[Nicky Campbell:] [music] Tonight live, the happiness pill, the terrorist godfathers and circuses. Are they right to use domestic cats? Roll up, roll up, it's Central Weekend. [music] [clapping] Good evening, welcome to Central Weekend and to our audience, they come from Ludlow.
[speaker002:] [clapping]
[Sue Jay:] welcome. We start tonight with a big row that's brewing over this little pill. It's new and it's given to people who feel depressed. Your doctor prescribes it as Prozac but it's already earned the nickname the happiness pill, but is it safe? Oliver what's so wonderful about Prozac as an antidepressant?
[Oliver James:] Well it doesn't actually make less people depressed that its predecessors, the great thing about it is is that it only only one quarter of the people who take it get side effects. So the old tricyclic antidepressants make you know most people get a lot of side effects. The second this about it, it's certainly not addictive in any way, it's not like the barbiturates Valium and so on. It's er you know it's completely okay to take and stop taking it, and you won't want to have to go on. And the third thing is that about twenty to thirty per cent of people who take it undergo a dramatic transformation in their personality, it seems, so it's claimed in America and there's a lot of evidence that might be true, erm and that is you know a huge difference from er just an ordinary antidepressant.
[Sue Jay:] So who's it really for, who's gonna m get the most benefit out of it?
[Oliver James:] Well it's it works best with people who r mildly depressed in fact,l less so with very severely depressed people, but that is the great majority of people, one in three women with children under the age of five are depressed, for example, so it's a huge advantage for them to be able to take it and not have side effects.
[Sue Jay:] Dr Vernon, is this the way to make depressed people happy? Have the drug companies at last come up with something approaching a m little miracle?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] It's a load o crap. The
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I feel as if I'm in a time war, I really do. Twenty years ago I was on programmes li, was Central Weekend on twenty years ago, I don't, twenty years ago
[Sue Jay:] Feels like it
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I was on, sorry?
[Sue Jay:] [LAUGHTER] feels like it []
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Well twenty years ago I was on programmes like this, saying that doctors who said that Valium and the other tranquillizers were perfectly safe were talking rubbish and that there was every possibility that there would be problems found in the future, if we kept prescribing these drugs for vast numbers of people. And now here we are again with yet another wonder miracle drug, which they say has got no side effects and which is wonderful and is gonna make all these people really happy
[Oliver James:] No we said a quarter of people who take it get side effects.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Let me tell y er have you seen
[Oliver James:] What's it got to do with Valium. What's it got to do with Valium at all?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] It's got a lot to do with Valium because it's being
[Oliver James:] What?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] given to very similar people for a start, it's being prescribed in huge quantities no let me finish
[Oliver James:] Valium's given for anxiety and neurosis.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] you asked me a question. It's being it is being prescribed t for huge numbers of people, it's being promoted as a very safe drug, it's a very profitable drug, and we already know that it causes a very large number of quite serious side effects. I have in front of me a copy of the data sheet produced by the company which makes it, which was incidentally the same company which made Opran, do you remember Opran which was withdrawn from the market, it's just
[Oliver James:] What's this got to do wi it's got nothing to do with Opran.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] got an enormous amount to do with Opran because you don't seem to understand the way the drug companies work. They put a drug on the market and they say that it's wonderful and that the side effects are irrelevant and very slight and that everybody's gonna be very happy and it's a new wonder drug and it'll change the world and [breath] isn't that marvellous. Then a few years later when the problems develop they say, oh god we're terribly sorry, we'll take the drug off the market. Let me
[Oliver James:] be six million people in the world are taking this drug saying it's really really helping them and you're telling them it's crap.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I'm d let me just tell you some of the side effects which the company making it admit to.
[Oliver James:] Now what do you say to those six million people?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Look no let me just tell you what the
[Oliver James:] Mm.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] side effects are. What I would tell them was, these are the side effects, they should be aware of this.
[Oliver James:] No there are the side effects are only a quarter of people have those
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] The company's, you don't want me to say the side effects do you?
