Dr. Carter Speaks Out
"I am sickened and yet heartened by your website"

September 14, 2004

I too am a defrocked MD Pain physician, more qualified in my specialty than any of the Medical Board members or their "experts" who judged and suspended me for inappropriate prescribing in Arizona in 1996. (Despite all the double boarded expert testimony to the contrary)

The war against Pain doctors was just beginning and yet I was alone, depressed, suicidal, no license, ultimately abandoned by the wife and kids that couldn't carry the cross with me anymore. Financially destitute and absolutely incredulous at the "Justice System", I actually planned my own suicide as the only honorable way of making the point of Pain Doctors across the nation dedicated to the most difficult population of patients around. Over $220,000 to defend myself in an "administrative" law court, with appeals to the State Supreme Court...yet the board can do whatever it wants under Administrative law rules. My partners and I lost our licenses and have still never recovered.

I work in the transcription-medical informatics area and feel fortunate to be able to make enough money to feed my young children. No recovery with the licensing board for any of us that were "bad guys". Hearing after hearing, lawyer after lawyer until your disgust and lack of funds dictates that you LOSE. And if you decide to go on living after all this, you must give it up and move on. Right. Who cares about this small group of physicians that have been made an example of by the system? We are out here working at whatever we can do to stay productive to survive only. This and the other cases mentioned on your site (and there are many, many more) represent more Stalinist Russia than the good ol USA.

These last few years I've felt totally alone, decried by the uneducated press, abandoned by other professionals who probably felt my destiny might in fact be infectious and steered clear. Those of us who are punished across the country for prescribing to pain patients, are a small but really unheard group attempting to survive despite the witch hunting DEA and Boards. For most of this group, survival skills ultimately take over and there is an afterlife...not much of one, but it won't be. It hasn't been anything like any of us ever expected.

H.E. Carter, M.D.
Albuquerque New Mexico
(505) 298-1360


(Ocpm put Dr. Carter in touch with a advocacy group)