Report: Lilly was aware of Prozac risks

(Also posted in the Indiana forum, but I thought it merited some discussion here as well)

http://www.indystar.com/articles/9/206053-3709-102.html

Associated Press
December 31, 2004


LONDON -- A British medical journal said today that it had given U.S. regulators confidential drug company documents suggesting a link between the popular anti-depressant Prozac and a heightened risk of suicide attempts and violence.

The British Medical Journal reported in its Jan. 1 issue that documents it had received from an anonymous source indicated that Prozac's manufacturer, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co., was aware in the 1980s that the drug could have potentially troubling side-effects.

The journal said the documents, reportedly missing for a decade, had formed part of a 1994 lawsuit against Eli Lilly on behalf of victims of a workplace shooting in Louisville, Ky. The gunman who killed eight people and himself in 1989, Joseph Wesbecker, had been prescribed Prozac a month before the shootings.

Eli Lilly won the case but later disclosed it had settled with the plaintiffs during the trial. The journal said one of the records, dated November 1988, reported that fluoxetine, the generic name for Prozac, had caused "behavioral disturbances" in clinical trials.

.... more

:hippie:

...The journal said it had turned the documents over to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which had agreed to review them. The journal said the office of U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., also was examining the documents to determine whether Eli Lilly had withheld data from the public and the FDA. "This is an alarming study that should have been shared with the public and the FDA from the get-go, not 16 years later," Hinchey was quoted as saying.


:mad:



:hippie:

:)