Doctor [David Healy] Defends Linking Suicide, Antidepressants

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> JustSayNo

> Tue, 20 Jul 2004 19:46:17 -0400

> [sSRI-Research] Doctor [David Healy]

> Defends Linking Suicide, Antidepressants

>

> July 20, 2004

>

>

> Doctor Defends Linking Suicide,

> Antidepressants

>

> By JEANNE WHALEN

> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

> July 20, 2004; Page B1

>

>

>

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109026843024367616,00.html

>

> BANGOR, Wales -- Irish psychiatrist David

> Healy has spent years speaking out on

> antidepressants, charging that in rare cases they

> can induce suicides. Some drug-industry executives

> and academics have dismissed him as a disgruntled

> kook. But Dr. Healy's campaign gained new momentum

> last summer when Eliot Spitzer's office called.

>

> Almost a year later, Mr. Spitzer, the attorney

> general of New York, filed suit in New York State

> Supreme Court against GlaxoSmithKline PLC, maker of

> the antidepressant Paxil, accusing the company of

> hiding negative data and exaggerating the

> effectiveness of the drug. Glaxo denies the

> allegations about its top-selling antidepressant.

> Dr. Healy, a controversial figure who has been

> studying antidepressants since the 1980s, obtained

> an internal GlaxoSmithKline memo that has now become

> a centerpiece of Mr. Spitzer's lawsuit.

>

> Mr. Spitzer's high-profile investigation into

> drug labeling and what companies do with the data

> from studies of their drugs has prompted Glaxo to

> publish all of its Paxil studies online. Other big

> pharmaceutical companies say they also will consider

> disclosing more data on their drugs. The companies

> maintain that the full results of their own drug

> tests prove their antidepressants are safe and

> effective.

>

> Dr. Healy says antidepressants can be a

> " wonderful " treatment for many patients. But he

> maintains that such medications should carry clearer

> warnings about potential side effects and withdrawal

> symptoms. " If all the evidence were available,

> doctors wouldn't be prescribing [antidepressants] as

> freely, " he says.

>

> Working from a cramped office piled high with

> textbooks and teacups at the University of North

> Wales, 50-year-old Dr. Healy has spent years

> reviewing epidemiological data on antidepressants

> and the results of clinical drug trials. He says a

> review of clinical trials that drug companies have

> submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

> shows that people taking antidepressants like

> Prozac, known as selective serotonin reuptake

> inhibitors, or SSRIs, are 2.5 times as likely to

> attempt or commit suicide as depressed people taking

> a placebo. He has presented these findings in a

> number of peer-reviewed journals, including

> Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic.

>

> The author of 15 books on the history of

> medicine, Dr. Healy has testified against some of

> the major drug companies in the trials of families

> suing after a relative has committed a violent act

> while taking an antidepressant. In several trials,

> he has helped families win large judgments or

> settlements, lawyers say.

>

> Dr. Healy's assertions have prompted strong

> criticism from some in the pharmaceuticals industry

> who say his studies misinterpret or distort data.

> And his credentials as an expert witness have come

> under question at times. In a 2002 trial against

> Pfizer Inc., maker of the antidepressant Zoloft, a

> U.S. district court judge in Kansas disqualified Dr.

> Healy's testimony, saying there were " glaring,

> overwhelming and unexplained " flaws in his analyses

> of Zoloft's side effects.

>

> (In 1999, Dr. Healy tested Zoloft on 20

> healthy volunteers at his university in Wales and

> found that two expressed thoughts of killing

> themselves. He published the results in two

> peer-reviewed medical journals, Primary Care

> Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine.)

>

> The Kansas judge then dismissed the case.

>

> " Whenever he uses [Zoloft] data we are able to

> show that he has literally falsely represented those

> data ... or grossly misinterpreted them, " says

> Malcolm Wheeler, a lawyer at Wheeler, Trigg, Kennedy

> LLP, a Denver law firm, who represented Pfizer in

> the Kansas trial. Dr. Healy denies that assertion.

>

> Attacking Dr. Healy on another front, Eli

> Lilly & Co., the maker of Prozac, said in a

> statement: " Healy has been and continues to be a

> paid witness for trial lawyers in lawsuits filed

> against companies that market antidepressants. As

> such Healy may have a vested interest in

> discrediting those products. "

>

> Dr. Healy denies any such bias. He says he has

> testified for plaintiffs in about a half-dozen

> trials since 1997, earning at most $20,000 as a

> witness in some years. He says that 120 different

> groups of plaintiffs have asked him to testify but

> that he turned down the vast majority because the

> cases lacked sufficient evidence. He also notes that

> he earns about $10,000 a year consulting for various

> drug companies (none of them antidepressant makers).

