1
1
1
In fact, Tracey produced a Glaxo memo that stated: "if after this meeting anyone on the advisory board who doesn't passionately believe Paxil's uniqueness for anxiety should quietly be replaced."
Naming Names
During the trial, Tracey wanted Healy to specifically testify about Doctors, Charles Nemeroff and Zachery Stowe, and apparently Glaxo did not want the jury to hear the sordid tale because their attorneys strongly objected.
On September 16, Tracy argued his case to the judge in chambers outside the hearing of the jury. "Doctor Nemeroff is generally considered, or was before his fall from grace, the most powerful man in psychiatry in the United States," Tracey told the judge.
"Doctor Healy is uniquely qualified to talk about Doctor Nemeroff's role in the corruption of medical literature related specifically to Paxil as orchestrated by GSK and Doctor Nemeroff," he argued.
"Same with Doctor Stowe," Tracey said. "Doctor Stowe specifically carried out a campaign to market through GSK or GSK through Doctor Stowe to pregnant women and women of childbearing age."
"I need to show the jury that an enormous amount of money changed hands between Stowe and Nemeroff and others," he said, "and that all of these doctors were on GSK's Paxil advisory board."
"It goes to the credibility of these doctors," Tracey pointed out.
"These are the doctors that are writing the literature that is out there in the peer-reviewed literature that doctors are relying on," he told the judge.
These doctors were required ethically "by their universities to disclose to the Federal Government how much money GSK was paying them," Tracey said. "They did not do that."
He also wanted the jury to know that "Emory University has actually stripped Doctor Nemeroff of his chair over this very issue of failing to disclose payments from GSK," he told the judge.
Tracey wanted to prove these allegations with testimony from Healy about Senator Charles Grassley's investigation of Nemeroff and Stowe and the results that were made public. In the end, the judge refused to allow Healy to testify about the amounts Nemeroff and Stowe were paid by Glaxo, why Nemeroff lost the chairmanship, or the disciplining of Stowe.
"Whether or not Emory had a battle with them about disclosure is not relevant in my mind,"the judge told Tracey. "What is relevant is that they were prominent individuals who wrote in favor of this drug, that they were on the advisory board, that they received honorariums of money, and that he believes in his opinion that these articles are wrong that they wrote."
"He can offer his opinion that they were wrong and why they were wrong," he said. "I am going to keep out the argument about the doctors being sanctioned for failing to disclose."
Nemeroff's "credibility from Emory would involve a mini trial of the issue with Emory and him," the judge said.
The Emory investigation, in fact, found Nemeroff was paid more than $960,000 by Glaxo, from 2000 through 2006, but listed less than $35,000 on his disclosure forms. All totaled, he had earnings of $2.8 million from speaking and consulting arrangements with drug companies between 2000 and 2007, but failed to disclose at least $1.2 million, according to Senate Finance Committee reports.
