Healers or Dealers?

4 stars
Healers or Dealers?
by Richard P. Allison

Absolutely maddening! Unbelievable. I knew some doctors were bad but I truly had no idea of the extent of the pill/drug trade some of them engage in. Richard Allison has written a truly engrossing book detailing his years as an investigator with Mississippi's state medical board. Readers will be absolutely shocked at what some doctors get away with and the lengths they go to keep their illegal drug use and overprescribing active.
Healers or Dealers is sometimes a tad slow but always informative. It is well worth the read.



I highly recommend this book!


I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley.

I found this book absorbing. The author, Richard P. Allison was an Investigator for The Mississippi State Board of Medical Licenses. I expected to hear about many doctors who were in fact not helping heal as they have pledged to do, but instead causing unbelievable and in many cases irreparable harm. I thought the book would be more dry with facts and found it was much more developed then that.

What I really liked about the books were all the stories the author provided. He appeared to be a very ethical person and I was surprised how fair the process seemed to be. When a doctor appears to be overprescribing Controlled Substances, an investigation is done. In some cases, the doctor himself/herself was impaired by drug addiction. If this was the case, the doctor was offered immediate help. This doctor would have to be evaluated for drug impairment and seek treatment immediately if this was why the large overprescribing was taking place. That doctor would have to stop practicing medicine and give in his/her DEA license. However, doctor’s who did comply then could practice medicine again and apply to have their DEA license reinstated. The individual would have to agree to random drug screening usually for five years. If the individual did stay clean and follow suggested advice, the ability to have your life back along with being a physician was most certainly obtainable.

Doctors who violated these conditions could not practice and should not be allowed to. This places patients’ lives in jeopardy.

Then, there were the physicians and also pharmacists filling very large prescriptions and were acting as drug dealers. There was no medical reason for the prescriptions being written. I imagine where there is money to be made, greed can and does take over the need to practice decent medicine as most physicians do.

Thank you NetGalley, Richard P. Allison, and Foundations Book Publishing for a copy of this book.