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By
Kelly Patricia O'Meara
The kid spoke unsteadily:
"I was sitting on a hill outside the school eating lunch
with my best friend when Eric Harris came over and started
shooting me. I was shot between seven and 13 times. No one
really knows the exact number because there were so many bullet
tracks. Most of the bullets just went right through me. After
I was shot I just lay there, playing dead, and could see others
being shot."
These are the recollections
of 19-year-old Mark Taylor, who spent nearly two months in
the hospital and has endured three years of follow-up operations
for the gunshot wounds he received during the murderous 1999
rampage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High
School in Littleton, Colo.
Taylor slowly is
recovering from his wounds and, in an effort to bring attention
to what he believes was the cause of Harris' deadly rage,
has filed a lawsuit against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., the
manufacturer of Luvox (Fluvoxamine), the antidepressant that
Harris had been prescribed and was taking at the time of the
shooting spree. Despite the deadly assault against him, Taylor's
perception of the young men who nearly killed him is surprising.
Taylor tells Insight,
"I'm suing Solvay because I believe that Eric Harris
did what he did because of this drug. I didn't personally
know Eric, but I knew him as one of the 'Trench Coat Mafia.'
Everybody thought Eric and Dylan were the nicest people. My
cousin, who was in Eric's class, told me that Eric and Dylan
used to bring her flowers and cookies. Eric was forced onto
these drugs and I feel sorry for him, like so many other kids
who are put on these drugs. I don't have ill feelings against
him since I don't think you can hold him accountable, because
he didn't know what he was doing." Taylor's lawsuit against
Solvay claims that the mind-altering drug Luvox was the cause
of Harris' rampage - that the drug made Harris manic and psychotic.
Luvox is in a class
of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
(SSRIs) that interact with the serotonergic system in the
brain, as do Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil. Street drugs that interact
with the serotonergic system include LSD and Ecstasy. The
Food and Drug Administration approved Luvox in 1997 for treatment
of obsessive-compulsive disorder in children, but not for
treatment of depression.
The Physicians
Desk Reference (PDR) records that, during controlled clinical
trials of Luvox, manic reactions developed in 4 percent of
children. Mania is defined as "a form of psychosis characterized
by exalted feelings, delusions of grandeur ... and overproduction
of ideas." Court records show that the prescription for
Harris had been filled 10 times between April 1998 and March
1999, and that three-and-a-half months before the shooting
the dose had been increased - a common thread many experts
say they are finding prior to adverse reactions to psychotropic
drugs. The autopsy on Harris revealed a "therapeutic
level" of Luvox in his system.
Other school shooters
on antidepressants at the time of their attacks include 15-year-old
Kip Kinkel who, while on Prozac, killed his parents and then
proceeded to school where he opened fire on classmates, killing
two and wounding 22 others; 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush, on
"antidepressants" when she wounded one student at
Bishop Neumann High School in Williamsport, Pa.; and 18-year-old
Jason Hoffman, on Effexor and Celexa when he wounded one teacher
and three students at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon,
Calif.
The medical histories
of scores of "school shooters" have not been revealed,
allegedly to protect the minor child. Ann Blake Tracy is a
consultant in Taylor's lawsuit and director of the International
Coalition for Drug Awareness. She holds a doctorate in biological
psychology and is a specialist in what she believes are the
adverse reactions to SSRI medications. She says Luvox caused
Harris to go on the Columbine shooting spree and thinks the
medical history of children who commit violent acts in school
should be made public.
"Suing Solvay
for the injuries Mark Taylor suffered is one of the biggest
SSRI suits we'll ever see," Tracy says. "It's a
pivotal case because what happened at Columbine was so big.
It's really crazy when you think about it. All you have to
do is read the Luvox package insert to see that Eric's actions
were due to an adverse reaction to this drug. Show me a drug
anywhere that has listed mania and psychosis as frequent adverse
reactions. That is what the insert says for Luvox. There is
no doubt in my mind that Luvox caused Eric Harris to commit
these acts."
The PDR lists adverse
reactions of Luvox to the nervous system as:
"FREQUENT:
amnesia, apathy, hyperkinesis, hypokinesis, manic reaction,
myoclonus, psychotic reaction;
"INFREQUENT:
agoraphobia, akathisia, CNS depression, convulsion, delirium,
delusion, depersonalization, drug dependence, emotional
liability, euphoria, hallucinations, hostility, hysteria,
incoordination, increased salivation, increased libido,
paralysis, paranoid reaction, phobia, psychosis, sleep disorder,
stupor, twitching, vertigo."
Tracy continues,
"Beyond the adverse reactions listed about Luvox, one
of the first clues I had that these boys were on antidepressants
was when it was made public that Eric [Harris] and Dylan Klebold
had both been in anger-management classes. Anger-management
classes equal antidepressants. Unfortunately, Dylan Klebold's
medical records have been sealed, so there's no way of knowing
what if anything he was on, but it makes sense that if he
was in anger-management classes he was prescribed some antidepressant."
The problem, Tracy
concludes, "is that this is a public-safety issue. So
why is everything kept so secret, under lock and key? This
information should be made available to the public so that
people can learn from it and maybe we can stop this kind of
tragedy from happening in the future. We've got a nightmare
on our hands with these drugs, an absolute nightmare. We've
got kids on these drugs that are ticking time bombs in every
school in America. Most of these drugs are not approved for
children, but it doesn't stop doctors from prescribing them.
Laws should be passed requiring that this medical information
be made public. And states should demand toxicology reports
for drugs of this kind in all murders and suicides."