[Oliver James:] side effects. Only a quarter of people. Do you accept that fact that it's only a quarter of people?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I no no I don't for a start accept it.
[Oliver James:] So you deny all the studies that prove that
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] No.
[Oliver James:] conclusively?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] And what I'm saying is that
[Oliver James:] Do you deny those studies?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] What I'm saying is that y I probably do deny those studies. But what I am saying is that the that the side
[Oliver James:] Yeah, yes, no, very, look hold on
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] effects would not be known, would not be known for a considerable period of time.
[Sue Jay:] Le let me bring in Dr C er Vernon let me bring in Dr Cosmo here, Vernon.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] No l hang on a minute let me
[Sue Jay:] No I I I just want to move it around a bit Vernon.
[Oliver James:] Nobody's denying
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] These are im these are important and we should talk about the side effects that are associated.
[Sue Jay:] We will we will we will I have we will. Dr Cosmo.
[Dr Cosmo Hallstrom:] Nobody nobody denies that Prozac has side effects. What the it has less side effects than other treatments. What i emerges is depression is a common condition which is under-diagnosed and under-treated. One in eight people who are seriously depressed er end up killing themselves by suicide. About ten people a day kill themselves by suicide, maybe maybe one in a thousand people who take Prozac get bad reactions to it, but that has to be seen in balance, in the balance of a large number of people deriving a lot of benefit and maybe a few people having some bad reactions.
[Sue Jay:] Donna, you took it, what happened?
[Donna:] Yeah, well let me just say first, I'm an agony aunt, a medical journalist, I've got a psychology degree, I've written health books, and as a punter I took Prozac by accident. I suffered what erm is known from as postnatal depression after I had my second baby. And I fought it for a long time and I wanted to get kick-started back to where I was before, because I felt under a cloud. Well I went and I had a different drug from Prozac, I had something which is actually newer and er
[speaker002:] Which one?
[Donna:] Zeroxac.
[speaker002:] Right.
[Donna:] Okay which was fine. But let's let's not kid ourselves audience. These are drugs, these are mind-altering drugs, every drug is a poison and every drug is a poison and every drug is a trade-off. You do not get something for nothing in this world and they know this. And people who have vested interests in drug companies are gonna tell you different. Let me tell you what happened to me. I went on Zeroxac, and there are side effects when you start, while you get used to the dosage okay. In my case I was very drowsy, I got constipated, they don't tell you very much about this, they play it down. Once I took the drug I was okay to a certain extent. Okay now this Prozac's in the same group of substances as the one I took and I was willing to do a slight trade-off here. Okay what happened was, I had no emotional reactions to anything, I wanted to cry at something on T V, I couldn't any more, I couldn't cry. I g well I'll tell you later about what else happened to me
[speaker002:] isn't aren't those symptoms of depression rather than actually the drug?
[Donna:] Listen let me finish. I went back to my doctor after two months and said well I feel a bit better, can I a few more months. Okay fine, he then gave me, I didn't know, I was on Prozac for a month. Now he s he thought he was giving me the same stuff, I didn't know what I was on, all I knew was I felt twice as bad. I went home and I st I got very very anxious, I started feeling suicidal, I was blubbering at everything on the television, now I could cry but I was crying too much. I went back to my doctor and said, what have you given me? This is not the same drug. Oh yes it is they're medically quite similar. What is it? It was Prozac.
[speaker002:] Well y you know,th the evidence is overwhelming that these drugs are actually good for depression, that they lift the symptoms, that they reduce suicidal
[Donna:] Fifteen per cent have got suicidal on it, that's too high
[speaker002:] I'm sorry fifteen per cent of of depressed people commit suicide, not fifteen per cent of people who take Prozac get suicidal. The evidence is
[Donna:] Fifteen per cent, the latest research says
[speaker002:] the evidence is just against that you know the evidence is totally contrary to that.
[Donna:] No this is not true.
[Sue Jay:] Let me ask you Donna why why you carried on taking it?
