THE TRIAL OF MOLLIE FRY, MD

Federal Jury Convicts Pro-Cannabis Doctor

After a 10-day trial, it took a federal jury in Sacramento less than
three hours August 16 to find Marion "Mollie" Fry, MD, and her
husband, attorney Dale Schafer, guilty of conspiracy to grow and
distribute marijuana. Schafer was represented by Tony Serra, Fry by
Lawrence Lichter. The lawyers' eloquence was no substitute for an
admissible defense.

Schafer, 53, acknowledges that he grew cannabis -initially for his
wife and himself, and then for some of her patients. He had intended
to argue that he did so on the advice of counsel after a 1999 ruling
by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals made "medical necessity" a
possible defense for marijuana distribution. But the U.S. Supreme
Court overruled the 9th Circuit, and Judge Frank Damrell forbade Fry
and Schafer from citing their once-possibly-valid belief that
"medical necessity" justified marijuana production and sales.

Their only remaining hope was that a juror might disapprove of the
war on drugs and vote not to convict on principle. Everyone in the
jury pool who said they'd heard of California's medical marijuana law
got dismissed. Seven women and five men were seated. Two were people
of color. One was a paralegal employed by a public defender's office.
The defendants and their well-wishers kept hoping, scanning faces for
a glint of support.

Opening arguments hadn't concluded before Damrell instructed the jury
that any references to "medical" anything were irrelevant under
federal law. He also told them that -contrary to what the defendants
were saying on Christine Craft's radio show-they absolutely had to
abide by his instructions.

Your correspondent fantasized about making an opening statement, too:

What could possibly have possessed Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer, a
successful doctor and lawyer, to grow marijuana and distribute it to
her patients? Money isn't a plausible motive. They were successful
professionals whose lifestyle was modest; they had no need to
supplement their income. So how did they lose perspective and take
this outrageous, absurd risk?

A belief in God.

Mollie Fry's office is in a town called Cool but she is the opposite
of cool. She hugs you as if you were a most intimate friend and tells
you everything she's feeling. She emotes and dramatizes. She cries
readily and profusely. She talks about what God wants and what God
might do. God is justice and justice must prevail. Her God talk and
her marijuana talk are in the same key and intertwine; the sacred
herb, the healing herb, she makes no distinction. She goes all the
way. She goes too far. She opens up her home to people in need. She
takes in strays. She's probably the most empathetic psychiatrist in
California. She has suffered and she doesn't want to see other people
suffer. In her 40s she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had
killed her mother, who was also a psychiatrist, in her 40s. Mollie
had both breasts removed. She attributes her survival to God. If she
was involved in distributing marijuana to patients it was in the same
spirit that she issued them approvals -doing God's work, reducing
human suffering. But the belief that she was doing God's work is
literally delusional. Shouldn't a sincere belief in a just God
qualify Fry and Schafer for an insanity defense?

Damrell put off sentencing until Nov. 26, for which the defendants
were grateful. They both face five-year minimums. A key question is
whether they'll be allowed to remain free on bail while they appeal
their conviction.

Conflicts of Interest 'R' Us

Conflict of interest is inherent in corporate medicine and cannot be
reversed by superficial reforms -especially reforms involving
voluntary compliance on the part of likely miscreants. For example, a
study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
July 25 concludes that padded hip protectors fail to prevent
fractures in the elderly. Three of the authors didn't inform JAMA
that they had taken money from manufacturers of bone-strengthening
drugs (whose sales might decline if padded hip protectors were shown
to work). JAMA adopted a stricter disclosure policy in 2006 but
doesn't consult a database to confirm that authors are being
forthcoming about their links to industry. Lindsey Tanner of the
Associated Press discovered the conflict.

A Laguna Beach cosmetic dermatologist named Arnold Klein who injects
the rich and famous with Botox -a "pioneer in the field," according
to a Wall St. Journal piece August 29- has urged the FDA to
reconsider its approval of a product called ArteFill, a mixture of
calf colleagen and tiny plastic beads that fills wrinkles
permanently. Klein and six other celebrity dermatologists warned the
FDA in July that ArteFill "may pose immediate, debilitating and
disfiguring health risks."

Indeed it may. It definitely poses immediate, debilitating financial
risks to the Botox-injectors whose patients have to come back for
touch-ups two or three times a year. "Dr. Klein has past and current
ties to ArteFill competitors," Rhonda L. Rundle reveals in her WSJ
piece. "From 2000 until last April, Dr. Klein worked for Allergan
Inc., which sells Botox and Juvederm, and since 2004 he has been a
consultant to Restylane maker Medicis Pharmaceuticals Corp. Dr Klein,
who made $250,000 a year from Allergan for several years, says such
ties 'have nothing to do whatsoever' with his concerns about
ArteFill. 'I refuse to see the field of soft-tissue augmentation
destroyed,' he says of his motivation.

Patients in the U.S. must wait 26 days to have a possibly cancerous
mole evaluated whereas the wait to get a Botox shot for wrinkles is
eight days, according to a study by UCSF dermatologist Jack Resneck
and colleagues published by the Journal of the American Academy of
Dermatologists in August. The cosmetic treatments tend to be easier
and more lucrative for the dermatologists, who must wait for
reimbursement by insurance companies when they provide medical
treatment. An apologist for the skewed system, professor Alexa
Kimball of Harvard Medical School, told the New York Times, "The
study shows that the Botox needs of the United States are being met.
If dermatologists stopped providing cosmetic care, it would not
necessarily have an impact on medical dermatology patients."
Especially if the doctors used the freed-up time to play golf instead
of treating patients with medical needs.

Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the journal of cannabis in
clinical practice.