Afzal Beemath, MD
http://doctorsofcourage.org/afzal-beemath-md/
Forty-two year-old internist Afzal Beemath, MD runs a hospice and palliative care clinic in Lathrup Village, MI. On October 23, 2018, he was indicted, arrested, and placed in jail by false accusations for legitimate patient care. His clinic is closed indefinitely. Where do his patients go? Most of them will probably die. When is this country going to wake up and recognize the police state our government has turned into?
Dr. Beemath is a doctor of South African ethnicity who speaks 7 languages. He got his MD at Santiago University of Technology School of Medicine in Chile and did his Internal Medicine residency at Wayne State University School of Medicine. From 2010 he has been the Director of Palliative Medicine at the Detroit Medical Center, building a Palliative Care program through education and consults. He was Director of Palliative Medicine at Sinai Grace Hospital from 2010 to 2013 [their first black Medical Director], Inpatient Hospice Medical Director from 2010 to 2012, and Medical Director of Palliative Medicine at Harper University Hospital in Detroit from 2013 to 2015.
In 2013, he was honored by Patch in an article titled
Dr. Afzal Beemath Helps Patients With Nowhere Else to Turn
highlighting his work in recognition of Black History Month. As stated in the article, Dr. Afzal Beemath, a modern-day community leader and trailblazer, had a life-long dream of becoming a physician and a passion for helping and healing.
In the article, Dr. Beemath explains that palliative medicine is for patients who have a terminal illness, including hospice patients, and provides symptom relief and comfort management. Patients don’t have to go untreated and can still feel healed. “Physicians don’t leave the patient to suffer.”
The director of Palliative Care Development for Vanguard Health Systems (a multi-state hospital empire), Dr. Robert Zalenski, said “For one individual doctor like Dr. Beemath to have brought so much good to so many in a unique and special way is perhaps unparalleled. He has a healer’s gift.”
Dr. Beemath was key in implementing Vanguard’s ICU-PAL initiative, a 16-week screening of palliative care for critically ill patients. He was the first to start and complete it. Dr. Zalenski credited Dr. Beemath for his outstanding work that made the program successful by stabilizing the patients and making them comfortable.
Dr. Beemath stated: “I always had a life-long dream of being a physician.” “It also satisfies that personal craving for helping fellow man.” His compassion shows when he said “There is a lot of heartbreak,” about when everyone can’t be helped.
Beemath offers autonomy and dignity to patients who are often at the end of their lives. Teronto Robinson, an internal medicine resident at Sinai-Grace in 2013, said “Words can’t describe how I feel about Dr. Beemath, He’s known around the hospital as a very upstanding, friendly guy. He’s always looking out for the patient and the family.”
Palliative medicine helps patients instead of turning them away or stringing them along with false hope.
“So what do you do? You take the patients’ hands, who have entrusted their lives to you, and walk with them to the end,” he said. “We don’t just treat them as a number, and we don’t just treat their numbers,” Beemath said.
Dr. Beemath works to educate metro Detroit on palliative medicine and to specifically involve faith groups and clergy. His goal is to extend palliative medicine back to South Africa. Now that is a caring, compassionate physician, not a drug-dealing criminal like the government wants to make him out to be with their indictment and false accusations spread by the media.
Dr. Beemath is also a writer for PubMed. He has 22 articles listed on his LinkedIn page written about various internal medicine topics, which have been cited collectively 1725 times. That is not the work of a drug dealer.
So here you have a doctor whose job is to keep dying people comfortable with pain relief. And now that you know the man before the indictment, look at what the government is trying to paint him to be. The 15-count indictment was titled
Physician Charged in a $32 Million Illegal Opioid Distribution Conspiracy
In other words, they took all of the medications he has prescribed to his palliative care patients and painted a propaganda picture that they are all being sold on the street. How can these people sleep at night?
Then the media take the false statements out of the indictment and publish them like they are facts. Things like:
“illegally distribute more than 1 million doses of drugs, especially opioids”
“recruiting ‘patients’” who did not have a legitimate medical need for the drugs.
“performing a ‘cursory exam’ on patients”
He is also being attacked for running a “cash only” office. Government propaganda against the combination of an opioid and a benzodiazepine is also being spread by the media, although they have been prescribed together for 40 years without problems.
The real evil people in this indictment are U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider, FBI Agent Timothy R. Slater, and DHHS Agent Lamont Pugh III, Assistant US Attorneys Regina R. McCullough, Brandy R. McMillion, and Andrew J. Lievense.
