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Symbol Debate

Lethal Drug Act Will Restrict Cancer Patients' Pain Treatments

Katherine Meade

Aug 6 1998 The Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act sets up a review board to oversee physicians. Patients and caregivers must be aware that this will restrain physicians' use of pain management at all times, particularly during palliative care. It is likely to interfere with the doctor-patient relationship by restricting doctors from prescribing effective pain medications according to patients' needs. This is of special concern to cancer patients and those who care for them at the end of life.

According to the Washington Post, Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill) is the author of the Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act, which has been approved by the committee by a voice vote. This act will penalize doctors by taking away their ability to prescribe certain controlled drugs.

The Supreme Court has said that this issue should be left up to the states. This Act appears to be an attempt to get around that ruling. USA Today says that Rep. Bobby Scott (D VA) has led the fight against the proposal. He believes that while there are supposed to be distinctions between drugs for pain and drugs for suicide, there is cause for concern that doctors will shy away from prescribing any drug above the PDR in case they lose their ability to prescribe drugs and possibly their malpractice insurance. Here in Virginia this has been an issue with a local physician. I personally find this proposal objectionable.

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The federal government should not be so intimately involved in medical decisions between a patient and his physician. We need to be working toward laws that enable a painfree death--not make it more difficult. We need to make these medications humanely available.

Fear of losing their source of income will influence physicians so that they may be much more hesitant to prescribe necessary drugs at necessary levels. You may want to discuss this with your doctor and ask him how he feels other doctors will react.

I am sitting at my husband's bedside during the end stages of his cancers. I thank God every day that because of his medications he is painfree; and I hope that all other cancer patients and their families can experiment until they find the right pain medication levels for themselves or their family member. We have adjusted and readjusted until it is right for him and he is aware and painfree.

I feel it is important that we do not allow the federal government to get involved in this last so personal issue of our lives.

Katherine Meade is an independent insurance agent and an artist. She has been caring for her husband, Bill, in their home with help from hospice. Bill died peacefully in his sleep on August 7, 1998.