"I know he has," Healy said.
During his opening statement, Tracey told the jury that 1998 was a big year for Paxil because a study came out by a doctor named Gideon Koren, and a researcher named Kulin, that looked at Paxil and two other SSRIs.
The study compared women who took SSRIs, to women who didn't take any SSRIs, and the number of birth defects in the two groups was the same. "So Doctor Koren concluded that SSRIs appear to be safe," Tracey said.
"Within, literally within 24 hours," he told the jury, "GSK's marketing machine cranked up and they faxed this information to their entire sales force."
And the sales force took this information and began to use it to sell to women, he noted. "What they didn't tell anybody was this," Tracey said. "That when you separated Paxil out from the other SSRIs, you saw that Paxil was causing birth defects, that there was an increased risk of birth defects in this study in these women when you looked at Paxil by itself."
"That was not in the paper," he said. "That information was not found out until two years ago."
While testifying, Healy was barred from telling the jury about Koren's involvement in one the biggest academic research scandals in history a few years back when he sent vicious anonymous letters to discredit fellow researchers and denied doing so until DNA evidence from postage stamps proved he was lying years later. In September 2003, the Canadian Association of University Teachers reported on the disciplining of Koren in the CAUT Bulletin as follows:
"The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons has formally reprimanded University of Toronto professor of medicine Dr. Gideon Koren. He had written anonymous harassing letters about Dr. Nancy Olivieri and three colleagues during Olivieri's dispute with the Hospital for Sick Children, the University of Toronto and Apotex Inc. He then had lied repeatedly to conceal his responsibility. The college also cited him for additional misconduct, in research."
The Teachers Association further explained in the Bulletin: "The college's finding of research misconduct was in relation to a study on a drug to treat a blood disorder in children that Koren and Olivieri had once collaborated on. Olivieri identified risks that the drug was ineffective and caused liver damage, and voiced her concerns despite legal warnings from its maker, Apotex. Koren differed and, contrary to accepted norms, published an article on the drug using data from other researchers, including Olivieri, without their knowledge or consent."
"Koren had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Apotex after the company had terminated the drug trials in its efforts to prevent Olivieri from disclosing risks to patients, as well as the hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding he had received during the trials," the newsletter reported, citing an journal article by the authors of "The Olivieri Report."
Apotex marketed a generic version of Paxil, or paroxetine.
The penalty had been jointly proposed to the discipline committee through prior agreement between Koren's attorney and counsel for the college, the Bulletin noted. In its decision, the committee said it was "deeply troubled by this case" and "seriously considered administering a more severe penalty" than that proposed, as it wished "to express unequivocally its condemnation of Dr. Koren's misconduct."
Glaxo Money Still Flowing
In a December 14, 2009 report on Pharmalot, Ed Silverman noted that Glaxo had published a list of fees paid out to US healthcare professionals for speaking and consulting services for the three month period of April 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009. "By its own tally, Glaxo paid $14.6 million to approximately 3,700 US docs and other healthcare professionals," he reported.
Although Glaxo paid out millions of dollars over the years to the doctors discussed in this article, not one of them was called to testify as an expert in the first birth defect trial.
(The Paxil Birth Defect Litigation Update Series is sponsored by the Houston law firm of Vickery, Waldner and Mallia at http://www.justiceseekers.com )
