Invited by the Nevada Psychological Association I gave a lecture in Reno on October 4 – see Health, Care and Science. The lecture centered on the death of Woody Witczak on a Zoloft Big Dipper ride and what can be done to save us from a fate like his.
Two days later the Southern California Psychiatry Society and an AstroTurf group no-one had heard of before, the Committee to Protect Public Mental Health, issued statements covering similar themes to those I had covered, specifically mentioning the FDA panel on SSRIs and pregnancy in which I participated – See Unsafe Safety Systems. As reported in NPR KQED, these groups came to quite different conclusions to mine – their solution is the removal of the Health Secretary, which is not mine.
Two days later again, on October 8, Jamie Dimon, Chair of J.P Morgan Bank, covered some of the key themes that concerned me, emphasizing economics rather than health. Dimon framed the issues in terms of stock market exuberance at the prospects of AI and the likelihood of and need for a market correction. Jamie is not the only person concerned – it appears clear that Silicon Valley is very aware of the risks we are all running – see Bubble-Bursting theme.
Do Health Bubbles Burst?
In the 1960s, Americans had the best life expectancies in the world and a health system that was viewed as the most innovative and the best.
But U.S. Life Expectancies have now fallen way below those of other developed countries. Reproductive rates have been consistently below the replacement rate for decades and would likely be worse if not for immigration.
Disability rates are escalating and most worryingly now affect younger (15-35) age groups and involve mental health claims rather than older folk in their middle (40-60) years claiming on the basis of musculoskeletal problems. – see The Great Silence and Damsels in Distress.
This is a predictable outcome if close to the entire literature on the medicines we use in healthcare is ghostwritten, if there is no access to the data (the people) who participated in company licensing assays to find out what really happened to them, if a large proportion of the assays are effectively fraudulent and if we insist that to mention any of this stigmatizes patients.
Back in the last weekend in August 2022, both the New York Times (Democrat) and New York Post (Republican) agreed our adolescents are suffering from a poly-psychotropic drug pandemic – see Trust Truth and Health. A cross-party agreement like this in the absence of any substantive grappling with the problem makes a market correction seem increasingly likely.
The SoCal psychiatrists and the AstroTurf group claim to be very concerned about stigma, and seem to think a market correction will stigmatise.
It does not stigmatize patients to claim their illnesses may not be real. It stigmatizes us to label our normal variations as illnesses. To transform extraversion into ADHD and introversion into ASD. It stigmatizes us to remove the risks from medicines available on prescription-only precisely because they are hazardous, which means that if anything then goes wrong on the treatment it must be our fault.
It stigmatizes women if many of them feel that those in social company relax when women convey an impression of control by saying they are taking an SSRI.
European countries like Sweden and Britain are de-diagnosing ADHD and ASD, in part because it is clearly crazy to have an illness like Adult ADHD appear from nowhere and become epidemic, or have Autism Spectrum Disorders increase a thousand-fold, with everyone affected entitled to claim disability benefits. This way social welfare systems, or even welfare nets, will inevitably collapse.
These pandemics are made in American laboratories – pharmaceutical company marketing departments. In 1962, the new regulatory framework for medicines put in place following the thalidomide crisis, positively incentivized companies to make us diseased in order to sell their medicines. To give you Prozac, I first have to make you depressed.
Jamie Dimon and the Real Economy
Can America afford to remain behind this de-diagnostic curve? This is where Jamie Dimon’s arguments come into the frame. Dimon contrasts the Real Economy with the Stock Market. Stock Markets love the exuberance that creates Bubbles. In the Real Economy people get hurt and lose livelihoods unless the fundamentals are solid.
Rather than stocking up on AI, whose value Dimon thinks is overblown, in an increasingly dangerous world, and specifically mentioning China, he argues America should be building up stockpiles of missiles, bombs and bullets.
From the American Civil War onwards, however, it has been clear that the country that loses the least soldiers to injuries or disease wins Wars – See American Veterans and Healthcare.
This spurred militaries, especially the US military, to become the primary sponsors of modern healthcare in the form of surgery, public health and, in World War II early pharmaceuticals imported from Europe. After the War, a program was put in place to make Pharma Big and relocate it to the US.
America and its military, however, are also the home of Big Propaganda and this has been deployed highly effectively by pharmaceutical companies. Aided by the fact that, as these drugs are prescription-only, doctors are the consumers of modern pharmaceuticals not those of us that put the pills in our mouths, pharmaceutical companies have been able to spend far more dollars on marketing these products to each American consumer (doctor) than any other company spends marketing all other products combined to the each individual member of the entire population of the United States.
The money is not spent on trinkets, or free lunches and does not end up in brown paper envelopes, all of which doctors deny being influenced by. It goes on what doctors say does influence them – the evidence.
