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Anyone here remember what happened when the patents on Freon were about to expire?
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Prozac revisited
As drug gets remade, concerns about suicides surface
By Leah R. Garnett, Globe Staff, 5/7/2000
Just as the 14-year patent on Prozac is about to expire and the drug's maker, Eli Lilly and Co., is preparing to launch a new and improved Prozac, a body of evidence has come to light revealing the antidepressant's dark side.
The company's internal documents, some dating to the mid-1980s, as well as government applications and patents, indicate that the pharmaceutical giant has known for years that its best-selling drug could cause suicidal reactions in a small but significant number of patients. The reports could become critical as Lilly seeks government approval for its new Prozac.
Among the findings:
Internal documents show that in 1990, Lilly scientists were pressured by corporate executives to alter records on physician experiences with Prozac, changing mentions of suicide attempt to ''overdose'' and suicidal thoughts to ''depression.''
Three years before Prozac received approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in late 1987, the German BGA, that country's FDA equivalent, had such serious reservations about Prozac's safety that it refused to approve the antidepressant based on Lilly's studies showing that previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug had a fivefold higher rate of suicides and suicide attempts than those on older antidepressants, and a threefold higher rate than those taking placebos.
Lilly's own figures, in reports made available to the Globe, indicate that 1 in 100 previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug in early clinical trials developed a severe form of anxiety and agitation called akathisia, causing them to attempt or commit suicide during the studies.
Though Lilly has steadfastly defended the drug's safety and downplayed studies linking Prozac to suicide, the patent for the new Prozac, R-fluoxetine, expected to be marketed by Lilly beginning in 2002, notes that the new version will not produce several existing side effects including ''akathisia, suicidal thoughts, and self-mutilation,'' which the patent calls ''one of its more significant side effects.''
A McLean Hospital researcher and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Martin Teicher, whose early 1990s studies linked Prozac to akathisia and suicide, is a co-inventor of the new Prozac, which Lilly plans to market, along with Timothy J. Barberich, the CEO of Sepracor Inc., a Marlborough drug company, and James W. Young.
A just-published book, ''Prozac Backlash,'' by a Cambridge psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, has drawn Lilly's ire for discussing Prozac's link to suicide, tics, withdrawal symptoms, and other side effects of Prozac and similar antidepressants.
Lilly officials continue to defend the drug's effectiveness, saying its track record is borne out by the fact it is still the most widely prescribed drug of its kind. In a written statement, Jeff Newton, a Lilly spokesman, said: ''There is no credible evidence that establishes a causal link between Prozac and violent or suicidal behavior. There is, to the contrary, scientific evidence showing that Prozac and medicines like it actually protect against such behaviors.''
Using figures on Prozac both from Lilly and independent research, however, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that ''probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated.''
Healy, meanwhile, is conducting a new study that he says is the first of its kind, giving antidepressants to healthy people to study possible links to suicide. The results are expected to be published in June.
Prozac's success is certainly unquestioned. The introduction of the drug to the US market in the late 1980s changed the way Americans viewed their most intimate emotions and limitations. Billed as a wonder drug to combat depression by boosting levels of the brain chemical serotonin, Prozac and others like it were also said to remedy a host of human frailties from poor self-esteem and concentration to fear of rejection.
By the end of last year, more than 35 million people worldwide were using the drug, which provided Lilly with more than 25 percent of its $10 billion in 1999 revenue.
Yet the problems with Prozac were known even before it was introduced to the US market. Figures in a 1984 Lilly document indicated that akathisia, the severe agitation that can lead to suicide, occurs in at least 1 percent of patients, a level considered a ''frequent'' event, and as such must be disclosed in a company's product literature and package inserts. But there is no such disclosure in Prozac's US literature, and it is not clear whether the FDA panel charged with approving Prozac simply overlooked or did not have access to certain critical data of Lilly's.
As a result, researchers say that most US doctors do not know to warn patients of the potentially dangerous effect which, according to published literature on the topic, can be alleviated with sedatives or by going off the drug.
German regulators, who eventually approved Prozac for use in that country, require a warning label about the risk of suicide and suggest the concurrent use of sedatives when necessary.
Akathisia is listed in Lilly's US product literature, but as an infrequent event in Prozac users. No mention is made of its potential relationship to suicide.
A relationship, however, was found in a Globe search of US patents. The patent for the new Prozac or R-fluoxetine (US Patent no. 5,708,035), which Lilly will market after the existing patent expires in 2001, contains a wealth of information about the original Prozac. According to the patent, the new Prozac will decrease side effects of the existing Prozac such as headaches, nervousness, anxiety, and insomnia, as well as ''inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation'' - the same effect Lilly has contended has not occurred in any substantial way in some 200 lawsuits against it over the past decade. Most of the suits were settled out of court and the terms kept confidential.