[Donna:] Oh no I came off of it. I I had a month's prescription, I came off of it. I went back on the c
[speaker002:] on it.
[Donna:] I went off of it, and th and then I was okay after that.
[Sue Jay:] How did it make you feel?
[speaker002:] I was suicidal, one day I'd been on top of the world
[Donna:] Yeah
[speaker002:] and I could take on anything then the next day I'd be trying to kill myself. Then why did you take the drug then?
[Sue Jay:] Why did you why didn't you stop taking it?
[speaker002:] Because you trust your doctor. Because it was making me so bad. doctor prescribed it and we trust the G Ps for. Then why do you go to your G P? I've heard all this tripe about and there were tested on prisoners. In the U S and she can verify that. This was this was exactly what we were saying
[Sue Jay:] Why do you go to your G Ps? Okay okay let's let's
[speaker002:] What's the matter with you people, don't you listen to the patients any more?
[Sue Jay:] Let me talk to a G P down here, Dr Stephen.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] I'm concerned because there have been accusations by Mix M Mr, he's actually erased from the register. He's not a prac
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] No I'm not erased from the register at all, that's a lie.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] He's not a practising er physician
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] That is a lie actually I think we ought to get this straight
[Sue Jay:] Okay listen before we go on
[Dr Simon Fradd:] medical register therefore you can't call yourself Doctor.
[Sue Jay:] Now listen we've got two conversations going at once here, why are you called Doctor, Vernon?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I've got a doctorate of science and I've got a medical degree from Birmingham University.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] But you're not on the medical register.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] No I'm not on the medical register for a very simple reason which I'm happy to explain to
[Dr Simon Fradd:] I'm very concerned that he made the accusation that the drug companies simply put these drugs on the market. Now Prozac is one of the highest used drugs in the States. And the States are second to none in drug testing. The Food and Drugs Administration really are absolutely . Now you're always making a balance in developing drugs and I have nothing to do with the drug industry, I'm a G P, you have a balance between trying to move things forward to get people better and on the other hand making sure that you're not going to do them any great harm. Any new drug in Britain is, every year the G P who's prescribing that for you gets a letter from a centre down in Southampton to ask if there've been any adverse reactions. So we monitor as carefully as we can. Yes there are
[Graeme Wilson:] The Food and Drug Administration the Food and Drug Administration condones tampering of scientific data in the pre-release trials by, we have the documentation on that, which has been a obtained under the Freedom o of Information Act.
[Sue Jay:] Yes.
[Graeme Wilson:] It condones it. They they w s they withheld and suppressed evidence of suicides occurring during the pre-release trials.
[Sue Jay:] Yes Gr this is Gr just let me introduce you to Graeme. You are with the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights. Now what
[Graeme Wilson:] That's right.
[Sue Jay:] is it that you have got so strongly against this drug?
[Graeme Wilson:] What we have so strongly on this is that there are now over twenty eight thousand
[Sue Jay:] Mm.
[Graeme Wilson:] adverse reaction reports on the drug.
[Sue Jay:] Mm. Yeah
[Graeme Wilson:] and that's that's ten times higher th that's higher
[Sue Jay:] Yeah
[Graeme Wilson:] than any other drug in history. It's ten times higher than the r reactions on Halcyon, of those reactions thirteen hundred, there were thirteen hundred relate to deaths of the users, and that's just too high a price to pay.
[Sue Jay:] So is it is it too no no we've got to come back here, is this too high a price to pay?
[speaker002:] Yeah I feel very sorry for the people who've had bad reactions from Prozac about
[Graeme Wilson:] They've died there's thirteen hundred
[speaker002:] hang on a second
[Sue Jay:] Let him answer. [shouting] Let him answer. []
[speaker002:] I feel very sorry for the people living who are here
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Can I just say
[Sue Jay:] Vernon
[speaker002:] adverse reactions. Th about a quarter of people do unfortunately and they have to stop taking it. Er c coming to this point, there is abundant evidence that er say two thousand for example, two thousand Prozac takers were compared with er two thousand takers of the old tricyclics compared with people on a placebo, and I'm sorry there is no increased probability of committing suicide. People who are depressed generally are prone to committing suicide. They're also co prone to commit violence. I wasn't.