This evidence consists almost entirely of company studies. There is no access to the data from these studies – not even to FDA. This means that legally these studies are Hearsay not Evidence.
The articles purporting to represent the results of company studies are ghostwritten, even those appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, from which the patients injured in these studies have vanished.
Even when company studies are shown to be fraudulent and lead to Billon dollar fines, these studies remain unretracted and built into Standards of Care.
As a result, companies are confident that few if any doctors (consumers) have a thought in their head not put there ‘by us or our competitors’.
The main company marketing weapon is essentially an early version of AI – randomized controlled trials (RCTs). RCTs, like Large Language Models (LLMs), are algorithmic averaging machines.
Widely portrayed now as the gold standard way to evaluate a drug, their creator, Austin Bradford-Hill, and the man responsible for incorporating RCTs into the regulatory process for medicines, Louis Lasagna, both said RCTs tell a doctor nothing about how to treat the patient in front of them.
They both thought the best way to evaluate what a drug is doing for or to you or me is to sit down with us and interview us.
They both thought that if RCTs ever ended up being thought of as the Gold Standard Way to evaluate a drug – as companies repeat all the time – we would have gone stark raving mad.
RCTs are, in particular, a Gold Standard way to Hide Treatment Harms – as you might have suspected when it is primarily companies who proclaim how useful RCTs are.
In recent weeks, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibiting (SSRI) antidepressants and Tylenol have emerged as the battleground on which these issues are playing out.
Should doctors in Southern California, or elsewhere, be taking sides in this battle in favor of what has been a dominant, company-framed, narrative?
If our treatments are as effective and free of harms, as claimed, doctors will be out of business. Cheaper prescribers, like nurses, will and are already putting doctors out of business.
Wake up and small the coffee is the phrase that comes to mind or perhaps a variation on Leonard Cohen’s savage anthem:
Partnerships
It is unlikely that all psychiatrists in Southern California are behind this statement apparently issued on their behalf. For decades, pharmaceutical companies have been adept at a well-known political tactic called ‘entryism’ – getting one or two well placed physicians in bodies that companies called partners, like APA or ACOG or SFMF, to frame and get published statements that seem to come from the organization as a whole but may in fact represent the views of perhaps no more than a fraction of their members.
See American Psychiatric Association and FDA and Request for American Psychiatric Association Assistance to which there has been no reply. But especially see Partnerships in HealthCare.
Companies groom Judas Goats to lead the Medical Sheep to their doom.
.
How do we solve these problems? More regulation or less?
In a recent Face the Nation interview, FDA’s Commissioner, Marty Makary said we need to make it possible for doctors to be doctors, implying that less rather than more regulation might be a better way forward. We once viewed our doctors as better placed to help us with our healthcare issues than bureaucrats within bodies like FDA. Our doctors also saw things the same way.
The change of attitude from seeing medical professionals to seeing bureaucrats as our savior is a great instance of what many on both the Left and the Right from Max Weber a century ago have viewed as a hazard of both governmental and corporate Deep States (bureaucracy).
Even if China were not a looming threat, and positively licking its lips at sight of the entire United States becoming disabled, Makary’s Back to the Future of Personal Care vision has to be the way to go.
Way to go for what? Way to save us, especially younger people who are committing suicide in ever increasing numbers, from a fate like Woody Witczak’s. Following a ghostwritten fraudulent literature might keep pharmaceutical companies alive and well, but how on earth can it save either us – the people who end up with pills in our mouths – or us – doctors like me who consume and believe in this bilge?
My hope from the lecture in Reno was to get ideas from the 200+ College folk there about how their generation might be able to help. But so far there has been silence.
Faced with these issues, doctors in training all go limp. What can we depend on if we have no guidelines, they ask?
This is a stock market that cannot easily correct. Unlike financial markets where sufficient numbers of us can pull our money out if we lose confidence, in this case doctors invest our money and, based on their comfort level not ours, leave it in even when we are throwing ourselves off the tops of buildings because of our losses.
Call it authoritarian perhaps, but it’s going to take a leader not a bureaucrat to get us out of this mess.
The distinction between a leader and a bureaucrat is that a leader, like an old-style doctor, knows when and how to help a people to take a corrective medicine, even if unpleasant, when it is called for.
Back in the USA
There is a strange backdrop here. Back in the USA in the early 1960s, when the US had the best life expectancy in the world and was taking a lead in pointing out the hazards of America’s and the world’s favorite tranquilizer, nicotine, JFK was elected in part on a promise to close the missile gap with the USSR.
In the 1964 election, LBJ faced a Californian Republican – Barry Goldwater. Almost all of American medicine voted Republican at the time – all except psychiatry, which was Freudian and Democrat. Leading psychiatrists took to the airwaves to tell us that Republicanism, like Nazism, was underpinned by a latent homosexuality. They promised that even Wars could be stopped if only everyone was analyzed.