Donald Marks specializes
in internal medicine, has a doctorate in microbiology and
has worked in pharmaceutical research for more than a decade
in the area of drug safety and clinical research. Marks was
brought into the Solvay lawsuit as an expert by Taylor and
is not surprised that there may be a causal relationship between
Luvox and Harris' murderous behavior. Marks also testified
in a Wyoming case last year involving a murder related to
the SSRI Paxil in which the defendant won an $8 million judgment
against GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Paxil.
As part of the
Columbine lawsuit, Taylor claims that Solvay failed to warn
adequately of the risks and adverse reactions associated with
Luvox, and Marks provides a preliminary expert opinion to
the court stating that Solvay "acted in an unreasonable
manner" by failing to provide adequate warnings of the
adverse reactions to the drug. The Marks opinion continues:
"In view of the evidence of a strong and likely causal
relationship between SSRI medications, of which Luvox is one,
and akathisia/suicide/homicide, Solvay should only have marketed
this drug with prominent warnings and cautionary statements."
U.S. District Court
Judge Clarence Brimmer has accepted Marks' preliminary report,
allowing the case to go forward and giving the expert access
to information that has been held under lock and key in a
vault in Denver since the Columbine shooting. Marks tells
Insight that "the preliminary report was based on what
I know from past cases, because I haven't been allowed to
examine information about Mr. Harris or anyone who knew him.
The information has been locked in a room in Denver, and I
haven't been allowed in the room until now."
According to Marks,
"The real problem is that physicians, of which I am one,
are not told that there is a potential for a causal relationship
between these drugs and homicide and suicide. Therefore we're
not educated to look for the kinds of adverse reactions that
could herald this kind of event. That's why proper warnings
about such drugs are so essential. I'm in the process of updating
my report for the court, but my preliminary impression from
looking at the material is that there very well could be a
causal relationship here, that this drug could have been a
factor that tipped Harris from being a troubled teen to a
murderer."
Marks says, "In
the report, I talk about the adverse-event profiles of other
SSRI medications and how, in the context of rules of evidence,
a statement of general causation could be made for all SSRI
medications and how it could be applied to Luvox. The neuro-psychiatric-event
profiles of the SSRI drugs are clearly associated with seizures
and psychosis. Some have been associated with hypoglycemia,
suicide and homicide. So it's not entirely implausible that
one additional member of this class, like Luvox, would have
those same effects."
The fact that the
court has allowed the case to go forward is a good sign for
Taylor, but there have been some very strange developments.
Lincoln, Neb., attorney John DeCamp, who now represents Taylor
against Solvay, tells Insight that "two days after I
took the case, Solvay pulled Luvox from the market. I don't
know if my coming on the case had any bearing on them pulling
the drug, but it is interesting." Solvay announced that
the drug was being removed temporarily from the U.S. market
to revise data about how Luvox is manufactured.
Another interesting
twist involves families pulling out of the lawsuit. "I
am very reliably informed," DeCamp says, "and I'm
satisfied that the people telling me this aren't lying, that
at the settlement conference families were informed that a
Colorado law that applies both in federal and state court
says: 'If you lose, you pay.' These families were told that
if they continued to sue and lost the case they would be sued
in return and they'd lose their homes, cars and everything
for the rest of their lives. So if you were one of these families
what would you do?"
According to DeCamp,
"My client is basically judgment-proof. In other words,
Mark doesn't have anything. The other families didn't settle,
they just dropped out of the suit - they were basically told
that they were going to lose and, when it was over, the pharmaceutical
companies were going to own their lives. It's fair to say
that my client was presented with this argument, but he doesn't
have anything."
The lawyer continues,
"It's also interesting in this case that there's more
security to keep related evidence from surfacing than there
is to get into the White House or Fort Knox. I have never,
in 35 years practicing law, seen its like. There's been more
evidence gathered than you can even imagine - things that
I hope one day will be made public. I stated in court that
if ever there was a monumental event this is it and the information
that is locked in this room should be made public. History
will be very unforgiving if that doesn't happen."
But the foremost
question in the minds of experts on adverse reactions to SSRIs
is whether history is just repeating itself. Recent court
decisions, however, may be useful in Taylor's case against
Solvay.
In April 2001,
then 16-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to Wahluke High
School in Washington state and took 23 classmates and a teacher
hostage. Baadsgaard was held in jail for 14 months. Based
on expert testimony by psychiatrists about the adverse reactions
to the drugs he was taking, he finally was released from jail
under community supervision for five years. Baadsgaard has
no memory of his violent actions toward his classmates, which
took place exactly 21 days after he had been cold-turkeyed
off Paxil and switched to a high dose of Effexor (an SSRI)
to treat "situational depression."
Cory's father,
Jay Baadsgaard, says, "The morning that Cory went to
school and did what he did, my wife and I just knew that it
had to be something with the drugs. That morning he had taken
about 300 milligrams of Effexor, and I thought it was something
about him going off one of the drugs and then the high dose
of the other. One of Cory's friends told us that Cory was
yelling and then he just stopped, looked down and saw the
gun in his hand and woke up."
There is no doubt
that Cory is lucky not to have gone further, says his father,
"and I guess I could blame myself for having the gun
available, but if I'd known then just what these drugs could
do it would have been the drugs that would not have been in
our home. They always talk about how the kids who do these
things are the ones who get picked on by the jocks and stuff,
but Cory was a jock. He was on the varsity basketball team,
played football and golf, and was very popular in school.
I pray every night that the media will get ahold of this issue.
If Cory had been on PCP the media would say 'Oh, he needs
drug rehabilitation,' but because these were prescribed medications
they say 'Oh, it can't be that,' but now we know it can be."
Taylor hopes his
lawsuit against Solvay will make people aware of the dangerous
side effects of such drugs. "Someone," he says,
"has to do something about these drugs, because too many
people are dying."
Insight
Magazine September 2, 2002
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