[Sue Jay:] No listen listen, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to someone here who's probably er only here because you're on Prozac, aren't you?
[Peter:] That's right yes.
[Sue Jay:] Peter, you you take Prozac?
[Peter:] I take Prozac.
[Sue Jay:] Why?
[Peter:] Erm completely disabling anxiety and depression that is moderate but persistent. And it needed something to break that cycle. And Prozac did the trick for me, erm it won't work for everybody, it's not a happiness pill, it just restores you to to some sort of normality.
[Sue Jay:] You you've been taking it for how long?
[Peter:] I've been taking it continuously for two years, and I want to stress that I've been taking eighty milligrams a day,
[Sue Jay:] That's a lot.
[Peter:] That was the dose,a and I want to stress also that I didn't start off at eighty milligrams, I started off at two and half which I think is important and
[Sue Jay:] Any side effects?
[Peter:] There was there was no side effects. Erm ma
[Sue Jay:] What ma what ma what difference has it made to your life Peter?
[Peter:] Comp completely, I mean I'm sat here in a live television studio with a girlfriend on my hand, I was housebound, erm just no interest in my hobbies, no energy, erm
[Donna:] Peter
[Sue Jay:] Well I'm glad you're here. Now listen, listen Donna, Donna, Donna wait a minute, Donna listen. This is obviously of real help to a lot of people even if it doesn't help everybody. You can't throw the baby out with the bath water,
[Donna:] No.
[Sue Jay:] you can't frighten people off it, when it is being of real help to people like Peter.
[Donna:] No it's now he was severely depressed. It's interesting cos you said it helps people with mild depression.
[speaker002:] No, no.
[Sue Jay:] No he didn't actually
[Oliver James:] and persistent
[Sue Jay:] Right persistent and moderate depression. Okay bu yes now I'm not arguing that for some depressed people it's there's always side effects of some kind, okay, Peter, I wanted to ask you a very personal question.
[Oliver James:] Well he just told you he didn't have any side effects. Are you denying this man's right to tell you what he believes is true?
[Donna:] Now wait a minute. Have you ever been on Proz have you ever been on Prozac Oliver?
[Oliver James:] No.
[Donna:] Alright. Well you won't be able to orgasm on it, okay? sexuality
[Oliver James:] But I'm asking you to address his point. You've just told this man
[speaker002:] [clapping]
[Oliver James:] You've just told this man that he his experience is invalid. you said to him that there's no
[Donna:] No I didn't. I
[Oliver James:] such thing as a pill without side effects, he just said he had no side effects.
[speaker002:] To to introduce to introduce one or two patients who ar who are happy with the drug is is irrelevant as you should know
[Donna:] Exactly.
[speaker002:] because people took thalidomide and were very happy with it, people took Opran and were very happy with it, people took Valium and were very happy with it. take penicillin and die of it because they have an allergic reaction. Even more people have died of overdoses of aspirin than any other drug in the world. We didn't ban those.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Let let me tell you about the damned side effects of this drug, because people are entitled to know what they.
[Sue Jay:] Listen I've got, Vernon I I've got some people who have had the side effects. Let me interview them because there's nothing like a human story
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Okay, bye, okay, I'll go home
[Sue Jay:] a personal face of this whole thing, I I ought to say that we did ask the drug company to send some along or er and they said no er but
[speaker002:] Strange
[Sue Jay:] but they but they we have got a man here who is the first in this country, Mr to sue them. Erm you took Prozac
[speaker002:] That's correct.
[Sue Jay:] erm, what kind of person were you before, apart from a bit depressed?
[speaker002:] person I wouldn't bother anybody, and it changed my entire personality.
[Sue Jay:] It changed it so much that you co committed an offence that ended you up in
[speaker002:] in prison.
