Pain Wars
It's Simple.
We Lost the War. The DEA is now your
pain doctor. No meds allowed. You just have to learn to live
with the pain.
See
Pain Relief Network
It is not right to send a doctor to
prison for treating serious chronic pain.
The message to a pain patient is
clear: as a society we want to make sure that you can end your
life, but we are not nearly as interested in making sure that your life
is pain free enough to avoid having to make that choice in the first
place.
This website was established by a group of concerned and loyal American citizens who organized under the banner "Pain Wars" because we concluded that is
the current state of our struggle with the federal government -- most
notably with the Drug Enforcement Administration ["DEA"]. We
are a varied group; we come from many professional disciplines, from
different regions in the country, from different cultural backgrounds
and economic positions, and share a multitude of political opinions.
Our group includes physicians, lawyers, pain patients, relatives of pain
patients, and many other professionals and individuals from numerous
walks of life.
What we shared in common was a
vision of a federal government that lacked power to dictate what types of
medical care individuals were allowed to receive -- that such
matters instead fell within the purview of personal dignity and
autonomy. As a corollary, we believed that the federal
government must also not be vested with the power to dictate what types
of medical care physicians were allowed to deliver -- especially
when that care is criminalized by federal law.
We still believe that, but our
federal courts have proven to us that they are not principled -- they are
outcome driven and will rule to create outcomes instead of law. Nor
has Congress fulfilled its duties. In essence, the federal government
is out of control and ruining lives for power. We are continuing to
work within the courts, but our task is great indeed, and we hope for the
day we get a judge devoted to law who will listed to our arguments.
We literally view this
struggle as one of life and death upon which we cannot compromise.
We must win this battle or lose our freedom. For many of
us, a loss of this principle will represent a lifelong sentence to
debilitating, horrible, life-altering pain. We are the faces that
matter in this debate -- the people whose lives will forever be
irrevocably altered. We are the individuals who but for adequate
pain treatment would be seeking out the services of Dr. Kevorkian.
We are citizens of these United States, and it is our belief that our
ancestors did not create a government that had the power to dictate that
some of us would have to suffer unimaginable pain in order to serve some
larger political interest for individuals in power.