A 1990 communique
In an electronic communique obtained by author Glenmullen dated Nov. 13, 1990, from Claude Bouchy, a Lilly employee in Germany, to three Lilly corporate executives at the company's Indianapolis headquarters, Bouchy says he and a colleague ''have problems with the directions our safety people are getting from the corporate group (Drug Epidemiology Unit) and requesting that we change the identification of events as they are reported by the physicians. ... Our safety staff is requested to change the event term `suicide attempt' [as reported by the physician] to `overdose.'''
Bouchy continued that ''... it is requested that we change ... `suicidal ideation' to `depression.'''
And then Bouchy makes an appeal to his US Lilly colleagues: ''I do not think I could explain to the BGA, to a judge, to a reporter or even to my family why we would do this especially on the sensitive issue of suicide and suicide ideation. At least not with the explanations that have been given to our staff so far.''
Lilly has also aggressively sought to discredit researchers who published data linking its product to suicide. One of its early targets was Dr. Martin Teicher, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a McLean Hospital researcher, who wrote a crucial paper on the link between suicide and Prozac in 1990; he found that 3.5 percent of patients put on Prozac either attempt or commit suicide due to severe agitation from akathisia. As a result of Lilly's campaign, many in the psychiatric community say they believe Teicher has distanced himself from his original work. But in a rare interview with the Globe, Teicher said that he stood by his work, and that the ability of Prozac to induce suicide in a minority of patients ''is a real phenomenon.''
Teicher, Barberich, and Young filed their patent for the new Prozac in August 1993, the same year Teicher published another report, this one in the journal Drug Safety titled ''Antidepressant Drugs and the Emergence of Suicidal Tendencies.''
The paper was a direct challenge to data reported in the March 1991 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry by Drs. Maurizio Fava and Jerrold Rosenbaum of Massachusetts General Hospital. Their study found no significant difference in ''suicidal ideation'' in patients treated with fluoxetine compared to those receiving other antidepressants.
Teicher wrote in his 1993 paper that Fava and Rosenbaum's statistics were flawed. Using Fava and Rosenbaum's data, Teicher came to the opposite conclusion: namely, that patients on Prozac were at least three times more likely to become suicidal than those on older antidepressants.
The FDA came up with similar results even before Teicher published his 1993 data. Dr. David Graham, chief of the FDA's Epidemiology Branch, wrote on Sept. 11, 1990, that Lilly's data on suicide and Prozac, as well as the Fava and Rosenbaum study, were insufficient to prove that Prozac was safe. In an internal FDA memo, Graham wrote: ''Because of apparent large-scale underreporting, the firm's analysis cannot be considered as proving that fluoxetine and violent behavior are unrelated.''
''Prozac Backlash''
Now a decade later, Lilly has targeted Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, whose book ''Prozac Backlash'' has apparently incensed Lilly executives.
Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinician at the Harvard University Health Services, says he wrote the book because he was alarmed by the number of patients who were reporting severe side effects from the serotonin-boosting antidepressants including Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Luvox. ''The two most upsetting side effects were patients becoming suicidal on the drugs, and the development of disfiguring facial tics,'' he said in an interview.
After obtaining hundreds of pages of FDA documents through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as internal Lilly memos that are part of the public record in lawsuits filed against the drug company, Glenmullen says he believes he sees a pattern: that since the mid-1980s, Lilly had tried to squelch its own findings on the link between Prozac and suicide.
Lilly alerted newspapers and TV stations to the book and began a campaign to discredit the author, saying Glenmullen, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, had inflated his resume, and that top officials of the school were unfamiliar with his work and did not recognize his name. Glenmullen is one of more than 420 clinical instructors in medicine at Harvard.
Blast from a critic
Chief among Glenmullen's critics is Mass. General's Rosenbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who, in a written statement sent to the Globe calls ''Prozac Backlash'' a ''dishonest book'' that is '' manipulative'' and ''mischievous.''
But Rosenbaum's objectivity has also been questioned. Not only was his 1991 study on Prozac and suicide criticized by at least two sets of researchers as well as the FDA, documents obtained by the Globe show that Rosenbaum's relationship to Lilly is a cozy one: he served as a Prozac researcher and sat on a marketing advisory panel for Lilly before Prozac was launched.
When asked in an interview why he was speaking out against Glenmullen's book, Rosenbaum said that the suicide controversy was ''old news'' and that the book presents the information as new research. He noted that akathisia is ''pretty rare'' and that ''it doesn't occur more than in people given a placebo.''
But because there is no official reporting system for drug side effects, no one knows how common drug side effects are, said Larry Sasich, a research analyst at Public Citizen in Washington, D.C.
''There is no active surveillance system to look at adverse events,'' he said. ''Unless something very unfortunate happens and a large number of people are harmed in a unique way, no one is going to look at it; nobody ever puts two and two together.''
Sepracor's patent
On April 12, the Federal Trade Commission opened the way for Lilly to market Teicher's, Barberich's, and Young's new Prozac, for which Sepracor holds the patent. The new Prozac, R-fluoxetine, is a modified form of an active ingredient found in Prozac, which, according to Sepracor, not only has fewer side effects but more potential uses and benefits than the original Prozac.
