News

Man sues over online prescription

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - ABDON M. PALLASCH Legal Affairs Reporter

Craig Schmidt was an active golfer and football and basketball player.

Then he ordered two prescription drugs over the Internet. They came in the mail and he took them.

What was the next thing he remembers?

"Waking up in Elmhurst Hospital two weeks later," he testified Monday in his lawsuit in U.S. District Court.

Schmidt suffered brain damage after taking Xanax and Ultram, anti-anxiety drugs that depress the central nervous system, said his attorney, Edmund J. Scanlan.

Had the doctors followed the recommended guidelines of the American Medical Association and the laws in most states, they would not prescribe medicine over the Internet without examining patients and getting their medical histories.

But Schmidt found, as have countless other Internet users, how easy it is to order drugs online with only perfunctory completion of a questionnaire, Scanlan said.

Illinois is among the minority of states with no law against prescribing drugs over the Internet, according to the Federation of State Medical Boards' Dallas-based National Clearinghouse on Internet Prescribing.

Of the 70 medical boards that regulate doctors in the United States, 37 have taken disciplinary action against doctors for writing prescriptions on the Internet.

Since 1999, Illinois has suspended the licenses of three doctors and issued a cease-and-desist order against a pharmacy dispensing drugs over the Internet.

Because there is no statutory law against dispensing medicine over the Internet, complaints against doctors in Illinois are considered by the state medical board on a case-by-case basis, said Sue Hofer, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Federal authorities are also cracking down on Internet doctors. On Sept. 21, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency took down a Dallas-based $200 million-a-year operation involving 20 doctors and 22 pharmacies, according to the clearinghouse.

In Schmidt's case, the Pennsylvania-based doctor who prescribed the Xanax has already settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed sum. The New Jersey-based doctor accused of prescribing him the Ultram says although his name is on the prescription, he is not the doctor who prescribed it.

Schmidt, a former real-estate salesman, now is homebound and said he doesn't even trust himself to baby-sit his 15-month-old son because he might fall over on him. He went out to a driving range to see if he could still golf.

"It was embarrassing," he said. "I fell over quite a bit. The momentum of the club would knock me over."