DOC DENOUNCES 'WAR ON PATIENTS'

The federal government's war on drugs has turned into a witch hunt for
doctors who legitimately prescribe legal painkillers, says a
California physician who claims he was the target of an unethical
federal investigation.

"The war on drugs has become a war on sick people," Dr. Frank Fisher
said Friday. "The war on drugs has morphed into a war on patients, and
the doctors are caught in the crossfire."

Fisher said the battle has erupted in Billings, where the Drug
Enforcement Administration is investigating neurologist Richard A.
Nelson. Nelson treated multiple chronic-pain sufferers with opioids,
or narcotic painkillers, until federal agents raided his West End
clinic three months ago.

Fisher, whose general practice clinic near Redding, Calif., was shut
down in 1999 by the DEA, spoke during a press conference in Billings
on Friday.

"My patients were tossed into the street and told to fend for
themselves," Fisher said. "Up at the county clinic, they thought they
were addicts, and they detoxed them."

Fewer than 10 percent of Fisher's patients suffered from chronic pain,
which he treated with narcotics.

Prosecutors charged him with five counts of murder, alleging that five
of his patients died because of the medication he prescribed for them.
One of them died after the vehicle in which she was a passenger crashed.

According to Fisher, the charges came after undercover agents posing
as patients failed at least seven times to get him to write them
prescriptions for fake symptoms.

Ultimately, the murder charges and 91 misdemeanor counts of medical
fraud were dismissed. A jury acquitted Fisher of eight more fraud charges.

Fisher said it was all an attempt by the DEA to stop him from
prescribing narcotic painkillers.

And it worked.

"I would like to treat chronic-pain patients," he said. "But it's too
dangerous. It's suicidal."

Fisher and Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network,
said the DEA has brought its scare tactics to Montana.

"This situation developing in Billings is going on all over the
country," Reynolds said during Friday's press conference. "Patients in
pain are being summarily removed from care through action taken
against their physicians."

When the DEA revokes a doctor's prescription-writing privileges - as
it did in Nelson's case - people in pain are often left with nowhere
to turn, she said. Many of Nelson's patients have said they cannot
find another physician to treat them.

"People assume everyone is getting what they need, so if people turn
up without meds, it must be because they did something wrong,"
Reynolds said. "People who need meds can't get them."

To that end, Reynolds, who lives in New York City, has spearheaded a
petition drive in Billings asking the state's congressional delegation
to initiate a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into the DEA.
She delivered 330 signatures on Friday to the office of Sen. Max
Baucus, D-Mont.

Reynolds said the Pain Relief Network is in the process of opening a
Billings office.

"We are going to keep on bringing it up until (these people) are no
longer victims of predation by the DEA," she said.

Jan Johnson, a patient of Nelson's, said on Friday that shutting down
legitimate sources for painkillers - such as Nelson's clinic - forces
people to find the drugs another way.

"The entire thing is supposed to be stopping the illegal sale of
drugs, but what it's doing is promoting it," Johnson said. "People are
going to do that because they are in a lot of pain."

The DEA has not said why it is investigating Nelson, although the
agency maintains that doctors who are doing nothing wrong should not
fear investigation.

Fisher traveled to Billings this week to see for himself whether
Nelson was a legitimate doctor or a drug dealer. After examining
medical records and meeting with patients Friday morning, Fisher said
Nelson was doing nothing wrong.

"I can tell you there's not a drug addict among them," he said of
Nelson's patients. "He used (narcotics) cautiously and sparingly, and,
from what I can see, he was doing a good job."