In making the decision, the FTC rejected arguments from its lawyers and the generic drug industry that the agreement unfairly limits generic Prozac competition.
According to a Sepracor press release dated April 13, the company will receive an upfront payment and license fee of $20 million from Lilly and an additional $70 million based on the progression of the drug. Sepracor will receive royalties, and in exchange, Lilly will get the exclusive world rights to R-fluoxetine for all indications and uses. Lilly will be responsible for the development of the drug, regulatory submissions, product manufacturing, marketing and sales, according to the release.
Glenmullen wonders whether the new, improved Prozac will, in fact, be
little more than an effort to prolong the life of a product with a soon-to-expire
patent. Although it is touted as having fewer side effects, no one knows
what effects may surface once large numbers of people begin taking it for
months or years. In the epilogue to his book, he simply says: ''Like any
new drug, it too will be an ongoing experiment.''
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 5/7/2000.
This one's for you.
Bump
Just go to GNC or any good health food store & get colloidal gold.
A few drops under the tongue before you go to sleep is better that all that expensive nasty Prozac-type crap.
A feeling of calm euphoria will come over your starting the next day when you wake up! It's great!
Check it out for yourself, enter colloidal gold into any search engine and you'll find out all the other stuff it's good for.
COVERED UP??????? IN AMERICA???????? TODAY???????? WITH ````THIS```` MOOBBB RUNNING THE COUNTRY?????????????? nnnnnnnaaawwwwwwwwww,, can`t BE!!!!!!! can it??????????????????
Bmp.
Bump
Shocking news. Shocking to think that people being treated for depression might commit suicide.
Joking aside, is someone severly depressed better off trying treatment under close supervision of a doctor or are they better off doing nothing?
In any case, a good psychiatrist is very careful when starting someone on drug treatment and ordinarily introduces the drug by gradually increasing the dose over time. I bet its more likely this gradual practice that occurs when starting new treatment or switching from other treatments is responsible for suicides because its "too little-too late".
Anyone here remember what happened when the patents on Freon were about to expire?
Suddenly, "research" started appearing on the dangers of Freon to the environment. However, the company who owned the patents on Freon *just happened* to have recently invented a new kind of Freon, without all the bad side effects.
Then, old Freon got outlawed, new Freon got approved.
See any parallels?
colloidal gold
It is difficult for tax-payers to sleep these past 8 years, and if you are serious, thanks for the info. BTW, I bet it will be found out that Prozac by itself is not the real problem, but taken in COMBINATION with a non-constitutional administration, is.
And naturally none of this could be allowed on the front page of any newspaper while Prozac was still a patented big money-maker. Now, can I assume that Lilly proclaims that "New & Improved Prozac" has no such adverse side effects, while the old, (now genericly produced and thus unprofitable to Lilly) is too dangerous to be allowed to be used (and compete with "New Prozac")
And how many ADVERSE REACZTION REPORTS has the FDA received from doctors since prozac came out?
The number is astronomical.
But these drug pushers and makers DO control the media.
I know of one mildly successful free-lance journalist who was blacklisted and never had his work used again on ANY topic once he started offering editors articles on the dangers of prozac.
The difference here is that research showing the dangers of Prozac has been available for 10 years, and it's been routinely downplayed or covered up.
Also, Eli Lilly has fought tooth and nail since the '80's to keep from having information made available to the public such as that in this article. They're still liable, you know. The patents don't expire 'til next year.
That's the thing, though. The original patents haven't expired yet....not 'til next year. Lilly can't be happy about this article.
" Using figures on Prozac both from Lilly and independent research, however, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that
''probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated.'' "
"When asked in an interview why he was speaking out against Glenmullen's book, Rosenbaum said that the suicide controversy was ''old news''
Did this guy attend the same medical school as Bill Clinton and Joe Lockhart?
No, what's really happening, some suggest, is the medicated masking over of symptoms without addressing the underlying etiology until, in which cases, a crisis level is reached.
Maybe the "new&improved" prozac will produce an even more efficient teen-aged mass-killing machine than the one from Columbine. It's not just Ritalin that's being force-fed to the children of this country by well meaning doctors and shrinks...they're also handing out prozac like its candy!!
Shocking to think that people being treated for depression might commit suicide.
I can't even imagine the pain of someone who has a loved one commit suicide.
However, when a previously non-suicidal person takes Prozac, then commits suicide, and the info is suppressed or covered up -- that's an outrage. This is what's been happening with Prozac.
Hopefully, David Healy's research due out this summer will further shine the light on this.
Yes, of course that's it, a pre-emptive move against competitors.
estimated that ''probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated.''
Saying it doesn't make it so. Just how does one interview 50,000 dead people ? Do You believe Clinton hired 50,000 cops too ?
What you are watching is two groups trying to support a predetermined posistion. The true answer is somewhere in between. This whole article just underscores the benefit of seeking out a psychiatrist who is familiar with the various drugs and their interactions.
I will admit that its quite possible that some doc's might be very lazy and ignorant and may not monitor what is going on with their patients close enough.