This brand of Freudian thinking viewed close to all claims of sexual abuse as fantasies.
Pharmaceutical companies are today’s Freudians. Exploiting our willingness to delegate our narcissism they have led us to think that the abuse Woody Witczak suffered on Zoloft points to something wrong in him, some fantasy he had, rather than abuse by Pfizer. A fantasy the Southern California and other psychiatrists, not knowing the Pfizer settled the lawsuit Kim Witczak took against them to avoid their documents coming to light, can continue to indulge.
annie says
What can be done to save us from a fate like his.’
The Cohen returns
Ah, there is no comfort in the covens of the witch
Some very clever doctor went and sterilized the bitch
And the only man of energy, yes the revolution’s pride
He trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child
And there are no letters in the mailbox
And there are no grapes upon the vine
And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore
And there are no diamonds in your mine
William Danton says
The injury is too many layers deep. Made up pseudo-medical diagnoses to justify pseudo-medical treatments contextualized in faith-based professions ministering to a naive public. I’ve got the poison. I’ve got the remedy. I’ve got the poison that poisons the remedy. Szasz redux.
Dr. David Healy says
Thanks for this Bill. I should let readers know that Bill was the Discussant – the final summer up – at the Reno meeting.
Moving forward ain’t going to be easy, especially in mental health where many of the new conditions are viewed as Disabilities and attract disability benefits and with disability groups getting pharma support to fight back on a defend our human rights basis.
Some of our poisons definitely disable but tax-payers end up paying through benefit or health service payments – no one appears to view these as ‘externalities’ Externalities that are caused by treatments and perhaps Pharma who are paid extravagantly for promised benefits, with the UK government currently committing to paying even more for the mirage of benefits, are never charged for the cost for treatment induced harm. We pay for a lack of benefit and for the harms this lack of benefit leads to
David
Mo says
What happened to Woody Witczak was and remains a dreadful tragedy. These Big Dipper rides caused by Zoloft and similar drugs can be fatal or severely injurious to some.
Being stuck at the top of a Big Dipper with no discernible or perceived safe way down is like a person being trapped on a ledge having climbed too high up the wrong mountain. Fish, the famous psychiatrist, first included a chapter in his 1961 book in which the philosophy of Heidegger was used to explain that the person as ‘being in the world’ (the Dasein) should navigate life through vertical and horizontal planes. Verstiegenheit is where Dasein has gone too high up the wrong mountain. Other things can go awry for Dasein, (such as ‘screwiness’ or ‘manneredness’, as translated from the German, the primary focus then being on schizophrenia). The result is that Dasein is not any longer perceived to be in the homeland of love.
The fact that some drugs, prescribed by one’s doctor for the likes of insomnia, can have such arresting and deadly Big Dipper ride effects for those with a vulnerability is so sad and extremely tragic. Something has to be done.
Harriet Vogt says
I read the transcript of Marty Makary’s ‘Face the Nation’ interview – a moment:
‘MARGARET BRENNAN: When do they get the data you’re promising? All these controlled studies.
DR. MAKARY: In the absence of data, they should talk to their doctor–
MARGARET BRENNAN: So no date?
DR. MAKARY: –and their doctor will use their best wisdom and judgment.’
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marty-makary-fda-commissioner-face-the-nation-transcript-06-01-2025/
I’m afraid I thought – warm feelings – but good luck with that. What wisdom and judgement – precisely? They’re lost without an algorithm.
Having taken fifty years to think beyond their commercial software installation, to recognise antidepressant or any psych drug withdrawal (still no notion of safe dosage levels, still not much understanding of withdrawal come to that) – knowing nothing about the therapeutic principles you have educated us in, a pattern recognition lens rather than holistic mindset, an inability to listen to the person-patient who is the one actually doing the science – your words– I believe prescribers of psychiatry’s main psychotropic product have forfeited their right to any authority. Ofc GPs form the majority of prescribers, UK 75%+, but this is brand psychiatry’s only mass market product. Take it from them.
I’m with Bill – and hear your observation about the benefit to patients of disability benefits. That’s true and cements the dependence, though the UK government and oppositions are all determined to reduce the costs- ‘anxiety’ is in the crosshairs’. But worse still – patients-people have internalised industry’s medicalisation of the human condition – ‘mental health’ gives their lives meaning and their selves identity. The lunacy is culturally embedded.
I was thinking it might be – well, lively – in a lecture or seminar for medical trainees, to do an extended courtroom number. The case for the prosecution being – doctors have lost all authority to prescribe antidepressants – patients would be safer OTC. I know you mooted this years ago – but I genuinely believe it -as long as the dosage levels were tiny and the consumer was instructed to watch carefully for any of the danger signs, as well as to monitor their own feelings like a hawk. Medical ‘authority’ just exacerbates the risk.
