DOCTOR DEFENDS PRESCRIPTION-WRITING PRACTICES

A doctor told jurors that he thought it was all right to sign another
doctor's name on patient prescriptions at his Westbrook methadone
clinic even though he wasn't licensed to write prescriptions for
controlled substances in Maine.

Dr. Marc Shinderman spoke publicly for the first time Monday about
the charges against him since he was indicted last August on 68
counts of forging prescription slips and records.

During the fifth day of his trial in U.S. District Court, Shinderman
said he thought he had the authority to use the name and registration
number of his clinic's medical director, Dr. Steven Keefe, when
prescribing anti-anxiety drugs and other medications to patients both men saw.

The arrangement seemed normal for doctors in the same practice, he said.

"I didn't think much about it," he said during two hours of testimony.

Shinderman and two other psychiatrists founded the Center for
Addiction Problems in Chicago, a methadone clinic that also treated
mental illness.

In 2001, Shinderman came to Maine and started CAP Quality Care in
Westbrook, the second methadone clinic in the Portland area.
Methadone is dispensed to addicts to curb their craving for heroin,
Oxycontin or other opium-based drugs.

Shinderman said he first began writing prescriptions for anti-anxiety
drugs and other medications on his Illinois registration with the
Drug Enforcement Administration, but soon realized that arrangement
wouldn't work in Maine. After consulting with the DEA, Keefe agreed
to sign blank prescription forms for Shinderman to use when Keefe was
away from the office.

Defense attorney Thimi Mina told the jury in opening statements that
Shinderman cannot be convicted of a crime unless he had a "criminal
state of mind."

Shinderman, Mina said, was appropriately treating patients and didn't
profit from the prescriptions, Mina said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Clark on Monday suggested that
Shinderman did have a financial incentive in prescribing the drugs.

In an evidentiary argument away from the jury, Clark said the clinic
competed for patients with another local methadone clinic and
profited from Shinderman's willingness to write prescriptions for
drugs that the other clinic did not prescribe.