have to find real solutions! The spectacle of gladiators and blood sport to divert the unrest of Public is as old as the Roman Empire. Newspapers print bold headlines with fantastic claims of huge amount of fraud ”discovered”. No one ask how much is actually ”recovered”. The media takes the easy way and prints the claims of the Federal Prosecutors that they investigated fraud of hundreds of Millions of dollars. No one informs the Public that the amount mentioned is ”intended loss” – a fabricated and fictitious number. Nobody asks about the ”actual loss”. Nobody gets to hear the other side as the defendants accept pleas, not necessarily out of actual guilt but threats of decades of incarceration just for exercising a constitutional right to trial by jury.
I often think of those standing before the judge accepting pleas to poor brides in India who give their ”consent” to the clergy in a big theater of arranged marriages. The guests feast on the lavish meal, the clergy recites the Holy Book and the bride is sent on her way to spend a life time with her husband that she never knew. Tradition lives on and everyone except the bride is happy. Call them “unwilling sacrificial goats” fed to the lion of Incarceration or the unwilling brides in the theater of arranged marriage, the fate of these souls are sealed as well as their lips.
But a few daring souls are breaking their silence and speaking up. Dr. Linda Cheek and Dr. Arnold Feldman are a few such souls.
I request all of my friends to take a few minutes and visit the website – Doctors of Courage and if you agree then please support our struggle. Become a volunteer to inform the Public. We fought for your Right to Treatment and we need your help to keep the momentum building to a point where the prosecution of the medical providers in this decade will be remembered in history as the trial of the witches of Salem.