Dr. David Healy says
We may be at cross-purposes. Doctors were not in uniform lockstep. That is a recent development. I am pretty sure Marty was saying we need to get them back to that. Back to using common sense
Maybe FDA need to say – Hey guys you are dangerous, we are going to explore an OTC option. That would make medicine wake up. The problem at the moment is an option like OTC is barely a notional hint for them.
It’s amazing to me how many people swallow the line that we should leave prescribing to shrinks – not let family docs near psychotropic prescribing. It sounds reasonable until you meet shrinks – as Ronnie Laing once said what scared him the most was the light of certainty in shrink eyes. Family docs don’t have this ideological intensity
D
Harriet Vogt says
I think I did understand what you were saying- just felt less optimistic about turning so many Cyborgs into proper docs.
Ronnie Laing was one of my heroes as a young thing. I even went to hear him speak at a theatre in Bloomsbury. Bit of a disappointment in the flesh– smallish chap in Jesus sandals and socks – but, despite this sartorial catastrophe, a mesmerising presence.
It is preciselt that look of certainty that makes shrinks deeply alarming – especially, to quote my rather less intellectual Aussie mother,because ‘they don’t know their arse from their elbow’.
Dr. David Healy says
It is going to take something of an earthquake to make a difference. But Walls have been known to fall in Berlin.
D
Harriet Vogt says
Thanks for forwarding the WSJ piece – ‘Girl, Take Your Crazy Pills!’ Antidepressants Recast as a Hot Lifestyle Accessory Influencers tout the drugs, but many unsuspecting followers find the side effects take the fun out of life’.
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/anti-depressants-lifestyle-accessory-3b66027d
Nothing us tiktok and marketing hounds didn’t know. Effectively a virtual pyramid selling operation – with other consumers – aka influencers – as the salesforce, telesales the main distribution channel.
Alix Eatle is a classic salesperson – Zoomer ‘Lexahoe’ (an approved collective moniker) – 7.7 million tiktok followers, on Lexapro for anxiety since high school. In the video, which got 6.1 million views, the 24-year-old shook a prescription bottle of pills and urged watchers to talk to a therapist if they have similar symptoms – ‘a lexapro girly too just proves the baddest bitches have crippling anxiety,’
What is slightly alarming is how economical with the truth some of the influencers can be, viz:
‘Byerley, 34, touted benefits of the medicine, but later felt emotionally numb, had brain fog and a loss of libido, she said. Byerley held off telling followers for months, reluctant to acknowledge her faded sex life and embarrassed about gaining weight.’
But, equally, there’s more vivid honesty about insufferable adverse effects like sexual dysfunction ,emotional anaesthesia, withdrawal horror from tiktokettes – than any of us will have ever seen on a drug label or heard articulated by prescribers. Words alone don’t really cut it.
What this says to me, loud and clear, is that these drugs are already effectively being sold OTC – the forhers screening interview I started – is laughable- a hamster could qualify for medication.
If they’d been OTC from the start – how much smaller and safer would this category of drug have been? The whole notion of SSRIs being prescription only medication suddenly seems absurdly anachronic.
The next wall to fall.
annie says
Rumblings, Tremors or Earthquakes
When my Seroxat prescription arrived from a psychiatrist, in 1999, to the doctors surgery, I was very wary. It resulted in the total destruction of my life. There was nowhere to go.
I came across the Panorama Programmes, I came across Who Cares in Sweden, I came across David Healy and I came across Bob Fiddaman.
This was all powerful and instructive. Bob wrote the book, in 2011 – The Evidence, However, is Clear The Seroxat Scandal
David Healy wrote, Children of the Cure. Patrick D Hahn wrote, Prescription for Sorrow
Three magnetic and powerful accounts of GSK and what happened with Paroxetine.
Currently you need to follow a young boy in France. His parents, Yoko and Vincent, have taken this on, and have created a huge boost, in publicity terms, of the fight back against GSK and this tragic loss of a young life.
https://x.com/antidepeffects
The Ghost of Keller, et al, is always there. The haunting reminder, that this Ghost, was never redacted. The BMJ took Study 329, eventually.
It is heartening to see Bob Fiddaman, in October, 2025, put his film-making talent and unstinting research abilities to a new test, in this new film
The Paxil Classroom
https://x.com/Fiddaman/status/1976986945424089184
Peter Selley says
Exorcism of the Ghost of Keller
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/paxil-marketed-teens-gsk-study-329-discredited-elsevier-journal-lawsuit/
The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and Elsevier, publisher of misleading Study 329 article, face lawsuit..
Amazingly Elsevier is still selling copies of the discredited article – just $33.39 to download.
annie says
Knock out
Dr. David Healy, co-author of the BMJ article that reanalyzed the data from Study 329, told The Defender that for years, he and others who had been investigating this issue assumed the journal had been duped by GSK, but later realized the journal “was not duped — it was complicit.”
