REIN ON NALTREXONE AID PLEDGE: KUCERA

A $1 MILLION election pledge to heroin treatment doctor George O'Neil was
conditional on strict clinical and financial controls, the State Government
said yesterday.

Dr O'Neil is under investigation by the Medical Board of WA.

A spokeswoman for Health Minister Bob Kucera said the Government supported
Dr O'Neil's naltrexone program but did not endorse his use of naltrexone
implants, which are not approved for human use and have not undergone
clinical trials.

Mr Kucera was watching the board's deliberations of Dr O'Neil's use of the
controversial devices with interest, she said. He also was monitoring the
situation in Queensland where Brisbane doctor Stuart Reece had been banned
from using them.

The office of Medical Board registrar Simon Hood confirmed it was collating
material after receiving a complaint from Leederville clinical psychologist
Bill Saunders. Yesterday, it provided Dr O'Neil with issues it wanted
addressed.

Curtin University executive dean of health services Professor Charles
Watson said its ethics committee was considering Dr O'Neil's application
for a clinical trial. The committee was not due to meet until August. There
was provision for a special meeting but it would not be stampeded into a
quick decision.

Results from a clinical trial were not likely to be known for six to 12 months.

The university stopped producing implants for Dr O'Neil last month after
raising concerns about them leaving WA. It said no more would be made until
a trial protocol was approved.

Dr O'Neil supplies implants to a number of eastern States doctors,
including Dr Reece. Professor Watson said he was not specifically aware
that Dr O'Neil also sold implants overseas.

The West Australian has obtained a copy of an e-mail dated March 28 from
London drug treatment doctor Colin Brewer to Dr O'Neil's clinic thanking
him for supplying 20 implants.

Dr Brewer advised Dr O'Neil against posting a further 50 implants to him.
He said it was preferable that Dr O'Neil took them with him to an April
drug conference in London.

"I think (Dr O'Neil) might be committing an offence if he sold or even
supplied them to other physicians at a meeting in Britain," Dr Brewer told
the clinic.

"Regulations allow me to import an unlicensed medicine for use in my own
patients on my own responsibility but I am not allowed to sell it to other
physicians."

Dr O'Neil had been allowed to use the implants under a special exemption
clause in the Federal Therapeutic Goods Acts relating to patients who risk
imminent death without treatment.