[Sue Jay:] in prison for, well you got a three year sentence
[speaker002:] prison sentence
[Sue Jay:] but you didn't serve it all. Erm you took a gun to your girlfriend's house,
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Sue Jay:] you handcuffed her son to his bed
[speaker002:] bed
[Sue Jay:] you were very violent in your behaviour?
[speaker002:] Where did you get the gun from? Say again. Where did you get the gun from? I collect weapons.
[Sue Jay:] Why, why do you put that down to Prozac?
[speaker002:] Because it was something that was totally out of character. My general behaviour changed completely after I was given Prozac. I was taken into the, my wife died in January of nineteen eighty nine, I was taken into the local psychiatric hospital at in the December of nineteen eighty nine and I was told I was gonna be given an experimental drug, I was told nothing about it or any anything to do with any of the side effects, I I was in th I was on Prozac for about four days, I suffered horrendous side effects, shaking and one thing and another. Why didn't you refuse it? You didn't have to take it. Well as far as I was concerned, I was doing what a doctor told me. These bunch of clowns pick your gun up and go and shoot.
[Sue Jay:] You're talking from a point of view of where?
[speaker002:] Well I work in this field and you can refuse that that medication unless you're under You don't expect a doctor to give you drugs that are gonna drive you mad. If you're an informal patient you can refuse that medication. psychiatric hospitals, there must have been something wrong with you. It's hard enough to get into if you're crazy.
[Sue Jay:] Yes, go on.
[speaker002:] One of things on this drug is that we have many cases documented on this where people don't realize the incredible grotesque feelings they have of mutilating themselves et cetera are actually connected to the drug. And it's only when they see publicity of the drug that they actually realize I tried to kill myself twice in the space of ten days, I suffered horrendous hallucinations people do you know. government initiative to reduce the incidence of suicide by er is it er five per cent over the next years because so many
[Sue Jay:] Are you saying there's no connection between the drug
[speaker002:] depressed people do kill themselves. That's just rubbish. It is. and one of the key ways of stopping people killing themselves would be to change from the old antidepressants onto the more modern safer ones which A are easier to take, less likely to make you kill yourself, and er
[Sue Jay:] Let let me introduce you to a nurse, a nurse called Nicola. Nicola Nicola doesn't want to be identified. Er Nicola had a baby, she suffered from postnatal depression and er can I ask for a bit of hush there please, Nicola suffered from postnatal depression and she took Prozac. Nicola, you suffered some of the side effects that we've been hearing about tonight, and then things got really bad. How bad did they get?
[Nicky Campbell:] I was only on the drug for seven days and by the seventh day, I'd suddenly turned into some sort of maniac. I became incredibly vi er I had violent feelings erm, I wanted to go out on the street and rampage. If I'd had a gun I would have gone out and shoo shot out the whole neighbourhood. Erm and really the only way I thought that I could prevent myself from doing anything like that was to kill myself in a very violent way because I
[Sue Jay:] N
[Nicky Campbell:] was so incensed, the way I felt.
[Sue Jay:] Nicola I I mean I I totally take your story on board but you are a nurse
[Nicky Campbell:] Yeah.
[Sue Jay:] and yo yo you understand about refusing medication.
[Nicky Campbell:] Yeah.
[Sue Jay:] Why did you carry on taking it?
[Nicky Campbell:] Erm, I hadn't actually felt that violent, I'd been having extremes of emotion all week erm, very high, very low, very very fearful, panic attacks which I'd never had before in my life.
[Sue Jay:] Did you associate with Prozac?
[Nicky Campbell:] I did yes. And I finally went back to my G P on the seventh day which was a Saturday in the morning, and he told me to carry on taking the drug. And within a few hours of taking it, that's when this happened to me. When I just felt that I was on the absolute fringe of going berserk. And I could have killed anybody. It wouldn't have mattered who, it could've been family, friends, neighbourhood, anybody. If I'd had a gun I would have done it.
[Sue Jay:] Listen, I can't go further into your story now, thank goodness it all ended happily and you got some
[Nicky Campbell:] Yeah.
