Originally published September 12 2005
Doctor loses license for over-prescribing OxyContin
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A Cape Cod doctor has lost his medical license after Massachusetts' Board of Registration determined he was a public threat because of the number of prescriptions he wrote for OxyContin painkillers; almost one third of the 923,000 OxyContin pills sold in the state last year were to fill prescriptions he had written.
A doctor facing criminal drug charges lost his medical license after a state board concluded he was a public threat because he wrote so many OxyContin prescriptions.
Prescriptions written by Cape Cod Dr. Michael R. Brown accounted for nearly a third of the 923,000 OxyContin tablets that pharmacies in the state sold last year, a board investigator found.
"Clearly, this pattern is such an extreme deviation from his peers that it raised grave concerns for the board," Nancy Achin Audesse, executive director of the Board of Registration, said after the hearing Thursday.
She said Brown had been required in 2001 to take courses in pain management, but his pattern of prescribing painkillers continued.
"It appears to be willful," Audesse said.
In the emergency license suspension, the board declared Brown "an immediate and serious threat to the public safety and welfare."
The suspension remains in effect indefinitely, but the doctor can appeal.
On Tuesday, Brown, 52, pleaded innocent to 13 counts of illegal drug possession within intent to distribute.
Sandwich police accused the doctor of buying back painkillers he had prescribed to a patient.
Brown's attorney Russell Redgate said the drug charges appeared to be based on small amounts of drugs that doctor routinely carry.
However, Redgate said, "there are so many allegations, I don't want to go out on a limb and say there's nothing to any of them."
OxyContin was approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration to treat chronic pain sufferers such as cancer patients, but abusers can alter the tablets to get a quick, heroin-like high.
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