The Eastern District of Michigan is one of the twelve districts in the Opioid Fraud Abuse and Detection Unit of the DOJ, created by AG Jeff Sessions, that uses PDMP data to target and prosecute doctors.
So basically Dr. Beemath was targeted because he stood out as a high prescriber when the government searched the PDMP for numbers. Then he is an independent minority physician. The recent law, Pub.L. 115-271, formerly known as H. R. 6, will allow the government to target more doctors through these tactics, even though drugs are not the cause of addiction. The attacks on doctors like this does provide job security for the evil ones above, and bring money in to provide their salaries.
So a caring, compassionate physician was arrested and hauled into the local jail. He had a hearing on Oct. 24, but returned to jail to return to court the next day for a detention hearing. At this time we do not know the results of that hearing. It’s possible he is still sitting in a jail cell.
P
resident Trump and Justice Kavanaugh, you don’t have a clue what a witch hunt is, or how lives and families are ruined. But WE do. Dr. Beemath, I hope you’ve already contacted us at Doctorsofcourage, or will when you see this post. There are things we can help you with.
All Doctors:
You need to join us at doctorsofcourage so that we can fight these illegal attacks. If you don’t, the next target might be YOU!!
Filed under: General Problems
Is there a time delay for our replys are posted?
Just want to let everyone know I found out Dr Beemath is waiting for sentencing in Federal Court. If anyone wants to help he would like you to write your comments down and send them to his attorney Loren Dickstein. He can be reached at 248-263-6800. But you must do it right away because he could be taken to court any day. Please won’t you help a caring innocent person? I pray you do.
This man is my brother an law. People can think what they want but he is a evil man and all the news is true about what he has done. He was also caught on camera selling to under cover dea agents. He fooled a lot of people into believing he is a good person but he is NOT. He was very abusive emotional and physically to my sister and nephews and hurt his family in every possible way that you could. I am so happy he is behind bars and he is there for ALONG time. Good riddance.
Dont know why. Just a gut feeling everything you just said is bullcrap.
God knows who deserves what. One thing the state needs to look at is all the good he has done for his community and especially his patients. If he made all that money they allege from wrongly prescribing pain meds he would not be running a clinic and caring for his dying patients. I personally know Dr beemath and he would never give any sort of meds, let alone pain meds, for no good reason. We want justice for Dr beemath!
This is all so horribly unacceptable! Yet it keeps happening and we seem to have little recourse to fight it! Mostly because it’s not based on good science or even common sense, but rather stems from greed and the control of those in our agencies who have their own personal gains at stake! They have blanketed our country with an expensive advertising campaign making opioids themselves the evil!! When the real evil is deceit and false statistics and scare tactics! And they have combined addiction to opioids with pain care using opioids…when nothing could be further from the truth!!
Anyone with long term, life limiting physical pain is now seen as guilty until proven guilty…and many of our doctors have all but abandoned us!! Pain is no longer even seen as the actual diagnosis…or what needs to be treated! Instead our care is reduced to “pain contracts”, pill counts, and urine tests…and often even tapering the already reduced amounts of the most helpful medications to lessen our pain which would help us function better!!
So insanity reigns! And no one in government is being held accountable! How can this be?! When we try to advocate for ourselves, we are often viewed as just “drug seekers”…not as people in pain who only want a better quality of life! As a former nurse, I never thought I’d see the day where physical pain was basically ignored and left untreated! And those who were trying to cope with it were judged and humiliated! So very sad! So very wrong! So very criminal!
This is a 2013 article on this courageous doctor. The fact that he never abandoned his patients during this opioid hysteria says a lot about him. This is just so despicable I don’t even know what to say. This is how low Big Brother is willing to go:
Dr. Afzal Beemath, 35, medical director of Palliative Medicine at DMC Sinai-Grace and Harper University hospitals, has a passion for helping and healing.
Beemath, who lives in Bloomfield Hills and was born and raised in South Africa, is the Sinai-Grace’s first black medical director of Palliative Medicine, which focuses on care for terminally ill patients. He said he’s had the position for two years and has been medical director of palliative medicine at Harper for a couple of months.
He is one of the modern-day community leaders and trailblazers whom Patch is highlighting in recognition of Black History Month.
He said palliative medicine, which was certified in 1996, is for patients who have a terminal illness, including hospice patients, and provides symptom relief and comfort management for them.
“There’s a difference between curing someone and healing someone,” he said.
Beemath said patients with illnesses without cures don’t have to go untreated and can still feel healed. The physicians don’t leave the patient to suffer, he said.
