In today’s New York Times John Tierney discusses both the Oregon “assisted suicide” case, but then goes on to look at something else, something which should also concern those opposed to assisted suicide, the way in which the Bush DEA has been harassing doctors who prescribe opioids as a means of palliative care for those in extreme pain, something, ironically, that can (I reckon) only make it more likely that patients will be driven to take their own lives.

Tierney notes how the DEA’s Karen Tandy has claimed that the agency has only investigated 0.1 percent of America’s doctors, but…”The doctors who matter are the small number of specialists in pain treatment who prescribe opioids. Ronald Libby, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida, estimates that 17 percent of those doctors were investigated during one year by the D.E.A., and an even greater number of others were investigated by local and state authorities, typically in concert with the drug agency. That means a pain specialist might have a one-in-three chance of being investigated for prescribing opioids. Faced with those odds, doctors are understandably afraid. As noted in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, the D.E.A. has made doctors reluctant to give opioids to desperately ill patients, even when these drugs are the most effective pain treatment. “

Disgusting.