Latest news with #Risperdal
Wall Street Journal
15-05-2025
- Health
- Wall Street Journal
‘Unshrunk' Review: The Toll of the Treatment
For nearly 15 years, Laura Delano was, in her own words, a 'professional psychiatric patient.' She believed she had an incurable psychiatric disease that could be managed only with medication, therapy and the occasional hospitalization. Over the course of her long career as a patient, Ms. Delano was medicated with Seroquel, Geodon, Abilify, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Depakote, Topamax, Lamictal, Klonopin, Ativan, Ambien, Provigil, Prozac, Effexor, Celexa, Cymbalta, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, and lithium. So convinced of her condition was Ms. Delano that if anyone had handed her a memoir like the one she has now written, 'Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance,' she would have been insulted and outraged. Her story begins when she was 13 years old. A competitive squash player and the soon-to-be president of her eighth-grade class, Ms. Delano was brushing her teeth in front of a mirror one evening when she had a harrowing experience: The edges of her vision blurred; she felt a terrifying sense of disembodiment and fragmentation; and the figure in the mirror was no longer recognizable as her. The episode didn't last very long, but it left her with a profound sense of unease. Reflecting on it in bed later that night, Ms. Delano began to see herself from the outside. The view was unsettling. Convinced that her life was all fakery and mindless rule-following, she resolved to escape. What followed was a self-destructive spiral that went far beyond adolescent rebellion. Ms. Delano gives us an unsparing account of her alcoholism, cocaine abuse, eating disorders and episodes of self-harm. In the ninth grade, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given prescriptions for an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. Later came an antipsychotic and a drug to help her sleep. If anything, medication accelerated her decline. By age 19, when she was a sophomore at Harvard, she writes, 'I'd morphed from a raw, suffering, lost young woman . . . into a detached, absorbed, empathyless machine.' Ms. Delano marks her eventual turnaround at age 27 to a moment of profound revelation in a Vermont bookstore. That was where she encountered Robert Whitaker's 2010 book, 'Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.' The question Mr. Whitaker asked was simple: How is it possible that rates of mental illness have skyrocketed in parallel with the development of so many supposedly groundbreaking psychiatric drugs? Mr. Whitaker's book forced Ms. Delano to pose a question that had never before occurred to her. 'What if it wasn't treatment-resistant mental illness that had been sending me ever deeper into the depths of despair and dysfunction, but the treatment itself?'
Malaysian Reserve
24-04-2025
- Health
- Malaysian Reserve
J&J and Eli Lilly Concealed Breast Cancer Risks in Blockbuster Antipsychotics for Decades, Wisner Baum Lawsuit Alleges
ALAMEDA, Calif., April 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court alleges pharmaceutical giants Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly knowingly concealed evidence that their blockbuster antipsychotic medications Risperdal (risperidone) and Zyprexa (olanzapine) cause breast cancer. Attorneys from Wisner Baum filed the complaint on behalf of plaintiff Bridgett Brown, who was prescribed both brand-name and generic versions of Risperdal and Zyprexa. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in approximately 2024. This is the first lawsuit to allege that these antipsychotic drugs cause breast cancer. The complaint centers on the drugs' capacity to cause hyperprolactinemia—a hormonal imbalance directly tied to breast cancer development. Recent studies cited in the lawsuit show significant increased breast cancer risks: 62% increased breast cancer risk for high-prolactin drugs like Risperdal and 54% increased risk for medium-prolactin drugs like Zyprexa – A study of 540,737 women (Rahman, 2023) 59% increased breast cancer risk for Risperdal – A review of 15 studies conducted on over 1 million individuals (Bird, 2025) 47% increased breast cancer risk after 5+ years of exposure to prolactin-increasing antipsychotics like Risperdal and Zyprexa – A Swedish registry study of 132,061 women (Solmi, 2024) Atypical antipsychotic drugs were initially approved for treating severe schizophrenia. However, the lawsuit alleges the drug manufacturers broadened their customer bases by gaining approval for milder indications and promoting off-label use, including ADD in children and dementia in the elderly, generating billions in profits. 'These companies transformed narrow-use schizophrenia drugs into multi-billion-dollar per year blockbusters by targeting extremely vulnerable segments of our population, all while hiding a cancer risk they've known about for decades,' said Pedram Esfandiary, attorney for Ms. Brown. The lawsuit alleges that despite knowledge dating back to the 1990s connecting these drugs to hyperprolactinemia, drug labels denied any cancer risk, stating until 2025, 'neither clinical trials nor epidemiological studies conducted to date have shown an association between chronic administration of this class of drugs and tumorigenesis in humans.' 'The science has been clear on prolactin-elevating antipsychotics for decades,' said Monique Alarcon, attorney for Ms. Brown. 'These companies had a duty to inform; they failed, and now individuals nationwide are suffering the consequences. We intend to hold them accountable.' The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, alleging strict liability for failure to warn, negligence, and fraud. The case is Brown v. Johnson & Johnson et al (Case No. 25CV119808). Read the complaint here. The award-winning law firm of Wisner Baum has successfully litigated cases against many of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Since 1985, the firm has earned a reputation for breaking new legal ground, holding corporations accountable, influencing public policy, and raising public awareness on important safety issues. Using its longstanding tradition of success in the courtroom, the firm always strives to expose unsafe products or harmful practices to protect consumers from dangerous products. The firm has won over $4 billion in settlements and verdicts across all practice areas. MEDIA CONTACTSteve Crighton, steve@