Murgatroyd said he, too, believes the expression of concern is a response to pressure from the pending lawsuit.
“The mechanism of self-correction isn’t working,” he told us. “When they don’t self-correct, somebody’s got to step in and say, either you do it or the court is going to make you do it.’ There is nothing good about that article. It’s evil. It promoted drugs to kids who killed themselves. There’s nothing worse than that. You can’t allow something like that to stand.”
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/10/16/controversial-paxil-study-329-earns-expression-of-concern-after-critic-sues-publisher/
39. In 2015 Dr. Jon Jureidini and a team ofresearchers including David Healy and others, published an article in the BMJ that reanalyzed the original Study 329 data using the restored clinical trial documents (RIAT) that were released due to different lawsuits and settlement agreements. The article: “Restoring Study 329 efficacy and harms ofparoxetine and imipramine in treatment ofmajor depression in adolescence.” \t reaffirmed that Study 329 showed that Paxil was no better than placebo for treating adolescent depression, suicidal behavior and serious side effects were under-reported and masked with the term “emotional lability and the study should never have been published as a positive outcome for Paxil in treating adolescent depression.
40. Every analysis ofthe Study 329 data, whether done by the FDA, independently or by GSK internally, conclusively found that Paxil is unsafe for children and adolescents suffering from depression due to the increased risk of suicidality attributed to the drug.
41. Doctors whose adolescent patients committed suicide or tried to do so stated and testified that medical journal articles influenced their prescribing practices. In one case that involved an I1-year-old boy who tried to hang himselfin his closet with his dog’s leash and went into a coma and died a few weeks later, the prescribing doctor testified that he read medical journal articles regarding Paxil claiming that Paxil works. He further testified that GSK sales reps made multiple sales visits to his office to promote Paxil by giving him articles on Paxil as well as leaving samples. From the information he read, he concluded that Paxil was “good” in treating adolescent patients with depression. In a second case where a young girl set herselfon fire and had massive burns throughout her body requiring numerous surgeries the prescribing doctor testified that she was visited every month by a GSK sales rep who left samples andjournal articles: “If a pharmaceutical representative shows me an article Iwould rely on that information. ”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/AmendedComplaint-Filed.pdf
‘to redress the knowing publication, distribution, and continued sale ofa false and deceptive medical article that has misled physicians, consumers, and institutions for over two decades and continues to endanger adolescent mental health and safety as well as public trust in scientific integrity.’
annie says
the lesson of Study 329: naked Emperors, fractious Queens…
https://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2012/09/04/the-lesson-of-study-329-naked-emperors-fractious-queens/
Jureidini and Tonkin said “evidence of distorted and unbalanced reporting”, “evaded the scrutiny of your editorial process”, “an attempt to show the drug in the most favorable light.” All of that is true. In response to their request to see the author’s reaction, the editor of JAACAP who had accepted this article, Dr. Mina Dulcan, responded with a nasty-gram for all times [see retract study 329…]:
Dr. Dulcan’s letter says, “Many highly expert child and adolescent psychiatrists were participants in that study, and others that were similar, and others equally expert contributed to the review process.” And when interviewed by Panorama, she said, “We rank, and this is a worldwide ranking, we rank number one in child mental health and number two in paediatrics” and “Oh I don’t have any regrets about publishing at all. It generated all sorts of useful discussion which is the purpose of a scholarly journal.”
So we come to another of the lessons of Study 329. There is no royalty in medicine. We don’t really know what lead Dr. Dulcan or her editorial board to decide to publish this article, or for that matter, even why it was submitted to her Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry when it was headed to the American Journal of Psychiatry. What we do know is that it wasn’t because of the value of the article itself. It is misguided science, deceitfully written, and reaches an unsupportable conclusion. It certainly wasn’t published because of rave reviews from the journal’s peer reviewers – they panned it. The most benign answer is that Dr. Dulcan was taken with having an article by the chairman of a prestigious university’s psychiatry department and many “highly expert child and adolescent psychiatrists” in her journal [that ranks “number one in child mental health and number two in paediatrics”].
The only useful discussions that I know of generated by this article were in senate hearings, depositions, and settlement negotiations where the topics were ghost-writing, false advertising, conflicts of interest, off-label prescribing, hiding adverse effects, patient harm, etc.
