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In 2008, Stowe was the primary investigator for a National Institutes of Health grant where the stated purpose was "to stimulate vigorous debate with the emphasis on the reproductive safety of antidepressant medications," according to a June 2, 2009 letter to the president of Emory from Grassley.
Glaxo paid Stowe $154,400 for fifty-seven promotional talks in 2007. He also received $99,300 from Glaxo in the first ten months of 2008 for thirty-eight talks for antidepressants, according to Grassley.
During a deposition, Stowe testified that around "80% of his Emory salary ($187,000) comes from his NIH grants," the letter notes. His total Emory salary was $232,000.
In a June 11, 2008 statement on the Senate Floor, in describing his investigation, Grassley said, "I have been looking at how drug companies try and influence medical care in America. Companies can do this by, for example, creating studies favorable to their drugs, by hiring doctors to promote their products, and in some cases even intimidating critics of their drugs."
On this date, Grassley was announcing his investigation of Glaxo regarding revelations in reports filed in Paxil suicide litigation by Dr Joseph Glenmullen, showing the company had manipulated the numbers on adverse events related to suicidality in clinical trials all the way back in 1989, before the drug was FDA approved, to make it appear that Paxil did not increase the risk of suicidal behavior when, in fact, trial subjects on Paxil were eight times more likely to attempt or commit suicide than patients taking a placebo.
"So what did GlaxoSmithKline do with these reports?" Grassley said. "Well, the company tried to hide them."
"They went to the judge and asked to have Dr. Glenmullen's report and all the confirming documents placed under seal-that means that no member of the public could see them," he said. "In fact, Glaxo has been doing everything possible to ensure that this information remains under court seal."
"It seems to me that GlaxoSmithKline tried to hide these reports because they seem to demonstrate what the company knew-that Paxil was associated with an increased risk of suicide based on the company's own studies," Grassley noted.
"Essentially, it looks like GlaxoSmithKline bamboozled the FDA," he pointed out.
For easy reference, psychiatric academics identified by Grassley's investigation to date, as not fully disclosing money from drug companies, include Joseph Biederman, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens at Harvard, Charles Nemeroff and Zackery Stowe from Emory; Melissa DelBello at the University of Cincinnati; Alan Schatzberg, president of the American Psychiatric Association, from Stanford; Martin Keller at Brown University; Karen Wagner and A John Rush from the University of Texas; and Fred Goodwin, the former host of the radio show, "Infinite Minds," broadcast for years by National Pubic Radio, before it was thrown off the air.
Paxil All-Star Team
During direct examination of Healy, Tracey introduced an exhibit on a 2002 forum called, "Perspectives on Psychiatry for the Future, Summary of Program Evaluations," along with a list of doctors who gave presentations.
"What I would like to do is use this document to prove that these are a list of doctors that are out promoting Paxil for the defendant, and to have Dr. Healy explain, as he has published, how GSK sought to change the culture of how doctors view Paroxetine and pregnancy," he told the judge.
Tracey went through several of the presentations and named off doctors that included Daniel Christensen, Zachary Stowe, Philip Perera, Dean Hamer, Dwight Evans, Karen Wagner, Katherine Beebe, and Prakash Masand.
Healy said he believed that most of the doctors mentioned were on the Paxil speaking team.
Zachary Stowe was listed for a presentation on the topic of, "Use of Antidepressants in Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women."