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How Johnson & Johnson has somehow survived scandal after scandal
On Sept. 29, 1982, Mary Kellerman woke up feeling sick. The 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, asked her parents to stay home from school, and they gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule. She was dead a few hours later. The doctors assumed she'd died from a congenital heart condition or perhaps an aneurysm. But then six more people across the Chicagoland area, ranging in age from 19 to 35, also died the same day from mysterious circumstances. Before long, firefighters realized that all the deaths had one thing in common: Tylenol. After the bottles were scrutinized by a medical examiner, it was discovered they'd been laced with cyanide. The deaths became 'one of the most extensively covered news events since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy almost twenty years earlier,' writes Gardiner Harris in his new book, 'No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson' (Random House), out now. 'All three national networks made the poisonings the center of their broadcasts for weeks. Almost every newspaper in the country covered it through the fall, with more than one hundred thousand individual stories.' It was a scary time for consumers nationwide. But it was especially daunting for executives at Johnson & Johnson, one of the country's most beloved brands. 'Few American corporations have ever faced such a disaster,' writes Harris. Tylenol wasn't just a top seller for Johnson & Johnson; it was the company's most important and iconic product. 'Sales in 1982 were expected to approach $500 million and account for nearly 20% of its profits,' writes Harris. 'Now every major media organization on the planet was linking Tylenol with death. The company had to rescue the franchise, but how?' It didn't help that Chicago's own mayor, Jane Byrne, held a news conference imploring city residents to bring their Tylenol to the nearest police station. 'Don't take Tylenol,' she said, 'not even in tablet or liquid form.' It was, to say the least, the worst public relations moment imaginable. Johnson & Johnson was at a crossroads. Depending on how executives responded, it could either scare their loyal customers away forever or prove they were a company and a brand to be trusted. In the end, they managed to pull off the latter. Their response 'has long been seen as the most ethical, honest, and effective crisis reaction in American corporate history,' writes Harris. Johnson & Johnson has faced a lot of scandals over the years that could have (and in many cases, should have) destroyed them. From lawsuits claiming their antipsychotic drug Risperdal didn't warn about side effects like male breast growth, to a 2020 nationwide recall of their baby powder after evidence surfaced that it was contaminated with cancer-causing asbestos, to FDA restrictions of their COVID vaccine due to life-threatening blood clot risks. But it was the Tylenol scandal that would forever define the company. Before the poisonings, 'few people knew that Tylenol was made by Johnson & Johnson,' writes Harris. But after their response, polls found 'near universal recognition.' Last January, Fortune magazine ranked Johnson & Johnson as one of the most admired corporations in the world for the 23rd consecutive year. 'If there is a more American — quintessentially American — company than Johnson & Johnson, I do not know what it is,' Tyler Mathisen, a longtime CNBC anchor, told a network healthcare conference in May 2019. How did Johnson & Johnson not just survive but thrive after the Tylenol panic of 1982? First and foremost, they acted fast. J&J executives agreed to pull every Tylenol capsule on every store shelf—about 31 million bottles. 'It was the largest drug recall in history and cost J&J $100 million to manage,' writes Harris. They also quickly added protective seals to all new Tylenol products, with a plastic ring around the necks of pill bottles and a foil placed over the bottle's mouth. 'These measures were soon adopted by every over-the-counter drug manufacturer,' writes Harris. But while it appeared that the company was decisive and expeditious, they were actually well-prepared for this moment. 'In the previous three years, the company had received 300 complaints about contaminations,' writes Harris. Johnson & Johnson was already working on tamper-resistant packaging, so when the Tylenol poisonings happened. They also had something else that helped the company protect its public image: the most corrupt FDA commissioner in history. Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., who served as the FDA commissioner between 1981 and 1983, 'believed drug regulation should be a collaborative process,' writes Harris. His idea of collaboration involved bribes from drug companies. The Tylenol poisonings allowed him an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the medical drug behemoth. Hayes 'lost little time in publicly exonerating Johnson & Johnson,' writes Harris. 