Look, these drugs are strong and dangerous and should not be given out lightly. If some Dr's are handing them out like candy, that is a dangerous practice, not the drug. But if done in conjunction with a good Dr' the side effects can be minimized.
EXCERPTS
.
Internal documents show that in 1990, Lilly scientists were pressured by corporate executives to alter records on physician experiences with Prozac, changing mentions of suicide attempt to ''overdose'' and suicidal thoughts to ''depression.'' Three years before Prozac received approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in late 1987, the German BGA, that country's FDA equivalent, had such serious reservations about Prozac's safety that it refused to approve the antidepressant based on Lilly's studies showing that previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug had a fivefold higher rate of suicides and suicide attempts than those on older antidepressants, and a threefold higher rate than those taking placebos.
Lilly's own figures, in reports made available to the Globe, indicate that 1 in 100 previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug in early clinical trials developed a severe form of anxiety and agitation called akathisia, causing them to attempt or commit suicide during the studies.
A just-published book, ''Prozac Backlash,'' by a Cambridge psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, has drawn Lilly's ire for discussing Prozac's link to suicide, tics, withdrawal symptoms, and other side effects of Prozac and similar antidepressants.
Lilly officials continue to defend the drug's effectiveness, saying its track record is borne out by the fact it is still the most widely prescribed drug of its kind. In a written statement, Jeff Newton, a Lilly spokesman, said: ''There is no credible evidence that establishes a causal link between Prozac and violent or suicidal behavior. There is, to the contrary, scientific evidence showing that Prozac and medicines like it actually protect against such behaviors.''
Using figures on Prozac both from Lilly and independent research, however, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that ''probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated.''
Healy, meanwhile, is conducting a new study that he says is the first of its kind, giving antidepressants to healthy people to study possible links to suicide. The results are expected to be published in June.
By the end of last year, more than 35 million people worldwide were using the drug, which provided Lilly with more than 25 percent of its $10 billion in 1999 revenue. Yet the problems with Prozac were known even before it was introduced to the US market. Figures in a 1984 Lilly document indicated that akathisia, the severe agitation that can lead to suicide, occurs in at least 1 percent of patients, a level considered a ''frequent'' event, and as such must be disclosed in a company's product literature and package inserts. But there is no such disclosure in Prozac's US literature, and it is not clear whether the FDA panel charged with approving Prozac simply overlooked or did not have access to certain critical data of Lilly's.
A relationship, however, was found in a Globe search of US patents. The patent for the new Prozac or R-fluoxetine (US Patent no. 5,708,035), which Lilly will market after the existing patent expires in 2001, contains a wealth of information about the original Prozac. According to the patent, the new Prozac will decrease side effects of the existing Prozac such as headaches, nervousness, anxiety, and insomnia, as well as ''inner restlessness (akathisia), suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation'' - the same effect Lilly has contended has not occurred in any substantial way in some 200 lawsuits against it over the past decade. Most of the suits were settled out of court and the terms kept confidential. A 1990 communique
In an electronic communique obtained by author Glenmullen dated Nov. 13, 1990, from Claude Bouchy, a Lilly employee in Germany, to three Lilly corporate executives at the company's Indianapolis headquarters, Bouchy says he and a colleague ''have problems with the directions our safety people are getting from the corporate group (Drug Epidemiology Unit) and requesting that we change the identification of events as they are reported by the physicians. ... Our safety staff is requested to change the event term `suicide attempt' [as reported by the physician] to `overdose.'''
Bouchy continued that ''... it is requested that we change ... `suicidal ideation' to `depression.'''
And then Bouchy makes an appeal to his US Lilly colleagues: ''I do not think I could explain to the BGA, to a judge, to a reporter or even to my family why we would do this especially on the sensitive issue of suicide and suicide ideation. At least not with the explanations that have been given to our staff so far.''
Lilly has also aggressively sought to discredit researchers who published data linking its product to suicide. One of its early targets was Dr. Martin Teicher, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a McLean Hospital researcher, who wrote a crucial paper on the link between suicide and Prozac in 1990; he found that 3.5 percent of patients put on Prozac either attempt or commit suicide due to severe agitation from akathisia. As a result of Lilly's campaign, many in the psychiatric community say they believe Teicher has distanced himself from his original work. But in a rare interview with the Globe, Teicher said that he stood by his work, and that the ability of Prozac to induce suicide in a minority of patients ''is a real phenomenon.''
Teicher wrote in his 1993 paper that Fava and Rosenbaum's statistics were flawed. Using Fava and Rosenbaum's data, Teicher came to the opposite conclusion: namely, that patients on Prozac were at least three times more likely to become suicidal than those on older antidepressants.
The FDA came up with similar results even before Teicher published his 1993 data. Dr. David Graham, chief of the FDA's Epidemiology Branch, wrote on Sept. 11, 1990, that Lilly's data on suicide and Prozac, as well as the Fava and Rosenbaum study, were insufficient to prove that Prozac was safe. In an internal FDA memo, Graham wrote: ''Because of apparent large-scale underreporting, the firm's analysis cannot be considered as proving that fluoxetine and violent behavior are unrelated.''
