Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression

Abstract

David Healy, New York: New York University Press, 2004. Pp. 368. $29.95 (hbk). ISBN 0814736696. David Healy recounts in this volume the story of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and the emergence of their links with suicidal behaviour in the 1990s. As one of the key consultants and witnesses throughout the era when pharmaceutical companies such as Lilly defended themselves against accusations of shoddy science, cover-up, negligence, and failure to warn, he was deeply involved in events and often privy to insider communications. As a prominent researcher and an acknowledged authority on psychopharmacology, he provides an impressive breadth of scientific understanding. As a strong supporter of psychopharmacological remedies for mental disorders, he cannot be accused of anti-psychiatry bias. Taken together, this means that the conclusions reached in the book are all the more important. Healy is not, however, without an axe to grind. He mentions his brushes with the psychiatric and medical establishment in trying to draw attention to the dangerous side-effects of this class of anti-depressants at the height of their remarkable popularity; his battles with lawyers and Big Pharma when his evidence was overlooked and his earlier statements were taken out of context; his struggles to publish in academic journals; and what he calls the Toronto affair, when his outspokenness cost him a prestigious post. His contract with the University of Toronto was breached following a lecture on conflict of interest as a key concern in modern science. He later sued and settled out of court. Like that lecture, this book is about conflict of interest in modern science, although it also touches on several other vices such as greed, deceit, moral ambiguity, and the wilful neglect of those consumers and patients whose interests modern science, medicine, and the pharmacology industry purport to serve. The science is complex, fascinating and instructive.