Book Review: Side Effects
I am reading Alison Bass’s book Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial. Overall it makes for a good read, a story about distortion of study results related to SSRI antidepressants, and the corruption of leaders in the academic psychiatry field for the purposes of promoting profit for pharma.
My only criticism is that at times it seems like there is too much narrative detail about taxi rides and other things that slowed the story down and are not directly relevant to the story flow.
However I have to admit that the part I found most fascinating was the part about Martin Teicher, MD, a psychiatrist I know personally, have had dinner with, read his papers and grant applications, and whose research interests overlap with mine (i.e. effects of childhood abuse on the brain).
You see, Marty Teicher had the guts to say that Prozac could make some people (emphasis mine) suicidal, back in about 1990, at a time when we were all “listening to Prozac”, or maybe drooling over Prozac, or whatever.
The “miracle drug” results in a two point increase over placebo on a 56 point scale, which pharma now acknowledges, because it is off patent and they want to promote their new miracle drug Abilify (which is actually an antipsychotic, which will literally make you drool).
I actually skipped chapters to read the accounts of Dr. Teicher. You see I had heard that Eli Lilly had used rumors that he had had sex with a patient to silence him in expressing his views that SSRI antidepressant medications could increase suicidal thoughts. Not very good PR when they were launching their drug as the miracle cure for depression.
And they were pretty effective. Most of Dr. Teicher’s recent research is on the effects of childhood abuse on the brain (NOT Prozac and suicidality).
I know that tune.
It’s kind of hard to do research when your data gets subpoenaed before you have had a chance to go over it and fact check it. I know from experience.
In the schools I came from they call that bullying.
In Alison’s book she gives a compelling narrative about an attorney for Eli Lilly named Nina Gussack who “softened up” Dr. Teicher and then hit him with accusations of a patient that he had had sexual relations with her. She spent two days deposing him after which he decided that he wouldn’t testify again. Eli Lilly hired his ex-wife (leading her to move to Indiana for four years THE VERY DAY they deposed him, taking with her his kids), only to dump her when they had no further use for her.
Congratulations, attorney Nina Gussack, counsel for Eli Lilly, I hope you can sleep at night (try some Ambien).
From my reading of the book and my personal interaction with Dr. Teicher I think the whole thing is a bunch of bullshit, Eli Lilly manipulating someone with borderline personality disorder for their own interests. In fact the Massachusetts Medical Board found no evidence of any sexual relationship.
The only “evidence” they had was that Dr Teicher had given the patient a card saying “love marty” on her birthday and a pair of ear rings valued at $3.50.
I write cards to my kids saying “love dad”. That doesn’t mean I am having sex with them. Give me a f**king break.
Here is my card for Eli Lilly: “Thanks for making us suicidal! Love, Doug Bremner MD”
