FUR FLIES OVER NALTREXONE STUDY

PERTH doctor George O'Neil claims a medical study on his controversial
naltrexone program is flawed.

But the co-author of the study, psychiatrist James Fellows-Smith, was
last night refusing to back away from his findings.

The study by Dr Fellows-Smith and general practitioner John Edwards
found that heroin addicts on the streets had a one in 100 chance of
dying, compared with addicts prescribed naltrexone who had a mortality
rate of one in 61.

In a day of claims and counter claims, Dr O'Neil said yesterday that
Dr Fellows-Smith's study was at best a misinterpretation of data
stemming from his clinic. Dr Fellows-Smith labelled Dr O'Neil's claims
as defamatory.

Dr O'Neil said that after the study appeared in The West Australian
last week, a social worker at his Subiaco clinic has been called a
murderer by a person whose loved one had died after being prescribed
naltrexone.

He claimed Dr Fellows-Smith had apologised to him at the weekend and
that he had been embarrassed when errors in the number of people he
had included in a so-called control group had been pointed out to him.

But Dr Fellows-Smith retorted: "I did not apologise then, nor do I
apologise now. I stand by the findings. It was the responsible thing
to do to release the study publicly."

He disputed that there was a problem with the people he included in
the control group and said it was ludicrous for Dr O'Neil to now
dispute the study.

"If action had been taken a year ago when we first became aware of the
high number of deaths in patients prescribed naltrexone then in the
region of 30 people would be alive today," he said.

Dr Fellows-Smith produced a letter dated April last year from Dr
O'Neil to Wayne Hall, regional editor of the international medical
journal Addiction, in which he endorsed the study.

Dr O'Neil's letter said: "I have been involved with substantive work
leading to the report and hold myself jointly and individually
responsible for its contents."

Dr O'Neil admitted yesterday that he signed the letter but had done so
without reading the study.

After reading the study, he contacted Dr Fellows-Smith to say that he
no longer wanted to be part of it and then wrote to the journal's
publisher withdrawing his involvement.

Dr Fellows-Smith said he was notified by Addiction's editor late last
week that the study had been rejected for publication but he denied it
was because the figures were misleading. He has now submitted the
study to the Australian Drug and Alcohol Review.