[Sue Jay:] instant help. Isn't this is an extraordinary situation,n here is a nurse, a a you know a a kind caring woman, she takes a drug and yet she must be of all people the one person to say, I'm having a side effect.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] Yes that's true.
[Sue Jay:] And yet she still believes her doctor. Just like all of us do, still trusts him,
[Dr Simon Fradd:] Well I
[Sue Jay:] still takes it.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] I really do think that one of the things that I'm unhappy about this evening is that people are concerned that our profession isn't caring. I take on a board all the comments that are made here, I I think they do need investigation. What one doesn't know is what's due to the disease and what's due to the drug. What I do know is that there are thousands and thousands of people out there for whom life is intolerable, roughly ten a day actually succeed in killing themselves, how many more have a go we don't know.
[Donna:] Sue, can I, I need to ask him a question. A very important question. Is it that G Ps don't read the literature that comes with the drugs. I wanna know why G Ps don't inform their patients about what to expect
[Dr Simon Fradd:] Well
[Donna:] because I'll tell you what, I came off cold turkey, and I had the worst three days of my whole life. I had all my symptoms condensed into a horrendous anxiety, my head
[Dr Simon Fradd:] mm, mm
[Donna:] was spinning, I thought I was gonna jump off the roof, I rang my G P and said, you never told me I had to decrease this dose, hang on just get through the weekend, he never told me what to expect,an I I feel like suing him.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] We, we
[speaker002:] [clapping]
[Sue Jay:] I I've just been told I've just been told that our entire switchboard is totally lit up. One person has had bad side effects, the rest of our callers think it's wonderful.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] But can I just answer that because hopefully we do we do try to listen and we try to give you what information you're capable of taking at the time. If you're in a very distressed state you can't take. Fortunately now, the drugs have to be packaged with an information leaflet so that you keep looking at it again and again and again.
[Sue Jay:] Okay,gentle gentleman at the back there, he's got his hand up.
[Donna:] to read it.
[Sue Jay:] Hang on Donna.
[speaker002:] Yeah, this drug could've been developed and refined and er gone into a lot further, but they didn't. and the reason why they didn't is because the losses at the moment are acceptable. Profitability, that's what it's all down to. [clapping]
[Sue Jay:] Before before I come back to you Cosmo, before I come back to you
[speaker002:] I want to talk to Nicola. You wanted to say something Nicola.
[Nicky Campbell:] Yes I just wanted to say that, can I just say that within about three days of coming off the drug, all my symptoms of feeling violent, murderous, suicidal completely disappeared and they've never come back since, and all I've had since then is a dose of vitamin B six every day.
[Sue Jay:] So th you are in no doubt that that's was
[Nicky Campbell:] No doubt at all.
[speaker002:] Wh w when testing a new drug, you're trading off th th the the level of testing you can do, it takes about a hundred millions pounds to produce a new drug, it takes about ten years from test tube to getting a licence. So you can test it more thoroughly but in that case, A you put the costs up and B it takes longer before it gets actually, before patients get the benefits of it. So the big argument at present about th for example in other medications is that people are being treatment.
[Sue Jay:] Okay Vernon.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] The the the quality of drug company testing is abysmal. Much of the e well hang on a moment. Hang on a
[speaker002:] It fulfils regulations both the F D A you know.
[Sue Jay:] Never mind the regulations is it good enough?
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] The the quality of testing by drug companies is appalling. One in six patients in hospital in Britain are there because they've been made ill by doctors. One in six. That's that is a frightening statistic. Forty per cent of the people who take drugs suffer serious, sometimes lethal side effects. There are several quite simple explanations for this
[Dr Simon Fradd:] That's why you need newer and safer drugs.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Would you mind shutting up for a minute,
[Dr Simon Fradd:] No
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I'm fed up of
[Sue Jay:] Okay
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] these bloody apologies for drug companies, have you ever worked for a drug company?
[Dr Simon Fradd:] I d
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Have you ever received money from a drug company?
