Pubdate: Mon, 23 Dec 2002
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2002 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Josh White, The Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

VA. DOCTORS IMPLICATED IN OXYCONTIN CASES

Eighteen people who illegally sold large amounts of OxyContin and other 
powerful prescription painkillers have pleaded guilty to drug charges in 
federal court over the past two months, and for the first time have openly 
implicated two northern Virginia doctors in a widespread conspiracy to put 
the drugs on the black market.

In court proceedings and documents filed in U.S. District Court in 
Alexandria, Va., federal prosecutors and investigators have publicly 
identified the doctors as the sources of hundreds of thousands of pills 
later sold throughout the region and in Appalachia. Prosecutors in court 
have said the doctors were hubs of two separate sales schemes.

The pleas have come from patients of William E. Hurwitz, who recently 
closed his McLean, Va., practice after learning of the investigation, and 
Joseph K. Statkus, who runs a pain clinic in Centreville, Va. Authorities 
said the two prescribed thousands of OxyContin pills a month, in some cases 
without performing medical examinations. They say the pills went to abusers 
in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.

The Drug Enforcement Administration cites 464 deaths in which OxyContin was 
verified as the direct cause of death, or was a likely factor.

The nationwide investigation also focuses on more than a half-dozen deaths 
thought to be linked to prescriptions from the doctors. Federal sources 
said prosecutors are trying to use those deaths to trigger death-penalty 
laws under drug kingpin laws if they are able to obtain indictments against 
the doctors.

Hurwitz and Statkus said they've done nothing wrong, that they were duped 
by phony patients, and that they have provided valuable services to chronic 
pain sufferers.

Hurwitz said the investigation is political and that it veers away from law 
enforcement and into how doctors do their jobs. "You don't ask a patient if 
they've committed adultery or cheated on their taxes," he said. "But in 
this particular area, doctors are expected to have perfect knowledge of 
everything a patient does. ... Nobody could treat pain if they're going to 
hold doctors to that standard."
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