{"id":53,"date":"2008-03-09T11:48:05","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T18:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/?p=53"},"modified":"2024-07-14T05:43:54","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T10:43:54","slug":"criminal-culpability-in-prescription-drug-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/09\/criminal-culpability-in-prescription-drug-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Criminal Culpability in Prescription Drug Deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

Report on Psychotropic Drug Crimes Launched on Online Tracking Database<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0SAINT LOUIS: Two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigations into doctors who prescribed cocktails of drugs, including tranquilizers and painkillers, leading to patient deaths, have prompted a new report released today online. The report, \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cWhen Prescribing Psychotropic Drugs Becomes Criminal Negligence: Cases and Convictions<\/font><\/a><\/em>\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d, published by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), shows legal precedents where psychiatrists or doctors prescribing psychiatric drugs have been convicted of manslaughter when patients have died as a result of those prescriptions.<\/p>\n

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Published on the website, psychcrime.org<\/font><\/a>, which features the world\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s only searchable database of criminally convicted psychiatrists and mental health practitioners, the report calls for referral for criminal investigation of all deaths or injury due to poly-pharmacy or negligent prescribing\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009drather than to medical boards who can only suspend the license of those found culpable.<\/p>\n

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A case in point is the once prominent Arlington County, Virginia psychiatrist Martin H. Stein. On January 31, Stein lost his five-year effort to regain his medical license when the Virginia Board of Medicine declared him unfit to resume practice. In 2000, Stein\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s 48-year-old patient Anita Kratzke died after Stein prescribed her 12 different drugs. No autopsy was performed, but Stein wrote on the death certificate \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201ccardiac arrest\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d without examining the body. Two years later, in 2002, Stein surrendered his license after the Virginia Board of Medicine ruled that he was a danger to public health <\/strong>and that signing the death certificate without proper investigation was part of a pattern of negligence. <\/strong>The 22-page order from the board describes ethical violations, misdiagnoses and the inappropriate \/ excessive prescribing of drugs, in the treatment of 10 patients Stein saw between 1991 and 2000. <\/strong>The board also found that Stein \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cengaged in sexually intimate behavior\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d for more than two years with a patient he billed for accompanying him on shopping sprees and another incident where an adolescent was given 33 prescriptions. Despite the severity of these acts, Stein was never criminally charged. Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR, says the lack of accountability is astounding, \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cCases like these should be referred for criminal investigation instead of a slap on the wrist, particularly when deaths are involved.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d<\/p>\n

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The unique psychcrime.org database is searchable by first and last name, type of crime and location. In its nearly 40 years of investigating criminal abuse in the mental health system, CCHR has found that criminal convictions do not always stop practitioners from moving to another state or country and continuing to practice on unsuspecting patients. CCHR has tracked such cases and reported them to local authorities that have been able to locate them and prevent further patient abuse. The database provides a list of almost 1,000 convicted mental health workers. Recent cases include:<\/p>\n

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