[Dr Simon Fradd:] Yes of course I have.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] You have? What do you mean yes of course I have, you have received money from a drug company.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] Yes I know about the drug industry.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] How much?
[Sue Jay:] He knows about
[Dr Simon Fradd:] I know about the drug industry, I do clinical trials, I do research for them.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] You d so you work for drug companies?
[Dr Simon Fradd:] Yes of course I do.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] So what the fucking hell are you doing here apologizing for apologizing for a drug.
[Sue Jay:] Completely uncalled for Vernon, completely uncalled for.
[speaker002:] You take it. Take it and come back here and let's see what you're like. And you take it. As well. I don't have to. You take the drug and see how you are. I have taken eight. You've taken it? That's fine. I've taken eight antidepressants over the last ten years, Prozac hasn't been one of them I must admit.
[Sue Jay:] Now listen, this is an interesting point, you've taken eight, and Cosmo people, people, and obviously she's had a lot of bad experiences we can't go into now, but people, people don't trust the drug companies because of all this long history and experiences.
[speaker002:] effect. Here we have someone shouting at us about the bad effects of the Prozac, they then tell us that haven't taken them. Now I've seen a lot of people who complain about taking drugs and the side effects they get, when you analyze it, you first of all find they haven't taken it, or they've taken five other drugs at the same time
[Sue Jay:] Now listen answer the question I asked you, answer the question I asked you, she has taken a lot of drugs in the past, not Prozac.
[speaker002:] Yes.
[Sue Jay:] But because of the bad experiences, when the drug companies have said for years, trust us, we've researched it, we've developed it, you know it's it passed the F D A rules, and then there's Atavan and Valium and all the things that we had Halcyon and there's a horror story at the end of the day. And now you have Prozac, why should we believe them this time?
[speaker002:] Well I think the drug industry and I don't represent them, but I think the drug industry
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] But you got money from them.
[speaker002:] Well you know
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] Have you have you done any work for this company?
[Sue Jay:] Vernon, Vernon I want the answer to this one.
[speaker002:] No I've never done any work for.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] You've never done any work on this particular product?
[Sue Jay:] Why should we trust them this time?
[speaker002:] I think thirty years down the line, Valium was developed in nineteen sixty one. Now we've had all the bad news. W w we're still having bad news but now we
[Sue Jay:] That's right
[speaker002:] learnt, we hope that we learn as we go along and that the same mistakes don't get made again. But a twenty years ago, twenty years ago falsify the testing results, I have that documentation This here, this here is thirteen hundred, the list is thirteen hundred deaths, thirteen hundred deaths due to Prozac. We're sitting in this room and we're hearing a lot of people who've had bad experiences with Prozac and other drugs. Twenty five per cent of people who take the drug have bad effects. That's a lot The drug companies say that. [clapping]
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] I'm terribly sorry madam, I'm terribly sorry madam, you might die if you take this drug Nobody's who's died has ever been depressed after they've taken
[Sue Jay:] Listen Vernon, Vernon
[speaker002:] has ever been killed by Prozac, and you know it Vernon.
[Dr Vernon Coleman:] The the drug company says
[Sue Jay:] Okay I'm gonna go back
[speaker002:] relationship between
[Sue Jay:] Okay Dr, Dr. Hush
[Dr Simon Fradd:] I'm very very concerned that we don't the. The th there may be an argument, and I don't know the details of what's being said here, and I certainly would not defend any sort of the highest level of enquiry. But if one sixth of patients are in hospital as a result of what we've done wrong, five sixths are there because we haven't managed to stop them being there. So don't let's forget that. Don't let's just say drugs are bad, because for every one that has a bad time, and some people have a terrible time, you say some people die, I accept that.
[Sue Jay:] Okay.
[Dr Simon Fradd:] But a lot of people come out feeling a hell of a lot better.
[Sue Jay:] Okay, I would like to thank everybody on this item who has taken part in the responsible bits of the debate. Thank you all very much.
[speaker002:] [clapping]