“In the course of time, there are sometimes moments of clarity that change things forever.”
annie says
”We rank, and this is a worldwide ranking, we rank number one in child mental health and number two in paediatrics”“Oh I don’t have any regrets about publishing at all. It generated all sorts of useful discussion which is the purpose of a scholarly journal
https://x.com/antidepeffects/status/1979608359474213127
Psychiatrist, Martin Keller and Advocate, Karen Barth Menzies
“He put his head in his hands and for the longest time there was silence”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGfEZlVbUA
MHRA appointed Ian Hudson, GSK, to head it up, as long as he was absent from all Paroxetine inquiries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TozBgI5LyGc&t=1s
annie says
Examination of Witnesses (Questions 780 – 799)
THURSDAY 20 JANUARY 2005
PROFESSOR SIR ALASDAIR BRECKENRIDGE CBE, PROFESSOR KENT WOODS AND DR JUNE RAINE
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/5012003.htm
Q790 John Austin: I think it would have been useful if Dr Hudson had been here because, as far as I understand, he was at SmithKline Beecham and his department was responsible for the collection of adverse reaction information such as there was with Seroxat.
Q796 John Austin: In October you appeared on a Panorama programme in which you said that SSRI antidepressants did not cause suicidal behaviour in adults.
Professor Sir Alasdair Breckenridge: Yes.
Professor Woods: Yes, I would like to answer that because I do have some information which might be helpful to you. As Chief Executive, I have discussed with Dr Hudson his previous role within GSK in relation to the specific question of Seroxat and he assures me that he has had no direct personal involvement in those safety issues. However, because of his role within the company, we agreed, and have since scrupulously observed, that he should have no role within the Agency in any decision-making concerned with Seroxat.
The jury decided Paroxetine was to blame for Donald Schell killing his wife, daughter, granddaughter and himself.
Ian Hudson, witness for the defence, was at the time of his deposition, Dec.15 2000, Worldwide Safety Director at GSK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0RyhJpulDw&t=1s
This does not appear to be mentioned in the ‘Examination of Witnesses’ or ‘scrupulously observed’
Anonymous says
Dr Healy if there is ever a way of proving I have PSSD like a biomarker or something. Is there a possibility I can still take legal action against the mental health clinic in Ireland? The statute of limitations in Ireland is 2 years from the medical injury but I have been suffering from PSSD since December 2021 so it’s well past 2 years now. Another problem is that the psychiatrist who put me on Vortioxetine passed away last year. When I was going to the mental health centre all of the psychiatrists kept asking me if I was in a relationship and I was constantly telling them I cannot be in a relationship if I can’t function as a man. None of them even knew what PSSD is, one psychiatrist got angry with me and said “what are you talking about your not on SSRIs anymore so what’s the problem” she then abruptly ended my appointment. Another psychiatrist almost laughed up in my face when I talked about suffering from PSSD and told me “don’t go down the internet rabbit hole” The way I was being treated in the mental health centre was making me feel suicidal so I called them up and told them I am going to see a consultant psychiatrist. But every consultant psychiatrist I talked to over the phone when I told them I have PSSD they rejected my application I do see a pattern of consultant psychiatrists not wanting to help a PSSD sufferer. I called one consultant psychiatrist I was in a long conversation with her but the second I told her I have PSSD she immediately ended the conversation. For over years I couldn’t get to a consultant psychiatrist so my GP told me I should go back to the mental health centre he sent a letter they never contacted me back so I called them and they said that I cannot go back to them they have rejected my application. So there’s a possibility that the mental health centre have deleted/destroyed my medical records. There’s a lot of things that would hold me back from successfully winning a court case against the mental health centre:
* The psychiatrist who put me on Vortioxetine passed away from old age.
“I am past the 2 year statute of limitations.
* The mental health facility banned me from returning and have possibly deleted my medical records.
And there’s no way to prove PSSD exists currently.
I talked to you a few times over the past few years about getting PSSD from vortioxetine. But here’s an interesting piece of information I forgot to mention
that the psychiatrist who put me on Vortioxetine actually helped make this drug he actually was working in the creation of SSRIs and worked specifically on Vortioxetine. When I talked to him about PSSD he was very condescending to me and said to me “he went to university and he worked for the pharmaceutical industry he has never heard of Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction and it doesn’t exist if it did exist he would have learned about it in university”
My final conversation with him I asked him can I take Bupropion I am tired of living with sexual dysfunction and Anhedonia he refused to put me on Bupropion and the most ironic thing is that he told me he wanted to put me on an SNRI after me telling him I have PSSD. He said I need to take another serotonin antidepressant if I want my Anhedonia to improve.
Dr. David Healy says
What you are describing here in terms of the reaction of the services to your complaint is all so typical of all problems and not just PSSD.
One of the oddities is if you got PSSD from an over the counter antihistamine they would likely to very quick to accept the risk these dangerous over-the-counter meds pose when SSRIs are on prescription only because they are supposedly much more dangerous than anything over the counter
Re a legal action, you need to ask a lawyer but I wouldn;t go near any lawyer in the UK – a lot of them are terribly Lilly-livered and venal
D
Harriet Vogt says
I second what you say about Lilly-livered, venal UK lawyers .
