My Life of Futility, Chapter 19…
In the early '90s I was writing about the marketing of Prozac for the AVA. My job editing the weekly newspaper at UCSF Medical Center gave me a good vantage point. I subscribed to the Wall St. Journal, whose coverage of the pharmaceutical industry was necessarily revealing. Eli Lilly's blockbuster antidepressant had many dangerous side-effects, the most dramatic of which was “suicidal ideation” –which occasionally led to suicidal actualization. I put a classified ad in the SF Bay Guardian and asked 100 people why they were using Prozac and with what results. I covered a dramatic meeting of the Prozac Survivors Support Group for the AVA and quoted at length people whose loved ones had, very uncharacteristically and bizarrely, become destructive. The meeting was disrupted when a Wenatchee, Washington psychologist –a blatant hustler who urged Prozac on all his patients– led a contingent of them to confront the Survivors' keynote speaker, the knowledgable Dr. Peter Breggin.
The first “Prozac case” to capture national attention came to trial in September, 1994. (Prozac sales increased by 73% that third quarter. A lot was at stake for Eli Lilly.) The case involved Joseph Wesbecker, a Louisville, Kentucky press operator who had taken an AK-47 into Standard Gravure, the printing plant where he’d been employed, and killed eight co-workers and injured a dozen others before committing suicide. Wesbecker had been prescribed Prozac five weeks before, and a coroner’s jury found that it “may have been a contributory factor” in his rampage. Some 24 parties –victims who survived the shooting, relatives of those who died, and members of Wesbecker’s own family– subsequently sued Eli Lilly, charging that the drug company “knew or should have known that Prozac was unsafe for use by the general public for the treatment of depression” and that the company “knew or should have known that users of the drug can experience intense agitation and preoccupation with suicide, and can harm themselves or others.”
Lilly’s PR wizard, Ed West, held a press conference on the eve of the trial which the Associated Press recounted thus: “West and Dr. Frederick Goodwin, who recently stepped down as director of the National Institute of Mental Health, say the anti-Prozac litigation was spawned by the Church of Scientology, which for decades has campaigned against psychiatrists and the drugs they prescribe.
“West said Scientology kicked off its national effort to discredit Prozac at the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of Wesbecker and his victims. The head of a California-based group affiliated with Scientology testified at the inquest.”
(Alex Cockburn, my partner in Prozac research, had extremely useful Scientologist sources – for which the liblabs loudly tsk-tsked him. I showed solidarity by reporting uncritically about the New Alliance Party. But I digress.)
The Wesbecker trial ended in early December ‘94 with the jury voting 9-3 NOT to hold Eli Lilly & Co. in any way responsible the murderous rampage. It emerged at the trial that Wesbecker had been hospitalized for emotional problems on several occasions before he ever took Prozac. Also, that he harbored a fierce resentment towards his employers. Lilly made the most of the verdict PR-wise. “We have proven in a court of law,” stated CEO Randal Tobias, “just as we have to more than 70 scientific and regulatory bodies all over the world, that Prozac is safe and effective.”
But there would be an unusual, unpublicized coda. On April 19, 1995 –the day that the federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City and there was hardly room for other news– the judge who had presided at the Wesbecker trial, John Potter, filed a motion to change his own order from “the dismissal was based solely upon a jury verdict” to “settled.” Potter’s motion, quoted in the AVA, explained his revised decision:
“Much of the evidence in the trial centered around whether Lilly had adequately tested the drug and fairly reported the test results and other information to the FDA which ultimately approved the drug. A significant portion of Lilly’s evidence emphasized that the FDA had approved the drug after reviewing the extensive and complete data supplied by lilly. A major thrust of the plaintiffs counter attack was that the data was not complete. Of particular significance in this regard was evidence designed to prove that Lilly had not accurately reported adverse comments and evaluation upon the drug’s performance made by the BGA (the German counterpart to the FDA).
“At the commencement of the trial and over the plaintiffs’ objection, the Court ruled that evidence of Lilly’s alleged misdeeds with other drugs would not be introduced.
“As the trial progressed, Lilly introduced evidence of its reputation for maintaining a good system for collecting an reporting adverse data on its products.
“Representative testimony put on by Lilly was to the effect that ‘Lilly had the most sensitive and elegant system of collecting adverse events…’ ‘The FDA has repeatedly said… Lilly [has] the best system for collecting and analyzing and reporting adverse events…’
“On several occasions throughout the trial the plaintiffs moved the vcourt to reconsider its prior ruling and admit evidence of Lilly’s conduct in regard to other drugs. As the case progressed and as more self-serving laudatory evidence came in, the Court became more inclined to reconsider whether Lilly had ‘opened the door’ to such evidence.
“On December 1, 1994, the plaintiffs filed [a motion] to introduce evidence that in August, 1982, the House Committee on Government Operations conducted an investigation into the FDA’s and Lilly’s handling of the drug Oraflex. A house report was issued in November 1983, which concluded, among other things, that ‘Lilly did not report serious adverse reactions associated with use of Oraflex prior to the approval of the drug.’ the referenced adverse reactions included over 20 deaths occurring in foreign countries. The report was equally critical of the FDA.
“In addition, the plaintiffs sought to introduce evidence that in June, 1985, Lilly, as a corporation, pled guilty to a criminal indictiment of 25 counts of failing to report adverse reactions to Oraflex to the FDA, and shortly thereafter Dr. Ian Shedden, the head of Lilly’s research, also pled to 15 counts.
“On December 5, 1994, Lilly filed a reply memorandum. These motions were argued in chambers on December 6, 1994, and on December 7, 1994, the Court ruled in the plaintiffs favor. On December 8, 1994, after a day’s delay at the parties’ mutual request and without explanation, the plaintiffs elected not to introduce the evidence they had fought so hard to get admitted, and closed their case.”
Fast Forward 25 Years
Andrew Wolfson of The Louisville-Courier Journal reported Sept. 11, 2019:
“The drugmaker that produces Prozac, the antidepressant that Joseph Wesbecker’s victims blamed for his deadly shooting rampage 30 years ago at Standard Gravure, secretly paid the victims $20 million to help ensure a verdict exonerating the drug company.
“Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly vigorously shielded the payment for more than two decades, defying a Louisville judge who fought to reveal it because he said it swayed the jury's verdict…
“In exchange for the payment, the plaintiffs – eight estates and 11 survivors – agreed to withhold damaging evidence about the arthritis drug Oraflex that Lilly withdrew from the market. Lilly pleaded guilty to 25 criminal misdemeanor counts for failing to report adverse reactions that patients suffered from the drug, and the drug company feared that the Prozac jury would be more inclined to rule against the drugmaker if it learned of it…
“Two of the victims recently told the Courier Journal that the payment totaled $20 million, worth about $41 million in today’s dollars, which the plaintiffs divided among themselves after paying their attorneys. The two victims told the Courier Journal they felt compelled to accept the money because they suffered egregious injuries that kept them from working again and they needed it to survive.
“Lilly used the verdict to tout that Prozac had been proved a safe and effective antidepressant. In 1995, the company reaped a quarter of its $6.5 billion in revenue from Prozac – and faced 160 other suits nationwide over the drug.”
Now, 30 years after Lilly's exoneration by the Wesbecker jury, some 28 million US Americans are on Prozac.
The moral of the story? Muckraking is an exercise in futility.
Only RFK, Jr. can save us now. (Just kidding.)
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