The Criminalization of Medicine

The loss of the rule of law has been dramatically illustrated by the abusive treatment accorded Alen J. Salerian, M.D., a distinguished psychiatrist, the former Chief Psychiatric Consultant for the FBI and head of The Salerian Center for Psychiatry in Bethesda, MD. On 3 March 2011, his home was raided and his wife and daughter terrorized by some two-dozen heavily armed agents of the DEA, ostensibly on the ground that he was dealing drugs, which was at least faintly absurd since, as a psychiatrist, he prescribes drugs for his patients, but that did not make him "a drug dealer". The DEA took his computers, his cars and froze his banks accounts, where he has now been waiting more than four years for his case to come to trial. In a development out of Kafka, he was institutionalized at the Federal Medical Facility at Butner, NC, for four months to determine whether he was mentally competent to stand trial. During his incarceration there, he discovered abuse after abuse being perpetrated on the inmate, where I would like his experience to lead to a reexamination of these facilities. When you consider the background, qualifications and experience of his dedicated physician, who has dedicated himself to enabling his patients to deal with pain/brain problems and where his efforts together with those of Sobhan Reynolds and Kevin Byers in founding Doctors for Equal Rights for Physical and Mental Pain were abruptly compromised by their death in a mysterious plane crash.