> All of his funding comes from his university salary,

> drug companies, and trial testimony, he says.

>

> Dr. Healy began charting the side effects of

> SSRIs while doing postgraduate research at Cambridge

> University in the late 1980s. One of the first

> patients he put on Prozac wound up feeling reckless

> and suicidal, he says. Soon after, Dr. Healy moved

> to the University of North Wales, where another

> patient he treated with Prozac tried unsuccessfully

> to drown himself. Convinced that his patients'

> reactions were drug-induced, Dr. Healy published his

> findings in the medical journal Human

> Psychopharmacology.

>

> " More than 50 million people world-wide have

> taken Prozac since it first came on the market ...

> and it has significantly improved millions of

> lives, " says Tarra Ryker, a spokeswoman for Lilly.

>

> As Dr. Healy continued his campaign, a handful

> of American researchers also were writing to medical

> journals with similar concerns. By the mid 1990s,

> dozens of families had filed lawsuits against

> antidepressant makers accusing the drugs of driving

> their loved ones to violence.

>

> In 1997, a California law firm asked Dr. Healy

> to testify in a suit filed by the children of

> William Forsyth, a Hawaii resident in his 60s who

> fatally stabbed his wife and killed himself with a

> kitchen knife 10 days after starting to take Prozac.

> Pointing to the absence of violent behavior in Mr.

> Forsyth's past, Dr. Healy testified that Prozac

> appeared to have caused the man's actions. The jury,

> unconvinced, ruled in Lilly's favor, but the case

> put Dr. Healy's name in circulation among trial

> lawyers as a witness for bereaved families and an

> opponent of antidepressant makers.

>

> In 2001, Dr. Healy's testimony was enlisted in

> a case in U.S. district court in Wyoming concerning

> a man who fatally shot three family members and

> himself after taking Paxil for two days in February

> 1998. In this case, plaintiffs, led by the man's

> son-in-law, won an $8 million verdict against

> SmithKline Beecham, a company that now is part of

> Glaxo.

>

> The issue gained much wider public attention

> in Britain -- and ultimately in the U.S. -- after

> Dr. Healy appeared in two influential BBC

> documentaries, in 2002 and 2003, that questioned the

> safety of Paxil. It was during this period that Dr.

> Healy obtained the internal GlaxoSmithKline memo

> that figures in Mr. Spitzer's lawsuit.

>

> The Spitzer team learned of the memo after Dr.

> Healy distributed a copy at a press conference about

> antidepressant side effects in Bethesda, Md., this

> past February. Written in October 1998, the memo

> states it would be " commercially unacceptable " to

> publish data indicating poor results in treating

> children with Paxil.

>

> From his analysis of various data, Dr. Healy

> has concluded that SSRIs cause an extra one suicide

> per thousand people participating in clinical trials

> for depression. Estimating that about two million

> Americans are taking SSRIs for clinical depression,

> he figures that these SSRIs could be causing up to

> 2,000 suicides a year in the U.S. -- deaths he

> believes could be prevented if SSRIs carried better

> warnings.

>

> In vigorously pressing his case, Dr. Healy has

> sometimes worked against his own best interests. For

> example, in a speech at the University of Toronto,

> he showed a slide of British serial killer Harold

> Shipman -- a doctor who killed his own patients by

> giving them lethal injections of painkillers -- to

> make the point that patients who put their trust in

> the medical profession are sometimes abused. Soon

> after, the university rescinded a job it had offered

> him at its Center for Addiction and Mental Health,

> saying in a letter to Dr. Healy that it was alarmed

> by the " extremity " of his views and the

> " scientifically irresponsible " accusations he had

> made against antidepressants.

>

> Despite the controversy, Dr. Healy's efforts

> have spurred public debate that contributed to

> British medical authorities' decision last year to

> ban the use of Paxil in children. Thanks in part to

> his lobbying, the British also are attempting to

> better track patients' experiences with drug side

> effects. " He's a man with a certain point of view

> and he puts it very forcefully, " says Alasdair

> Breckenridge, chairman of the Medicines and

> Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, Britain's

> equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration.

>

> Write to Jeanne Whalen at

> jeanne.whalen

>

> URL for this article:

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http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109026843024367616,00.html

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