“For one individual doctor like Dr. Beemath to have brought so much good to so many in a unique and special way is perhaps unparalleled. He has a healer’s gift,” said Dr. Robert Zalenski, director of Palliative Care Development for Vanguard Health Systems.
Zalenski, who formerly held the position Beemath has now at Sinai-Grace, said he recommended Beemath when he was promoted. He said Beemath was key in implementing Vanguard’s ICU-PAL initiative, which was a 16-week screening of palliative care for critically ill patients.
“Dr. Beemath was the first to start and complete it,” he said.
Zalenski said Beemath did outstanding work in the screening trial and made it successful by stabilizing the patients and making them comfortable.
“I always had a life-long dream of being a physician,” he said. “It also satisfies that personal craving for helping fellow man.”
However, he said he realized when he became a physician that there was much he didn’t know.
“There is a lot of heartbreak,” he said about when everyone can’t be helped.
Beemath offers autonomy and dignity to patients who are often at the end of their lives, said Teronto Robinson, an internal medicine resident at Sinai-Grace who has worked closely with him for the last three weeks.
“Words cant describe how I feel about Dr. Beemath,” he said. “He’s known around the hospital as a very upstanding, friendly guy. He’s always looking out for the patient and the family.”
Before going into palliative medicine, Beemath trained in internal medicine and further trained in hospice care. Palliative medicine allows Beemath to offer assistance instead of turning patients away or stringing them along with false hope, he said.
“So what do you do? You take the patients’ hands, who have entrusted their lives to you, and walk with them to the end,” he said.
He said palliative medicine is about giving the patient what they want, whether it’s to be pain-free or be at home away from the hospital.
“We don’t just treat them as a number, and we don’t just treat their numbers,” Beemath said.
He said when he was studying medicine it was taken for granted that a physician would know how to treat a dying patient. He said unlike in years before, many patients don’t have a family to care for them and palliative medicine offers them that support.
Beemath said he is working with his team to educate those in metro Detroit on palliative medicine and to specifically involve faith groups and clergy.
“We’re not out to get patients to give up yet,” he said, and for many patients a part of that is their faith.
His goal is to extend palliative medicine back to South Africa, he said, by sending a voluntary team to assist existing palliative care services or patients with no access to palliative care.
“With the population there being afflicted with the HIV virus, there’s no place I’d think would have more use for palliative medicine,” he said.
https://patch.com/michigan/bloomfield-mi/dr-beemath-helps-patients-with-no-where-else-to-turn
I remember him – wonderful man – sad to see what has happened.
The DEA and DOJ is too chicken shit to go after the REAL dealers! The Mexican Cartel. Our Drs are easy pickings and these atrocities need to stop! Quit arresting the wrong people! I cannot believe this is happening! The Mexican Cartel must think the USA is a bunch of dumb asses and they are right! God help us!
What the hell is happening in this country.???????
Exactly what I’d like to know! How can this happen in our country?! Large groups have written, faxed, called, met with, Congress. We’ve done the same with the media, celebrities. It’s a media blackout! Illicit Fentanyl from China, Mexico is pressed into Vicodin Percocet, xanax, oxycontin is killing people As the level of prescriptions has dropped back to the late 90’s, overdoses are increasing. Last year MD has a 72%reduction in RX deaths & 110% increase in deaths from illicit fentanyl. GEORGE Knapp did a 5 part series The Other Side of Opioids He’s been very helpful Where is the media? We’re Dying. Where’s the humanity? Thank you Steve. We all appreciate every article.
The DOJ and Sessions have turned our well educated Drs. Into fearful slaves to and their never-ending threats and tracking of the writing of their prescriptions. I cannot understand how the government could manage to make such a decision of this seriousness without having any education in the field and or knowledge to support it. The figures they Supply are biased they include drug addicts not palliative care or chronic pain patients. The recently signed opioid epidemic CDC guidelines will have epidemic proportionate effects on our citizens the likes of which this world has never scene. All chronic pain patients are being forced off of their medication and are losing functionality and have grown into despair I wish just one attorney would take this case on as it appears to me as though our civil rights have been violated!!
What I haven’t figured out is, of the great number of Chronic Pain Patients in the U.S. there aren’t a few lawyers, judges or lawmakers included that know how to file whatever it is we need done to turn the tide of this witch-hunt.
Am I the only one seeing a trend of what nationality these doctors aren’t?
