Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - Following Thursday's sentencing of Dr. Eugene Gosy on Federal charges stemming from painkiller prescription medicine, Federal prosecutors and medical experts have diverging opinions on the impact the case has had on the medical use of powerful painkilling drugs.
A local medical expert says even before Dr. Eugene Gosy was prosecuted for overprescribing painkillers, the landscape had already changed when it came to opioids.
"What has happened already before this case was prosecuted, was we were more aware of the profounds dangers of high dose opiates in a way we had not been before," says Dr. Nancy Nielsen of the Jacobs School of Medicine at UB. "The drug companies were absolutely relentless and we know totally deceptive in the way they marketed these drugs to physicians. Doctors not only through the drug companies but through some early reports, did not know the real dangers of long term opioids the way we know now."
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Nielsen notes patients with chronic pain are having a tougher time getting treatment however as a result of the Gosy case. "It is a real deterrent to physicians who are trying to help because they're afraid of being the next ones prosecuted," says Nielsen. "When you talk to these patients you will find they are having a very hard time getting their legitimate medical conditions taken care of, and that is not a good thing." She says primary care doctors are referring chronic pain patients to pain specialists.
US Attorney JP Kennedy says the prosecution achieved a reassessment in how drugs are prescribed, and that benefits the entire community. "Much of the evidence developed recently show these opiates don't do a lot when it comes to long term pain management and there are much better ways to deal with it," and Kennedy says the case pushed that reassessment further. "Heads of the medical community sat with me and said the indictment was having a chilling effect on medicine. I told them I don't know what that exactly means but if that means it gets a physician to think twice about prescribing these drugs, then good."
That angers Nielsen. "It's an overstatment on the situation and it's had a chilling effect on the community." responds Nielsen. "Patients have to have individualized therapy, and when you basically say you can't use this category of drugs at all or you'll invite federal scrutiny, that's a problem."