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 Healers and Dealers
Prosecutors say McLean, Virginia physician William Hurwitz, who is on trial at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, knowingly supplied OxyContin and other narcotic painkillers to patients who sold them on the black market. "A self-proclaimed healer, he crossed the line to dealer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lytle declared in his opening statement. "He thought he could hide behind the pain he treated."
When Hurwitz was indicted last fall, U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty called him a "major and deadly drug dealer." Charged with 62 counts related to what prosecutors describe as a multistate drug trafficking conspiracy, Hurwitz faces a possible life sentence.
Yet the details of the government's case do not fit the picture it has tried to paint. Instead, they suggest that if Hurwitz is guilty of anything, it's inadequate skepticism and excessive compassion. By prosecuting him for trusting his patients too much, the government is criminalizing the sort of mistake doctors already are so keen to avoid that they routinely turn away or undertreat patients in pain.
Over the years Hurwitz has acquired a reputation as one of the rare doctors brave enough to prescribe for patients with severe chronic pain the high doses of opioids they need to make their lives bearable. Inevitably, such a doctor will attract people who want narcotics to get high or to sell them on the street.
The government does not dispute that Hurwitz has helped hundreds of desperate patients who unsuccessfully sought pain relief from doctors who were afraid to risk unwanted attention from the government by treating them. But it faults him for "willful blindness" in prescribing "obscene amounts of pills" to patients who were selling or abusing them, including three who took overdoses.
A former patient called as a prosecution witness testified that "I had a lot of pain, but I exaggerated it, trying to get the drugs." On cross-examination, he added that he had "played a lot of doctors" over the years. He characterized Hurwitz as naive, saying: "He was concerned about me and my wife [also a patient]. Dr. Hurwitz is always concerned."
Such testimony...»»
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