''Prozac Backlash''
Now a decade later, Lilly has targeted Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, whose book ''Prozac Backlash'' has apparently incensed Lilly executives.
Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinician at the Harvard University Health Services, says he wrote the book because he was alarmed by the number of patients who were reporting severe side effects from the serotonin-boosting antidepressants including Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Luvox. ''The two most upsetting side effects were patients becoming suicidal on the drugs, and the development of disfiguring facial tics,'' he said in an interview.
After obtaining hundreds of pages of FDA documents through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as internal Lilly memos that are part of the public record in lawsuits filed against the drug company, Glenmullen says he believes he sees a pattern: that since the mid-1980s, Lilly had tried to squelch its own findings on the link between Prozac and suicide.
Lilly alerted newspapers and TV stations to the book and began a campaign to discredit the author, saying Glenmullen, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, had inflated his resume, and that top officials of the school were unfamiliar with his work and did not recognize his name. Glenmullen is one of more than 420 clinical instructors in medicine at Harvard.
Blast from a critic
Chief among Glenmullen's critics is Mass. General's Rosenbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who, in a written statement sent to the Globe calls ''Prozac Backlash'' a ''dishonest book'' that is '' manipulative'' and ''mischievous.''
But Rosenbaum's objectivity has also been questioned. Not only was his 1991 study on Prozac and suicide criticized by at least two sets of researchers as well as the FDA, documents obtained by the Globe show that Rosenbaum's relationship to Lilly is a cozy one: he served as a Prozac researcher and sat on a marketing advisory panel for Lilly before Prozac was launched. When asked in an interview why he was speaking out against Glenmullen's book, Rosenbaum said that the suicide controversy was ''old news'' and that the book presents the information as new research. He noted that akathisia is ''pretty rare'' and that ''it doesn't occur more than in people given a placebo.'' But because there is no official reporting system for drug side effects, no one knows how common drug side effects are, said Larry Sasich, a research analyst at Public Citizen in Washington, D.C. ''There is no active surveillance system to look at adverse events,'' he said. ''Unless something very unfortunate happens and a large number of people are harmed in a unique way, no one is going to look at it; nobody ever puts two and two together.''
From www.drugawareness.org (posted on Rense/Sightings):
... We have witnessed no decrease in suicide, but increases in murder/suicide, suicide, unwed pregnancies, domestic violence, manic-depression, MS, hypoglycemia, diabetes, bankruptcies, divorce, mothers (parents) killing children, road rage, school shootings, cancer, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and fibromyalgia since these serotonergic drugs have become so popular and I relate it directly to the effects of these drugs. The death toll has continued to climb drastically since I wrote PROZAC: PANACEA OR PANDORA?Some of the cases you may be familiar with are: Mr. and Mrs. Phil Hartman (Zoloft), Prozac was found in the van of Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader, who recently killed his family and others in a shooting spree before taking his own life; Neal Furrow, in LA Jewish school shooting was reported to have been court ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications; the Salt Lake Family History Library shooting, school shootings in Littleton, Colorado (Luvox), Atlanta, Georgia, Springfield, Oregon (Prozac), and Caldwell, Idaho; another boy in Pocatello, ID in 1998 who in seizure activity from Zoloft had a stand off at the school;
15 year old Chris Shanahan (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman; the shooting at the lottery in Connecticut last spring by Matthew Beck (Luvox) that left five dead in a murder/suicide; the New York City Subway bombing by Edward Leary (Prozac); little 10 year old Timmy (Prozac) in southern Florida; Nick Mansies (Paxil) in New Jersey who was convicted of killing a little boy who was selling cookies door to door; in Orange County, CA Dana Sue Gray (Paxil) who co-workers described as a very caring nurse killed several elderly people;
Officer Stephen Christian (Prozac) one of the finest officers on the Dallas Police force, who ran into a police substation shooting at fellow officers and was killed; 13 year old Chris Fetters (Prozac) in Iowa who killed her favorite aunt; David Rothman (Prozac) killed two co-workers and himself at the Dept. of Agriculture in Ingelwood, CA; Williams Evans (Zoloft) shot one co-worker at the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services before shooting himself in Columbus, OH; Wenatchee, WA where 43 people were wrongfully imprisoned in a false accusation of sexual abuse "witch hunt" fury started by a child under the influence of Prozac and Paxil;
Christopher Vasquez (Zoloft) killed Michael McMorrow in Central Park; Megan Hogg (Prozac) duct taped the mouths and noses of her three little girls and took a handful of pills; Vera Espinoza (Prozac) in Randolph, VT shot her small son and daughter before shooting herself; an elderly man (Prozac) in Layton, UT axed his wife and daughter to death; Margaret Kastanis (Prozac) used a knife and hammer to kill her three children before stabbing herself to death; an elderly man (Paxil) in Dallas, TX strangled his wife before shooting himself twice in the chest;
Larramie Huntzinger (Zoloft) blacked out and ran his car into three young girls killing two in Salt Lake City, UT; Mary Hinkelman (Prozac), a nurse in Baroda, MI shot her two small daughters and her sister before shooting herself; Lisa Fox (Prozac) shot her small son and her dog before shooting herself in Brighton, MI;
Debi Louselle (Zoloft) shot daughter and then herself in Salt Lake City, UT; a father in Wyoming shot his wife, daughter and baby grand-daughter then himself after only days on Paxil; a mother (Prozac) in Pleasant Grove, UT killed her 17 year old son with a sledge hammer while he slept before she attempted suicide by drinking Drano; Larry Butzz, a superintendent of schools in Ames, IA shot his wife, son and daughter before shooting himself - many cases pending in court are not mentioned.