In the UK we just don’t seem to have anyone like the US based Wisner Baum you know, with a long track record of taking on pharmaceutical companies on behalf of harmed patients. I don’t know why – I guess it’s bigger business in the US.
There is a huge amount of ‘medication error’ in the UK system – ‘est 237 million medication errors occur at some point in the medication process in England annually, 38.4% occurring in primary care; 72% have little/no potential for harm and 66 million are potentially clinically significant.’ Definitely avoidable ADEs are estimated to cost the NHS £98 462 582 per year, consuming 181 626 bed-days, and causing/contributing to 1708 deaths.’ https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/30/2/96
But this seems to be conceptualised primarily in terms of prescribing errors – rather than harms intrinsic to commercially driven disinformation about the drugs themselves.
I’m in the middle of reading Cathy Wield’s book, ‘Unshackled’, where she, a medical doctor herself, effectively loses 7 years of her life to the misdiagnosis of ‘intractable treatment resistant depression ‘.
The list of drugs she was prescribed over that period is jaw-dropping: 14 antidepressants, 9 antipsychotics, 2 mood stabilisers, 3 adjunct drugs for intractable depression, 3 psychoactive drugs to treat the adverse effects, 1 anti-parkinsons drug , 2 antiemetics.- and some benzos.
Adverse effects included postural hypotension, hypothyroidism, amenorrhea, obesity, oversedation, hyperprolactinaemia – and so on and on,. They threw in 100+ ECTs and a cingulotomy for good measure.
She found a medical negligence lawyer willing to listen to her. This is how Cathy described his verdict:
‘His assessment was blunt. He said she would not stand a chance in a million of winning her case. He said the courts would put more weight on the opinions given by those very staff who needed to answer for their actions…you were detained because they assessed you as being a danger to yourself, why would they believe what you have to say?’
Lilly-livered and venal may be an understatement.
Happily, Cathy recovered when she weaned herself off the toxic drug cocktail. So much for the myth of treatment resistant depression.
Dr. David Healy says
Cathy writes like an angel – perhaps even dangerously so. She could talk even me into figuring childhood trauma is the cause of all nervous problems but I worry that she has flipped from an over-enthusiastic embrace of so called bio-psychiatry into an opposite belief system, when her case is her case. The one thing we might all be able to agree on, even those currently dishing out bad care, is that she suffered the standard abuse that current psychiatry so off-handedly dishes out whereas none of us can come to a consensus with her on what happened in her childhood. We just weren’t there in the way we all are – abused and abusers – at encounters happening right now before everyone’s eyes.
D
Harriet Vogt says
I guess some of us are more susceptible to embracing belief systems than others. Cathy – who as you will know- is a literal angel-also had a religious upbringing which may be relevant.
Certainly, as a heathen, I’m deeply sceptical of any absolutism. Lenses are nothing more than ways of seeing.
Except, as you say, the one absolute is that Cathy – like so many other victims we know- was conceptually and chemically tortured and diminished – for years. By a mindless, biomedical belief system- that seems to have no grasp whatsoever of the main tools of its trade-drugs.
And worst of all, her doctors – aka the high priests- believed they were acting in good faith – and in her best interests.
Dr. David Healy says
Not just High Priests – her doctors were among the Bishops and Cardinals of the Church of Psychiatry
D
annie says
GSK made nearly £10 million out of the failure of the UK Group Action against it’s drug, Seroxat.
Hundreds of litigants proceeded through years of setting up the case and with several lawyers.
Eventually just over a hundred litigants remained and it went to trial where it was unceremoniously thrown out by the Judge.
‘In considering the application for indemnity costs, Lambert J, having set out the law, stated that the issue was “straightforward”: the court’s previous rulings on the Claimants’ case were “crystal clear”, and decisive of its scope (para 66). Following the decision in Gee, it was clear that “the Claimants were pursuing a case which was quite simply unarguable” (para 67). Continuing the litigation beyond that point was “unreasonable to a high degree… and compellingly so” (para 68).
https://www.hendersonchambers.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Alerter-Seroxat-Litigation-Judgment-for-GSK-July-2020.pdf
‘Although the Court did not need to determine substantively GSK’s application concerning the correct approach to defect in the context of a prescription-only medicine, the judgment on indemnity costs clearly endorses the approach taken in Gee and Wilkes. When read with the earlier Court of Appeal Seroxat judgment, these cases can now be taken as authoritative statements of the law: claimants who fail to plead a case which accepts an holistic approach to the assessment of defect are unlikely to succeed, and may be at risk of indemnity costs.
