Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jul 2001
Source: Bristol Herald Courier (VA)
Copyright: 2001 Bristol Herald Courier
Contact: http://www.bristolnews.com/contact.html
Website: http://www.bristolnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1211
Author: Marshall Tobelmann

CLARK TRIAL CONTINUES

ABINGDON -- A former minister and recovering drug addict told a federal 
jury Tuesday he worked as a volunteer for Dr. Freeman Lowell Clark at the 
same time he was receiving narcotics prescriptions from him. Harold 
Underwood, 66, of Wytheville said he worked for several months at Clark's 
clinic, sometimes taking patients' vital statistics and medical histories 
despite a lack of medical training. "I was just trying to help out," said 
Underwood, who also was an alcoholic. "I didn't have anything else to do." 
Underwood said he "tried" to take readings of patients' blood pressure when 
asked by the doctor to do so and sometimes would talk to patients about 
their personal lives while taking down their histories. All the while, 
Underwood said, he was abusing narcotic OxyContin, Darvocet, Percodan, 
Tylox and Lorcet pills Clark was prescribing for his back and neck pain. 
"When I get on something, I have to be locked up to get off it," he said. 
It was the fifth day of trial for Clark, 43, who is charged with 298 counts 
of prescribing narcotic painkillers without a legitimate medical purpose.

If convicted on all counts, he faces hundreds of years in prison and 
millions of dollars in fines. More than a third of the counts involve 
morphine-like OxyContin, which has been linked to more than 120 overdose 
deaths nationwide. Abuse of the drug has reached epidemic levels in the 
region, and more than three dozen Southwest Virginians have died of 
overdoses, authorities say. Clark's alleged offenses occurred in 1999 and 
2000 at his clinic, which first was in Bluefield and later moved to 
Wytheville, then Bland. Underwood, who said he now is free of narcotics and 
taking nonaddictive Celebrex for his pain, said he volunteered while the 
clinic was in Bluefield and Wytheville. At one point, he said, he was 
taking as many as 12 narcotic pain pills a day but claimed the doctor knew 
nothing of his addiction. "He had no way of knowing that," Underwood said. 
"I never got to the point where I was completely out of it." But the former 
minister said he met the doctor in a 12-step program for recovering 
alcoholics, so Clark at least was aware of Underwood's alcoholism, he said. 
Underwood defended the doctor, saying Clark conducted thorough examinations 
before prescribing narcotic painkillers. "He always examined me," Underwood 
said. "It was never just ask for medicine and get it." Another patient, 
Edward Stamper, 44, of Bluefield said the OxyContin pills Clark prescribed 
allowed him to keep working after hurting his back in a mining accident. 
"I'm feeling a whole lot better than I ever have ... in the last four to 
five years," he said. But Stamper also said he sometimes had to wait up to 
12 hours to see the doctor. "He would keep putting you off, telling you, 
`It'll be a minute,'" Stamper said. He added that he rarely talked to other 
patients waiting with him for hours at the clinic. "They were just not my 
type of people -- shady-looking characters," he said. Connie Hatfield, 46, 
of Princeton, W.Va., said she began seeing Clark because no other doctor in 
the area would take her as a patient. "I had called several different 
doctor's offices," Hatfield testified. "As soon as I told them I had 
chronic pain they would say they weren't taking anymore patients." Clark 
was willing to prescribe OxyContin, which Hatfield said she continues to 
take for back pain. "I can't function without my pain medication," she 
said, adding that she didn't abuse the drugs. Prosecutors are expected to 
rest their case when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. today.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart