List of pharmaceutical companies Dr. Healy has had consultancies with - FIDDAMAN counterpoint blog

In recent years Dr. Healy has had consultancies with, been a principal investigator or clinical trialist for, been a chairman or speaker at international symposia for, or been in receipt of support to attend meetings from: Astra, Astra-Zeneca, Boots/Knoll Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Lorex-Synthelabo, Lundbeck, Organon, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Pierre-Fabre, Pfizer, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Roche, SmithKline Beecham, Solvay, and Zeneca.




source - http://www.ahrp.org/ethical/WolpeHealy.php




From: Paul Root Wolpe


Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 4:30 PM

To: VERACARE

Subject: Re: Ethics of U Penn surgical "drug implant" experiment



Vera,



We will have to agree to disagree, so this will be my last email on this. A few reactions:



I have tried to "personalize" our disagreement? Allow me to quote the email that started all this:



At 5:00 PM -0400 10/7/03, VERACARE wrote: one of Penn's senior fellows at the Center for Bioethics, Paul Root Wolpe, PhD, who is Director of Psychiatry and Ethics at the School of Medicine. Given that bioethicists are not free of financial conflicts of interest, having close ties to the biotech / drug industry, the unacknowledged purpose of such discussions is, no doubt, to pave the way for legitimizing "drug implant" technology "by consensus"--a favorite method for pushing through dubious public policies.



So please, when you use innuendo that impunes my motives and career, using common rhetorical devices like "no doubt" which are substitutes for any actual substantiation of claims, please don't accuse ME of insisting on personalizing this.



I know all about psychiatric drugs. I have also seen people in major depression and floridly psychotic. I, like so many of them, would choose the meds over killing myself or living the tortured life of the schizophrenic. You can quote all you want people who object to psychiatric meds, and I would be happy to quote back as many experts who think they are godsends. The point is that I believe people should have a choice. This technology is simply one more choice.



I know Carl Elliot well, am a friend of his, and reviewed his latest book in the current edition of AJOB. I have read everything he wrote about Healy. He is wrong, and if you knew more about the Healy case than just what is in Carl's article, you would know that Healy utterly misrepresented himself and has since retracted almost everything he claimed. He has recently admitted, for example, that he received substantial fees from Pharmacia, the manufacturer of reboxetine, as well as other Big Pharma that he never disclosed to the Hastings Center Report (as he promised to do) or any other venue during his "victimization." He also now says that Lilly DID NOT influence the rescinding of his offer (this is Healy talking, not Lilly). You would hardly believe his latest "personal disclosure" statement in an article he recently published:



In recent years Dr. Healy has had consultancies with, been a principal investigator or clinical trialist for, been a chairman or speaker at international symposia for, or been in receipt of support to attend meetings from: Astra, Astra-Zeneca, Boots/Knoll Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Lorex-Synthelabo, Lundbeck, Organon, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Pierre-Fabre, Pfizer, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, Roche, SmithKline Beecham, Solvay, and Zeneca. Dr. Healy has been an expert witness for the plaintiff in five legal actions involving SSRIs and has been consulted on a number of other attempted suicide, suicide and suicide-homicide cases following antidepressant medication, in the majority of which he has offered the view that the treatment was not involved. Dr. Healy has also been an expert witness for the defense on a series of LSD (46) and ECT (1) cases.



Again, that is Healy himself disclosing, admitting that in the majority of cases he testifies that SSRIs are not involved. In other words, the story Carl told about Healy, and the story Healy USED to tell about himself, are patently false.



You say i do not appreciate the significance of Healy and Olivieri; of course I do, especially Olivieri, who I lecture about to medical students. But they are clinical researchers; that is the point you have consistently refused to address. Pharma has a hold over them that is simply does not have over bioethicists. Which does not say that some biothicists are not influenced by Pharma. Of course they are. What it does say is the other point I have made over and over and that you have never responded to: the fact that "bioethicists" can be influenced by drug money does not mean that I am, any more than the fact that "patient advocates" can be influenced by drug money means that you are. And it is just ridiculous to say that, because a clinical researcher asked Art for a recommendation that he took, that Art therefore "does clinical trials." I mean, really. If the researchers decide not to use these implants on people because they read your CIRCARE column, are you then a clinical researcher?



The problem, Vera, is that you will just lump together any political issue that you think makes your ideological point; you simply obscure the differences between "bioethicists" and a particular bioethicist, or someone who gives advice to a clinical researcher and someone who does clinical research.



And if my insistence in using "scratched" to describe what hte monkey did (the word the researchers who were there used, by the way) is ideological, than your insistence on using the words "rip through his chest to yank the implant out" is equally ideological. I, at least, heard what happened from the people who were there, and use their description. You just make up the most emotionally volatile words you can think of as scare tactics.



And, finally, you misrepresent who is targeted by the researchers. There are many psychiatric patients who miss taking their meds for many reasons, not just because they "choose" not to take them. Patients come to doctors asking for ways to make sure they take their meds; that is why the two week injections that are offered now are very popular among patients.

--



* * * *

Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D.

Departments of Psychiatry and Sociology

and Center for Bioethics

University of Pennsylvania



Chief of Bioethics

(Care and Protection of Research Subjects and Patients)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)



Center for Bioethics:

3401 Market St., Suite 320

Philadelphia PA 19104

(215) 573-9378 or 898-7136

(215) 573-3036 (fax)