Before the coining of the term "opiophobia", before anyone had ever heard of an "Intractable Pain Act", before Pain Patients had any rights, Dr. Harvey Rose risked his medical license and his career to defend the compassionate treatment of those who suffer unrelenting pain. Coming from medical tradition, including house calls which he still makes, Dr. Rose has spent much of his professional life as a Carmichael, California, Family Practitioner educating all whom he has encountered about the duty to relieve legitimate pain and suffering. Physicians, Nurses, Pharmacists, Educators, Legislators, Journalists and Law Enforcement, have all has been his students, as he slowly succeeded in exposing society’s tragic indifference to the suffering of others. Instrumental in the 1992 creation of California SB1802, "The Intractable Pain Act", and in the successful 1997 legislation of SB402, "The Pain Patient’s Bill of Rights", Dr. Rose made compassion a legal duty in the State of California. This has allowed tens of thousands of suffering citizens to obtain the proper medical and legal treatment that is their inherent right, and protects them, and all future victims of pain, from a lifetime of needless hell. Even as he was suffering personally with the slow death from cancer of his own wife, Dr. Rose tirelessly worked to relieve the suffering of others. He is an extraordinary physician, a model for all posterity and a treasured citizen of this State.