This is only a handful of MANY, MANY more cases - there would not be room for anything else if I continued listing the cases. A few additional famous victims: Princess Di (Prozac) and Dodi Fayed -via their driver Henri Paul (Prozac), Monica Lewinsky (Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Serzone and Phen-Fen), Chris Farley (Prozac), Pres. Clinton's ex-partner Jim Mc Dougal (Prozac), Abby Hoffman (Prozac), Del Shannon (Prozac), Danielle Steele's son (Prozac), INXS singer Michael Hutchence (Prozac), Sarah - Dutchess of York (Phen-Fen)
The latest figures show Prozac has about 44,000 adverse reports filed with the FDA. Out of those reports there are about 2500 deaths with the large majority of them linked to suicide or violence. The suicide statistics relating to women are shocking. According to the CDC there are about 30,000 suicides yearly in the United States. Out of those about 6,000 are women - a ratio of about 4.3 to 1, male to female. About twice as many women as men are treated for depression demonstrating that generally men are more than 8 times as lethal in their suicidal gestures as women. Women were known to use less lethal means until the SSRI antidepressants hit the market.
But on Prozac and Paxil, women committed 40% of the suicides - many were strikingly violent and clearly leaving no means for rescue. (Remember that because Prozac was the first of this group of drugs its track record gives us a vision of what is to come with other serotonergic antidepressants, especially when they are so powerful in the reuptake of serotonin.)...
I had a very good friend with severe depression problems. He was taking Prozac. He had an interesting explanation about the effects of Prozac. He often felt suicidal, but didn't have the drive or initiative to act on his feelings. In his depressed state he didn't act on much of anything. Taking Prozac removed that limit. He was no longer depressed, and was enabled to act on his desires. He was much more productive....but he still had an interest in suicide. Enabled by Prozac, he finally acted on that interest. The last week I saw him, he had suddenly cut his hair, shaved, and was making an effort to dress in a more professional manner at work. I left for a 3 week business trip in West Palm Beach, FL. He killed himself on the Friday I returned from the trip. The ops manager called everyone in to a meeting Monday morning to announce the news.
I'm not sure Prozac deserves the blame entirely. I think it simply hastened an inevitable event. I've lost a good friend and a brilliant colleague in the image processing field. He personally delivered the software to Norman Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia that enabled the brilliant strategies used in the Gulf War. R.I.P Greg.
The loss of your friend is a tragedy. I'm very sorry.
I'm not sure Prozac deserves the blame entirely. I think it simply hastened an inevitable event.
I have to disagree profoundly with this.
In today's world, with biological psychiatry predominating, and insurance companies reluctant to fund anything but drugs, it's very difficult to seek alternative help such as psychotherapy. But it's still out there. There are sill psychiatrists and psychologists practicing psychotherapy who achieve astonishing results. Too bad the drug co./NIMH/APA machine has made it so difficult to get help to "heal the mind," instead of just drugging the brain.
The effect you discuss above is a common risk with anyone taking any kind of anti-depressant. It is not a peculiar property of Prozac, or of any other specific anti-depressant. It is rather, like you said: "...didn't have the drive or initiative to act on his feelings..." but once the depression was "lifted" he did have the drive to act. This has a been common problem for years before Prozac and argues for family and general practitioners to always make a mental health referral in conjunction with prescribing anti-depressants.
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Anyone here remember what happened when the patents on Freon were about to expire?
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There are sill psychiatrists and psychologists practicing psychotherapy who achieve astonishing results.
Yeah, you're absolutely correct--I can typically get as good or better therapeutic results (than with psychotropics alone), that have a faster onset and longer duration through a combination of psycho- and hynpo- therapies. But these drugs, when watched closely by a mental health practioner, have been far, far more effective than dangerous. The trick is to watch the patient very closely (after getting to know the patient), stay away from anxiolytics and focus upon relapse prevention.
Unfortunately, this is not the procedure typically followed by doctors who do not have mental health as their specialty. They usually give Xanax for the complaint and signs of anxiety, after listening only to a 5 minute pateint self-report, fail to follow-up and extend the Xanax far too long (because the patient says it (Xanax) works and will NOT give it up.) Meanwhile the depression deepens, the use of Xanax escalates and addiction sets in. Eventually they come or are referred to someone like me (in that condition.) The moral: leave surgery to surgeons and mental health to psychologists/psychiatrists.
