Letter from Washington
To the editor:
I am a retired physician who has had a narcotics license for almost 30 years. I have cared for literally thousands of elderly retired people in my practice. I have prescribed necessary narcotic analgesics for literally thousands of patients.
I have evaluated and read the charts on the patients for which
Dr. Weitzel has been charged and briefly convicted of murder. The charges against
him are really very simple and can be stated in a single sentence: "That
Dr. Weitzel 'deliberately' weakened his patients with psychotropic
drugs and then over prescribed narcotics to kill them."
The charts speak to these issues precisely and just as simply. That did not happen.
Patients like to think that chart notes are "private." Actually, hospital charts and the notes on them are as public as a glass bowel surrounded by mirrors. They can be obtained easily with a subpoena from any attorney, governmental authority, hospital or auditors. Every doctor knows that his/her orders can and will be examined and judged by those authorities and their peers.
It is ridiculous for any physician bent on assisted suicide or murder to choose a hospital environment to pursue their ends. There is absolutely no evidence of Dr. Weitzel's injecting any patients himself, so all of the treatments were administered by experienced professional nurses. Those nurses were very much aware of narcotic dosages, and in some cases even had some control of their own over setting them. All psychotropic drugs that might have "weakened" the patients were discontinued by order prior to prescribing opiates. In one case they were not, but had not been taken anyway, and Dr. Weitzel was aware of this.
The absurd actions by prosecutors in Dr. Weitzel's case will surely frighten any physician who treats patients with necessary narcotics, and will lead to deliberate under-dosage. That in turn will frighten patients into thinking that they will experience horrible pain when they get a terminal disease. The State of Utah will be encouraging personal suicides. I ask your readers: "If you were a physician, would YOU take the chance of prescribing enough narcotics for pain relief for a terminal patient if you realized that you might go do jail for doing it?"
There was even a lawsuit against a physician in another state for underprescribing for a patient who eventually died. Dr. Weitzel did not kill any of those patients. There is no medical evidence at all pointing to it. This persecution should end, and now.
Michael Rosenblatt, DPM
Seattle, Washington