Documents missing from a 10 year old murder case sent to the BMJ
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《英国医生杂志》
The BMJ has been given a set of documents that mysteriously went missing from a US mass murder case 10 years ago. The killer was taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor at the time of the murders.
The internal drug company documents marked "Confidential," which were sent to the BMJ by an anonymous source, indicate a link between a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and a side effect, known as the "activation syndrome," which includes agitation, mania, and hostility.
The BMJ has offered to turn the documents over to officials of the Food and Drug Administration, but no one at the FDA was available to comment as the BMJ went to press.
The documents were sent to the BMJ as a federal circuit court judge ruled on 3 December that Pfizer must turn over internal research documents to the defence counsel for a boy charged with murdering his grandparents.
Christopher Pittman, aged 15, started taking sertraline several weeks before killing his grandparents. A judge has ruled that Pfizer must hand over documents about the drug to the boy's lawyer
Credit: MARY ANN CHASTAIN/AP
Christopher Pittman, aged 12 at the time of the killings, confessed that in November 2001 he used a shotgun to shoot first his grandfather and then his grandmother as they slept. He then set fire to the home and fled in the family car. He is to be tried as an adult and has been in prison for the past three years awaiting trial. He faces life imprisonment.
Several weeks before the killings he was started on the antidepressant sertraline, and his dose was doubled just two days before the killings.
The FDA recently sent a letter to drug companies with a template to use for warning about the dangers of antidepressants in children. The effects listed by the FDA included agitation, panic attacks, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia, and mania.
A Pfizer spokesman, Bryant Haskins, said that both Pfizer and the FDA opposed efforts to make the documents public because they "contain anecdotal information" that is "not relevant to this case," according to an article in the 3 December issue of the Herald of Rock Hill, South Carolina (www.heraldonline.com/).
The FDA told the BMJ that it could not comment on cases involving pending litigation.
One of Christopher Pittman's attorneys, Karen Barth Menzies of Los Angeles, told the BMJ that Pfizer's documents were important because they showed that some of Pfizer's own scientists had expressed concern that sertraline could cause violence.
Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist who served as the scientific expert in a review of over 100 cases of murder and suicide allegedly related to the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), told the BMJ that the newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors cause an "activation syndrome" that is similar to the effect of amphetamines and that their dangers are akin to the dangers of street drugs. "Why do we think that simply because a doctor prescribes a medication they lose their dangerous effects?" he said.(Jeanne Lenzer)
The internal drug company documents marked "Confidential," which were sent to the BMJ by an anonymous source, indicate a link between a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and a side effect, known as the "activation syndrome," which includes agitation, mania, and hostility.
The BMJ has offered to turn the documents over to officials of the Food and Drug Administration, but no one at the FDA was available to comment as the BMJ went to press.
The documents were sent to the BMJ as a federal circuit court judge ruled on 3 December that Pfizer must turn over internal research documents to the defence counsel for a boy charged with murdering his grandparents.
Christopher Pittman, aged 15, started taking sertraline several weeks before killing his grandparents. A judge has ruled that Pfizer must hand over documents about the drug to the boy's lawyer
Credit: MARY ANN CHASTAIN/AP
Christopher Pittman, aged 12 at the time of the killings, confessed that in November 2001 he used a shotgun to shoot first his grandfather and then his grandmother as they slept. He then set fire to the home and fled in the family car. He is to be tried as an adult and has been in prison for the past three years awaiting trial. He faces life imprisonment.
Several weeks before the killings he was started on the antidepressant sertraline, and his dose was doubled just two days before the killings.
The FDA recently sent a letter to drug companies with a template to use for warning about the dangers of antidepressants in children. The effects listed by the FDA included agitation, panic attacks, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia, and mania.
A Pfizer spokesman, Bryant Haskins, said that both Pfizer and the FDA opposed efforts to make the documents public because they "contain anecdotal information" that is "not relevant to this case," according to an article in the 3 December issue of the Herald of Rock Hill, South Carolina (www.heraldonline.com/).
The FDA told the BMJ that it could not comment on cases involving pending litigation.
One of Christopher Pittman's attorneys, Karen Barth Menzies of Los Angeles, told the BMJ that Pfizer's documents were important because they showed that some of Pfizer's own scientists had expressed concern that sertraline could cause violence.
Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist who served as the scientific expert in a review of over 100 cases of murder and suicide allegedly related to the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), told the BMJ that the newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors cause an "activation syndrome" that is similar to the effect of amphetamines and that their dangers are akin to the dangers of street drugs. "Why do we think that simply because a doctor prescribes a medication they lose their dangerous effects?" he said.(Jeanne Lenzer)