Sorry for your terrible loss.Very interesting angle on Prozac's effect.
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Arguments that there are legitimate uses for this inanimate object, that properly used it actually reduces crime, er, suicide, fall on deaf ears. The manufactirters are evil! Let's sue them out of business! They make a dangerous product! Their lobbyists are merchants of death! Yeah, I've heard all this stuff before. Only last time, it was Al Gore and Sara Brady selling it. |
Thanks to the department of education. Government messes up everything it is into.
However, when a previously non-suicidal person takes Prozac, then commits suicide,
Your premise is flawed. Prozac is used to treat depression. Everyone who is depressed is at risk for suicide. Therefore, there is NO such thing as a previously non-suicidal person being treated for depression.
Very slick, Nick, but not applicable.
First, having a gun doesn't make it deadly for ANYONE. Taking a Prozac is increasingly being shown to actually be deadly for a certain number of people. I don't know why you can't make that distinction.
Second, I've never argued for lawsuits, lobbyists or anything of a sort, so don't lay that "guilt by inference" trip on me.
All I've ever argued for is truth in labeling for Prozac, Ritalin, etc. Beyond that people can take whatever the hell they want.
Yeah, I've heard all this stuff before.
Actually there is another ingredient that drives the anti-drug therapy folks. Its the Christian Scientists.
They hate the fact that sometimes drugs can help a person. The concept threatens their understanding of God. Its akin to holding evolution theories in front of bible literalists.
Therefore, there is NO such thing as a previously non-suicidal person being treated for depression.
Tell that to mental health professionals and researchers in the field. They make that distinction all the time -- between depressed patients that are suicidal or not.
Are they wrong?
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Taking a Prozac is increasingly being shown to actually be deadly for a certain number
of people.
I would agree that too many doctors take these drugs lightly (familiarity breeds contempt) and do not always worry enough about the risks. To that extent, I suppose an occasional jihad againt anti-depressants is warranted. But it should be addressed to the doctors... this business of scaring lay people with mysterious deaths does no one any good. It's just another form of Alar-Apple fright. "Is your refrigerator poisoning your children? Film at 11." Feh. And sorry, all this noise about the greedy manufacturers is the gun control nonsense all over again. |
You make some excellent points. I recently had an experience with a very close friend who is bipolar that points out much of the problem with coming to any reliable conclusion.
She recently lost custody of her children and, without child support, was subsequently evicted from her apartment. She attempted suicide and was held in the psych ward of a local hospital for two weeks, during which her medication levels were changed on a regular basis right up to the day she was released .
She was released to my wife with no home and no means of support and was taking lithium and depakote for mood stabilization, clonipin for anxiety, and fiorocet for migraine headaches. Her next follow-up appointment to check her medication levels was scheduled for five weeks later. During the 17 days she stayed at our house we also discovered she had a drinking problem, was smoking pot, and was abusing the painkillers prescribed for the migraines (we figured out she took 90 in 17 days, prescribed by three different doctors and filled at three different pharmacies).
To make an already long story short, when we confronted her and told her she could not drink or abuse drugs while staying with us she packed up and left the next day. I will be singularly unsuprised if she kills herself at some point in the future (17% of all bipolars do). What have I concluded from this? That medicating the mentally ill for organic brain disorders works wonders for many people, but that medication alone is not a pancea for others who have severe emotional and/or substance abuse problems. Trying to pin 50,000 suicides on prozac is a tough case to make.
Trying to pin 50,000 suicides on prozac is a tough case to make.
Using figures on Prozac both from Lilly and independent research, however, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that ''probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated.''
Healy, meanwhile, is conducting a new study that he says is the first of its kind, giving antidepressants to healthy people to study possible links to suicide. The results are expected to be published in June.
David Healy will make that case. Although not reported in this article, the results of this study are already circulating in medical circles.
He's also gonna make the case that 5%-10% of healthy people taking Prozac become belligerent and pose a risk to themselves or others.
brain's serotonin system
I have been told by some very knowledgable pharmcists, that prolonged taking of these types of drugs will cause the natural serotonin production to cease.
B-U-M-P!
Eli Lilly & Co along with the likes of Timothy Leary helped bring about a new drug consciousness. IF YOU DON'T FEEL GOOD- TURN ON! In order to accept the premise that a drug is a remedy once must first buy the theory of chemcial imbalance as an explanation for depression. A drug very often masks the source of the depression as well as diminishes the ability of the person to solve his/her problem.
Case in point, my sister was in a bad marriage. We all knew it and deep down she knew it yet denied it. A depression resulted from her refusal to listen to herself and act accordingly. Rather than face this truth she chose years of anti-depressants. Eventually she came around AFTER SHE OFF THE ANTI-DEPRESSANTS.
25 million worldwide on PROZAC. That scares me more than drunk drivers!
