Pubdate: Fri, 22 Mar 2002
Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
Copyright: 2002 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.
Contact:  http://www.journalnow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504
Author: Associated Press
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n438/a10.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?186 (Oxycontin)
Note: The Journal does not publish letters from writers outside its daily 
home delivery circulation area.

DOCTOR DEFENDS HIS PRESCRIBING OF PAINKILLERS

RALEIGH -- A doctor accused in 23 drug-overdose deaths defended himself 
yesterday as an unconventional practitioner bucking the medical and 
regulatory establishment.

Dr. Joseph Talley has already lost his federal license to prescribe 
narcotics and now finds himself fighting state regulators who want to strip 
his license to practice medicine.

Bob Clay, an attorney representing the Cleveland County doctor in a hearing 
that began yesterday before the North Carolina Medical Board, portrayed his 
client as a believer in using prescription painkillers to treat long-term, 
chronic pain.

Talley had the best interests of his patients in mind and was not trying to 
get rich, Clay said. He said that Talley earned $140,000 in 2000, the most 
he had ever made.

"He can treat people with sore throats and make just as much money as he 
does with this," Clay said.

State medical regulators began efforts to take Talley's medical license 
after federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided Talley's office 
in December. The federal agency says that 23 of his patients died from 
overdoses.

Talley, 64, hasn't been charged criminally. He denies wrongdoing, admitting 
only to self-prescribing the diet drug Pondimin and stockpiling it when 
patients returned unused pills.

A pharmacy operated by another man in a trailer behind Talley's office has 
for years led the nation in prescriptions of OxyContin, state regulators said.

At the hearing, medical-board attorney Bill Breeze produced case files that 
showed that Talley had prescribed opium-based drugs including morphine and 
OxyContin without giving patients a full physical examination.
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