'FDA officials even took pains to tell reporters that the two lots linked to the poisonings were not being termed 'recalls,' which would imply a manufacturing defect.' There's no conclusive proof that J&J ever paid Hayes a dime during his time as FDA commissioner, 'but he spent much of the rest of his life (after retiring as commissioner) working for a public relations firm owned by a former top J&J executive,' writes Harris. When Johnson & Johnson relaunched Tylenol just a few months later, on Thanksgiving 1982, with tamper-resistant packaging, it was briefly the only over-the-counter medicine with the extra layer of safety, 'providing the product with a halo it never surrendered,' writes Harris. It wouldn't be the last time Tylenol became a headache (no pun intended) for the company. In 1994, Antonio Benedi, a former scheduler for President George H.W. Bush, sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming that he suffered liver failure after using Tylenol Extra Strength to treat the flu. The jury awarded him nearly $9 million in damages, and court documents found that 'Johnson & Johnson had known for years that moderate drinkers — a description that applies to most Americans — could suffer catastrophic liver damage from ordinary doses of Tylenol,' writes Harris. The trouble had started decades earlier, when J&J upped the amount of acetaminophen from 325 to 500 milligrams per pill to combat consumer belief that Tylenol, while safe, was less effective than other brands. The FDA was reluctant to add a liver warning on bottles, deeming it unnecessary. 'The agency said it didn't want people who were contemplating suicide to know the damage the drug could do,' Harris writes. The brand's avowed safety — its most iconic advertisement claimed it was the pain reliever 'hospitals use most' — was, ironically, what made it so deadly. A University of Pennsylvania study found that many patients who developed liver damage from Tylenol never bothered to read the recommended dosage as 'they thought the drug was so safe,' Harris writes. Despite the legal wrist slap, Johnson & Johnson emerged almost unscathed and today is still one of the largest and most trusted healthcare companies in the world. The 1982 Tylenol poisoning has become a case study for students at Harvard Business School, which 'used to teach thousands of executives-in-training that if they do the right thing even at considerable expense, customers will reward them,' Harris writes. Even within the J&J inner ranks, a belief has solidified that 'the company was a uniquely beneficial force for good in the world.' They had a level of trust from consumers that was 'all but impossible to degrade,' Harris writes. It was, he adds, 'Corporate gaslighting on an epic scale.'
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Book Review: 'No More Tears' scrutinizes the legacy of health giant Johnson & Johnson
Health care giant Johnson & Johnson is one of the most well-known and respected brands, and its response to the 1982 tampering of Tylenol bottles that killed seven people is held up in business schools as a model. But in 'No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson,' veteran reporter Gardiner Harris uses his investigative skills to scrutinize the legacy of the company, as well as that of federal regulators. What he unveils is a damning portrait. It's a story that Harris writes 'has been hiding in plain sight for a very long time," but his comprehensively reported and researched book goes much further. Harris takes a deeper dive in looking at Johnson & Johnson's history, including the story behind the litigation against the company that it settled for billions of dollars over its baby powder containing talc powder. He details a litany of controversies involving the company ranging from the effects of its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal to the company's role in the nation's opioid crisis. But Harris doesn't spare others from scrutiny or criticism with his book. Namely, he focuses on what he calls the false mythology of the Food and Drug Administration, detailing times when the agency fell short of protecting consumers. He also trains his eye on the American media itself, noting ways that reporters at times portrayed the FDA's actions against drugmakers as tougher than they really were. Harris' book provides a valuable history that's not limited to Johnson & Johnson, and helps for a broader understanding of today's health care system. ___ AP book reviews: Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press
Associated Press
07-04-2025
- Health
- Associated Press
Book Review: ‘No More Tears' scrutinizes the legacy of health giant Johnson & Johnson
Health care giant Johnson & Johnson is one of the most well-known and respected brands, and its response to the 1982 tampering of Tylenol bottles that killed seven people is held up in business schools as a model. But in 'No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson,' veteran reporter Gardiner Harris uses his investigative skills to scrutinize the legacy of the company, as well as that of federal regulators. What he unveils is a damning portrait. It's a story that Harris writes 'has been hiding in plain sight for a very long time,' but his comprehensively reported and researched book goes much further. Harris takes a deeper dive in looking at Johnson & Johnson's history, including the story behind the litigation against the company that it settled for billions of dollars over its baby powder containing talc powder. He details a litany of controversies involving the company ranging from the effects of its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal to the company's role in the nation's opioid crisis. But Harris doesn't spare others from scrutiny or criticism with his book. Namely, he focuses on what he calls the false mythology of the Food and Drug Administration, detailing times when the agency fell short of protecting consumers. He also trains his eye on the American media itself, noting ways that reporters at times portrayed the FDA's actions against drugmakers as tougher than they really were. Harris' book provides a valuable history that's not limited to Johnson & Johnson, and helps for a broader understanding of today's health care system. ___