Nick---
Are you posting straight from Eli Lilly headquarters.
This looks like bad news for Lilly.
BAD news.
Come on, the fact that people at risk for suicide frequently do the deed just as they are starting to get better (i.e. have more energy) is widely known.
You're changing the subject again. The point is that non-suicidal people are taking this stuff and offing themselves (or others) at a statistically significant rate.....and that is NOT widely reported.
Also, it's nice to know that you are concerned about carefully evaluating and closely monitoring patients that are on drugs like Prozac. Please forward your concerns to the leading lights in psychiatry.
People like Harold Koplewicz, the "star of the show" at last year's WH dog and pony show on mental health, and one of the big names in psychiatry. He argues that you can drug a 4-year-old after seeing them for 5 minutes!
Or Jerry Wiener. He's not just anyone, Nick.....he's past president of the APA and one of Elian's psychiatric "caregivers." He diagnoses from TV and thinks that kids are woefully underdrugged in America. Wonder what he's doing to little Elian......
I still think you can "leave it to the doctors" in most medical fields. You do that in psychiatry, however, at your own risk. Thus the need for truth in labeling IMO.
My understanding is it's not just suicide. Haven't people on Prozac and similar drugs become irrationally aggressive and committed things like murder?
By the way, I suppose I've never felt more than mild depression. But when I have felt that, I've found that vigorous exercise did me a world of good.
It seems that the akathisia problem will show up right away. Another reason for close medical supervision when prescribing these drugs. Here is an interesting article related to this :
I have been told by some very knowledgable pharmcists, that prolonged taking of these types of drugs will cause the natural serotonin production to cease.
That's certainly the case in animal studies. They won't do these kinds of studies in humans. Maybe someone's afraid to find out the truth? Wonder who that could be.....
Thanks for the link. A terrific article but kinda long.
The story of William Forsyth is a sad one.....a successful businessman with no prior history of mental problems who started on Prozac and stabbed his wife to death with a kitchen knife, then killed himself.
BTW, this is the case that convinced David Healy to start publicly speaking out.
As one of the world's leading brain researchers, Healy had steadfastly refused to get involved in Prozac litigation prior to this case.
Tell that to mental health professionals and researchers in the field. They make that distinction all the time -- between depressed patients that are suicidal or not. Are they wrong?
I have never heard a mental health professional say that a depressed person is not suicidal. After admitting someone to the hospital, they are more likely to say that the person should have a combination of drug therapy along with counseling and should be monitored closely. Why? Because depressed people commit suicide and surprise suprise, those who are determined to commit suicide aren't gonna tell their therapist. Duhh.
He's also gonna make the case that 5%-10% of healthy people taking Prozac become belligerent and pose a risk to themselves or others.
Why do healthy people take Prozac?
To make an already long story short, when we confronted her and told her she could not drink or abuse drugs while staying with us she packed up and left the next day.
You bring up an important point. Too often drug use creates symptoms of other psychological problems like depression. Too many Dr's treat folks who abuse drugs with drugs.
These folks are already self destructive and the contraindications are too dangerous, IMHO.
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Are you posting straight from Eli Lilly headquarters.
You need to watch Alan Keyes more. He never uses big red fonts, he never puts his stuff in bold, and he never disparages his opponents. He simply makes well-reasoned arguments that advance his cause. Try it some time. |
I have never heard a mental health professional say that a depressed person is not suicidal.
Correction =I have never heard a mental health professional say that a depressed person is not potentially suicidal, without following them closely for awhile. And even then their report will be full of qualifiers like "scored such and such on a personality test" ...
Why don't you take your two bit report and shove it up your a**.
You have created two false arguments.
Not all folks who are depressed are suicidal.
The other is patently false, that someone contemplating suicide would not be a candidate to tell a therapist.
You're pulling arguments out of a hat.
One good thing about an article on Prozac is that we all get to find out which Freepers have IQs under 80.
Why do healthy people take Prozac?
Dieting.
They volunteered to do it. To see if there was a link between Prozac and violence/suicide independent of a person's mental state.
One good thing about an article on Prozac is that we all get to find out which Freepers have IQs under 80.
I believe that Al B and Joe Montana are right. All I can go on is what happened to me when we lost our business. I was a perfectly normal person who got depressed. I was given Prozac and was told that it would take 9 days before I felt O.K. For 9 frightening days I stuck it out hoping to feel better, but I just got more and more scared. When I looked in the mirror I saw a real scary face and it was mine. When I almost jumped out of our moving car on the way to breakfast at the beach, I knew that stuff was bad. I was better without that junk and I do believe people killed themselves by the droves. Dagny
Good catch.
Most of the arguments in this piece are indistinguishable from those used by gun control proponents. Here we have an inanimate object blamed for all sorts of tragedy. Body counts are trotted out to prove that people are dying because of this inanimate object. Who's to blame? The greedy manufacturers who won't implement common-sense drug safety, and the gun, oops, I mean drug lobby who control the media and hide the deadly truth.