There are no words for how bad I feel for this Doctor. He has
been done so wrong and his poor patients. To know your dieing and your Doctor has been taken away, how cruel. Hopefully someone will be made to pay for this Injustice.
My DIL ‘ s palliative care doctor was forced out of business and her primary care doctor lost his licence to write controlled substances within the last couple of months because they say he misprescribed methadone to two patients years ago.
So sorry Afzal Beemath, MD, thanks for posting dr Steve. Hopefully this doctors patients will show up in court like dr ibsen’s did, however many of these may be terminally ill. So hopefully their families will. We need to spread the word to this doctors patients and their families.
When are the drs going to lobby, when are the pain patients going to break down the doors at the dea and doj. These nice nice protests are a waste. Its time to block thier doors, throw bufferin at them and take them to court for practicing medicine sithout a licence and cruel and unusual punishment. I really hate these asswipes.
And – when will the hospitals stand up and back the docs?
It’s all just so wrong
I am now lost without my doctor. He is such a caring compassionate intelligent up to date in all areas. No one will help me. I will go thru withdrawal at 65 yrs old. He gave me my life back. He never charged me. He charged my insurance. I remember when this same thing happened to another doctor I knew for years. Dr Amin. They tried to destroy him too. I am sure if given the chance dr beemath’s patients will come foward and help him. The only problem is they probably don’t know what happened to him or where he is.
We all support you in the chronic pain community. This is a tragic situation when real compassionate mds are targeted. We will continue to fight this injustice.
He is in federal prison and looking at 20 years.
Even if they all did come forward the court would not even take it into consideration. He was watched from 2013 until now selling to under cover DEA agents. He also has 1.8 million dollars missing from patients bringing him back the money after they sell the pills. Half of the people he wrote prescriptions for was not even his patients. They would give him cash and he would write it and they would bring him the money. He is SCREWED. Not just for drug invasion but Tax fraud too.
I Thought all Palliative Care and Hospice Patients were exempted from the limits if that is true,how do they justify arresting the Doctor’s that treat those patients that are dying. The doses that they would be getting would be a lot higher how high would depend on how many patients he had in home and in hospitals.When you are in Palliative care you have more than one Doctor taking care of your.you have your Primary Doctor who would be the one to diagnose what your terminal illness is,you have a Pain Management Doctor,you have a Specialist caring for what ever you have been diagnosed with and you have a staff of Nurses that come to your home for taking care of your needs,so how can they pick one Doctor and Arrest him they need to call in all the doctors of each Patient to see if he has done anything wrong with their patients.
I agree
I agree! Hospice was set up to give comfort, pain relief to those dying. What’s happening?! How is this happening in our country?! Human Rights Watch is investigating these atrocities in the US
Why did you feel it’s necessary to take potshots at two well-known federal officials in your article, especially when one of the individuals has had done nothing to impact the current hysteria? I’m a chronic pain patient who’s suffered with transient, although frequent, episodes of excruciating pain for over 50 years. I’ve already lost some of my pain meds and could lose the little I’m still prescribed so I follow this faux crisis closely, do much of my own research and try to give whatever support I can. There is nothing to be gained by taking cheap shots at those two people (one of whom I believe has no business being in his current position.) Your remark was mean-spirited and petty. You will alienate many chronic and/or intractable pain patients if you continue doing this.
Perhaps you need to focus your reading comprehension a little more … there is a hyperlink in the article http://www.doctorsofcourage.org and that is where the original article appeared. When I actually post my opinion you will see the graphic
and the text will be in GREEN.. this article had neither… so I was making my readership aware of what is being posted on the web in other places
Thank you Steve!!
Thank you, Steve! God bless you! Hope you will be successful for helping the good doctors and fight back to the wrongful charges on the doctors.
Lady wake up.its time dea and sessions are abolished.
I agree completely, Sessions is on a power trip and has hired a pack of wolves to do his bidding. It’s a huge witch hunt that is not going to stop until enough of us stand up and start yelling. The only problem is, many aren’t even able to stand up very long we’re all in so much pain and crippled. They’ve truly attacked the crippled and dying in this country. It’s disgusting and inhumane.
“Lady wake up.its time dea and sessions are abolished.”
AMEN!!!
???? Are you kidding me?
Not sure who you are talking about but AG Jeff Sessions is attacking our doctors, raiding them, jailing them, taking their assets so they can’t defend themselves. He controls the DEA and has declared we should all take some Bufferin and suck it up.
Afzal Beemath gets everything he deserves.
Does anyone know when Dr Beemath goes to court? Or where he will go to court?