[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 27, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H10864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             REGARDING H.R. 2260, PAIN RELIEF PROMOTION ACT

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. ``Do no harm'' is a tenet that underlies the practice of 
medicine in America. But despite the system we have, the great system 
for training, licensure, the safeguards that are built in, occasionally 
someone incompetent, or in this case a group of people totally 
unqualified in the practice of medicine, does harm to an individual 
patient or a group of patients.
  Today, the United States Congress wishes under the leadership of the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) to irrevocably change end-of-life 
pain care in America. On the one hand the bill that will come up today 
says you can aggressively treat pain at the end of life even if it 
causes death, but the other section of the bill says if a death results 
in the aggressive management of pain, the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, that well-known bastion of medical lore, will determine 
the intent of the physician who provided that prescription after the 
fact. This is an extraordinary intrusion not only into States' rights 
but into the practice of medicine. Inserting the Drug Enforcement 
Administration into the patient-doctor relationship is outrageous and 
it will set back pain management for decades in this country.

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