Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression

393 Pages·2006·2.06 MB·English

by  David Healy

LET THEM EAT PROZAC
MEDICINE, CULTURE, AND HISTORY
Series Editor: Andrea Tone
Let Them Eat Prozac
The Unhealthy Relationship between the
Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression
David Healy
DAVID HEALY
LET THEM EAT PROZAC
The Unhealthy Relationship between the
Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2004 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Healy, David, MRC Psych.
Let them eat Prozac : the unhealthy relationship between
the pharmaceutical industry and depression / David Healy.
p. cm. — (Medicine, Culture, and History)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-3669-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Serotonin uptake inhibitors. 2. Fluoxetine.
3. Depression, Mental—Chemotherapy. 4. Psychotropic drugs industry.
[DNLM: 1. Fluoxetine—adverse effects. 2. Depressive Disorder—
drug therapy. 3. Drug Industry—ethics. 4. Fluoxetine—therapeutic use.
QV77.5 H434L 2004] I. Title. II. Series.
RM332.H423 2004
616.85’27061—dc22 2004002297
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Justin
Whose ability to get to the heart of the matter
I’ve tried to copy Carpenter’s Boat The new wood as old as
carpentry Rounding the far buoy, wild
Steel fighting in the sea, carpenter, Carpenter,
Carpenter and other things, the monstrous welded seams Plunge
and drip in the seas, carpenter,
Carpenter, how wild the planet is.
—George Oppen, 1962
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface: Under the Thundercloud of a Common Experience
Introduction: Before Prozac
1 Take One
2 Events in Kentucky
3 Down the Barrel of a Lawyer
4 Market Force
5 A Pacific Fault Line
6 Kafka’s Castle
7 Experiment at the End of the Millennium
8 The Plots Thicken
9 The Tort Wars
10 Let Them Eat Prozac
Epilogue: Anecdotal Deaths
Notes
Index
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I have always tried to fit my acknowledgments into a transport
metaphor. At one point it looked as if the only metaphor that would do
for this book was a solo skiff on a whitewater river, or a battered raft
complete with bewildered souls who had lost children, parents, partners,
or friends. But things changed, and this book now owes more to the
efforts of others than anything else I’ve written. These have not been
efforts to check the grammar or the facts but rather real risk-taking by
many people. Among the thousands whose lives have been torn apart by
SSRI antidepressants were Tim Tobin, Bill and Susan Forsyth, Linda
Hurcombe, and Fiona Lindsay. Of the many who have learned what
academic freedom really means, those on the same bit of river as I
included Nancy Olivieri, Brenda Gallie, Helen Chan, Alison Hudgins,
Rhonda Love, Peter Durie, and John Dick.
While most of us floundered, a few who had been there before knew
what to do. These included Cindy Hall, Karen Barth, Skip Murgatroyd,
Andy Vickery, Rhonda Hawkins, Nancy Zettler, Jim Turk, Rosemary
Morgan, Peter Rosenthal, Kiké and Charlie Roach. There were others,
but these stood out.
Downriver—when the going got really wild, and no one should have
even thought about helping out—Tom Ban, Ned Shorter, Cyril
Greenland, Trudo Lemmens, Mona Gupta, Bruce Charlton, and Charles
Medawar not only thought about helping but also came on board, and
without their contributions the journey would have ended far earlier.
Many people managed to throw lines to the raft at critical points,
keeping it on course. These included Julie Axelrod, Ross Baldessarini,
Raymond Battegay, Per Bech, German Berrios, Tom Bolwig, Arvid
Carlsson, Gaston Castellanos, Jonathan Cole, Leon Eisenberg, Joel Elkes,
Giovanni Fava, Max Fink, Alfred Freedman, Peter Gaszner, Abraham
Halpern, Turan Itil, Gordon Johnson, Joseph Knoll, Toshihiro
Kobayakawa, Brian Leonard, Isaac Marks, Robin Murray, David Nutt,
Merton Sandler, Mogens Schou, Pierre Simon, Solomon Snyder, Costas
Stefanis, Fridolin Sulser, Gabor Ungvari, and Herman van Praag.
I also got huge amounts of help from Carl Elliott, David Antonuccio,
Elizabeth Young, Richard Tranter, Françoise Bayliss, Richard De-
Grandpre, Cedric Knight, Max Lagnado, Terry Maltsberger, Mervyn
Whitford, Mariam Fraser, and Nikolas Rose, and latterly from Bob
Whitaker, Vera Hassner Sharav, Andrew Herxheimer, Bill Bruneau,
Andrea Tone, and Alison Waldenberg.
Many people working in the pharmaceutical industry will know that
this is not a book hostile to industry but rather one that has received
huge input from colleagues working in that industry. We have all been
operating under the thundercloud of a common experience.
Sarah Boseley, Anne McIlroy, Duncan Dallas, Marc Edwards, and
Vicky Marriott provided key coverage at critical points early in this
whitewater journey, and more recently Shelley Jofre and Andy Bell have
contributed hugely.
Back at base, as ever, were—among many others—Dinah Cattell,
Jackie Thomas, and Tony Roberts.
I owe a special debt to the Canadian Association for University
Teachers (CAUT), who picked up my case at a critical point. They owed
nothing to a “foreigner” but responded to the principle, even though this
lay outside their brief. I am particularly pleased that all royalties from
this book will go into an academic freedom charitable fund within
CAUT.
I still have no idea whether this river is about to level out around the
bend of publication or if this raft will drop over a waterfall.
Responsibility for a big drop is clearly not mine alone, but equally
clearly, none of the responsibility lies with anyone else mentioned in this
acknowledgment.