Don’t go changing your claim: High Court and Court of Appeal rule on preliminary issue of the scope of the claimant’s claims on defect in the seroxat group litigation
https://www.hoganlovells.com/-/media/hogan-lovells/pdf/2020-pdfs/2020_01_10_iplr-76_dont-go-changing-your-claim.pdf
“assessment of whether the safety of a product is at an acceptable level requires a holistic approach”.54 This marks the first time the Court of Appeal has endorsed the holistic approach to defect. Elsewhere, the High Court had already followed this approach in Gee v DePuy International Limited [2018] EWHC 1208 (QB).
The case also serves as a reminder to claimants precisely to outline the defect alleged when bringing CPA claims. As stated by the Court of Appeal, it is this articulation of defect that will drive the scope of expert evidence and the focus of the trial, rather than the Defendants response.
In particular, GSK submitted that the previous court rulings had determined that the relative risks and benefits of Seroxat, whether in comparison with other SSRIs or otherwise, did not form part of the Claimants’ pleaded case. It was not open to the Claimants to seek to expand their pleaded case on defect at trial, contrary to the earlier court rulings, to try and include them. GSK had maintained from the outset that the Claimants’ approach to the assessment of defect, relying on a single adverse event, was wrong as a matter of law, logic and evidence, and that a holistic approach was required in determining the safety of a prescription medicine.
So there we were. We lost, without a chance, it seems..
annie says
Wendy Dolin Takes on GlaxoSmithKline And Wins — For Now at Least
By Jim Gottstein, J D May 2, 2017
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/wendy-dolin-takes-on-glaxo-smith-kline-and-wins/
Since Bob did such a great job, I am not going describe the trial except to say that it exposed GSK lies and the morally bankrupt conduct of GSK, its attorneys and expert witnesses. GSK knew Paxil caused adults to commit suicide and hid that from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and doctors. The trial transcripts can be found here and exhibits here.
This is one key to the case, because there is a legal principle shielding drug companies called the “Learned Intermediary Doctrine” which establishes that the doctor, with access to full information, recommended the prescription-only drug after carefully weighing the risks and benefits. The primary official way that doctors are told about the risks of a drug is through the FDA-approved “label.” The drug manufacturer can also issue what is called “Dear Doctor” letters alerting them to risks.
But if the drug manufacturer withholds information, then one can get over the Learned Intermediary hurdle. That is the crux of this case. The argument is that because the manufacturer did not tell the doctor about the substantial risk of suicide, the Learned Intermediary Doctrine does not apply. Ms. Dolin’s top-notch legal team from Baum Hedlund (well known for taking on drug companies, especially over antidepressants) and David Rapoport established that GSK did not inform the FDA or doctors that Paxil caused people to commit suicide, thus getting over the Learned Intermediary hurdle. In fact, GSK still denied it. Cases against drug companies for withholding important information are not unusual.
Dr Pedro says
Ian Hudson’s name has cropped up from time to time in this post.
Readers might find it interesting to watch his performance in front of Baroness Cumberlege when he gave evidence to the Valproate/Primodos/Mesh Inquiry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrfwwunYcRA
He says the UK drug regulator MHRA was going to improve transparency and openness.
Cumberlege concluded
“The MHRA needs substantial revision, particularly in relation to adverse event reporting and medical device regulation. It needs to ensure that it engages more with patients and their outcomes.”
But why does it look like Ian was on his way to a funeral?
annie says
Whose Funeral?
GlaxoSmithKline’s $3bn fine for mis-selling drugs in the US is the biggest ever handed down, but analysts say it is a drop in the ocean compared with the profits from medicines
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/08/pharma-misbehaviour-gsk-fine
https://archive.is/7Qyl7
But the GSK case has shaken even the most hardened of industry observers, as prosecutors found the company had been allotting over half a million dollars a year to its district sales representatives to offer doctors regular golf lessons, fishing trips, and basketball tickets while promoting the use of antidepressant drug Paxil in children.
The GSK sales campaign also involved helping to publish an article in a medical journal that misreported evidence from a clinical trial.
What’s the UK doing about it?
All of GSK’s problems have come to light in the US, where corporate abuse is taken very seriously. Britain is different, and the FDA’s equivalent, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), appears to engage in lighter-touch regulation. The MHRA has never successfully prosecuted a company since it was established nearly 10 years ago. It did investigate GSK over alleged inappropriate use of a drug in 2008 but abandoned the case.
Last week I resigned from the Government’s watchdog on anti-depressants after it tried to cover up its own ten-year failure to identify serious side-effects of the controversial drug Seroxat.
by RICHARD BROOK
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-300164/Why-I-resigned-happy-pill-cover-up.html
The only protection is a musical chairs system where you leave the room if you have an interest in the drug being discussed or its manufacturer, or you can stay but not vote.
Need for independent inquiry
There is an urgent need for an independent inquiry into the MHRA. The Government must also change its culture of secrecy.
chris says
Dr Cathy Wield (Video); A shocking story of battling through the mental health system:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iXVmxtwiFU0