July 2000 • Volume 6 • Number 7
Pain relief act might inhibit use of drugs to fight pain
The Academy is continuing to battle the proposed Pain Relief Promotion Act.
Take action: Write or e-mail your senators by going to http://www.aafp.org/gov and clicking on "Speak Out" and then "Write to Congress." Letter to Clinton. The Academy recently urged President Bill Clinton to raise the possibility of a veto with the bill's supporters. "H.R. 2260 may put physicians who are appropriately prescribing pain narcotics at risk for both civil and criminal liability," wrote AAFP Board Chair Lanny Copeland, M.D., of Albany, Ga.
The Academy stands firm against assisted suicide as being inconsistent with the physician's role as healer. But H.R. 2260, which aims to outlaw physician-assisted suicide, calls for Drug Enforcement Administration agents to investigate and conduct enforcement actions concerning deaths involving prescribing controlled drugs -- provisions the AAFP says threaten patient care.
Senate staff briefing. H.R. 2260, which passed the House of Representatives last fall, may soon come up for a vote in the Senate. A Senate committee revised the bill, and the AMA and some medical societies now support it; the AAFP and about 40 other groups still oppose it.
To try to influence the Senate vote, the Academy coordinated a briefing June 6 for senators' aides. Speakers included AAFP President Bruce Bagley, M.D., of Albany, N.Y.; representatives of the American Pain Foundation and Oncology Nursing Society; a patient with chronic pain; and the mother of a 4-year-old girl who died of cancer.
Briefing materials about the bill warned, "It would inhibit aggressive use of controlled substances to fight pain."
Research indicates patients in pain may need more medicine, not less. In a 1993 study of 897 oncologists, 86 percent of respondents said cancer patients' pain was undertreated. A 1998 study found that 24 percent to 38 percent of cancer patients in nursing homes were in pain every day; more than a quarter of them received no pain medicine. A recent unpublished study shows that New York state physicians already fear governmental oversight and may be underprescribing for half of their patients in pain.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2000 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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