ANESTHESIOLOGIST FOR PROMINENT FERTILITY DOCTOR ADMITS PAST DRUG USE

NEW YORK (AP) - A former anesthesiologist for a prominent fertility doctor
on trial for insurance fraud testified that he was high on drugs during the
first two years he worked for the doctor.

"In retrospect, I was pretty stoned a lot of the time I was giving
anesthesia," said Dr. Neil Warren Ratner, an anesthesiologist and a key
government witness.

Ratner, 50, of Manhattan was called by prosecutors Thursday as a witness to
buttress their case against Dr. Niels Lauersen.

Lauersen, 63, a Park Avenue obstetrician and gynecologist, and Dr. Magda
Binion, an anesthesiologist, are charged with conspiracy, health care fraud
and mail fraud.

For a decade, they allegedly falsely billed fertility surgeries that were
not covered by insurance as gynecological surgeries which were.

Ratner told the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that he began
working for Lauersen in 1987. He said Lauersen instructed him to leave out
any reference to fertility procedures when insurance companies were billed
for them.

He said his work for Lauersen began while he still had a drug problem which
began in his junior year of high school.

He testified Thursday that he has not taken drugs since a moment in May
1989 when he had a near-death experience he described as "God's way of
telling me, 'This is your last chance."'

But before then, he said he regularly used drugs.

During college, Ratner sold drugs to make enough money to pay for the drugs
he abused, he recalled.

Afterwards, he avoided the Vietnam War by faking psychological problems
with the help of a psychiatrist who believed everyone has a psychological
abnormality "which ultimately you could then blow up to a neurosis or
psychosis," Ratner said.

He said after college he worked as a road manager for the Edgar Winters
White Trash band and later worked with other music acts, including Humble
Pie, J. Gyles and Peter Frampton.

After five years in music, a kidney stone attack pointed him toward the
medical profession and he enrolled in medical school, he said.

Following a two-year residency at Beth Israel Medical Center, he began
working as an anesthesiologist for several doctors, including Lauersen.

He said his drug habit by then was limited mostly to drugs such as codeine,
Demorol or morphine, some of which he stole from the offices of doctors
other than Lauersen.

The drug use culminated in 1989 when he almost died in the operating room
of another doctor for whom he worked, he said.

"I was injecting myself with drugs by this point every few hours or so and
I mistakenly picked up a syringe of what I thought was a narcotic,
injecting myself with it," he said. "It turned out to be a paralyzing
agent.

"I ended up on the floor, paralyzed, unable to speak and just barely able
to breathe," he said.

He said the doctors and nurses around him were horrified. After a few
minutes, the effect of the drug subsided and he began to recover as he was
replaced by another anesthesiologist, he said.

Ratner testified in exchange for leniency after he pleaded guilty in May
1998 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, health care fraud and to making a
false statement regarding health care matters. He has not been sentenced.