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Part 3: “I’VE LOST SO MUCH” How Abilify became the best-selling drug in America

“Works like a thermostat”



David Healy is a medical doctor, the author of Pharmageddon, and an outspoken critic of the psychopharmaceutical industry. He also is a practicing psychiatrist and he does prescribe neuroleptics to his patients. But, he cautions, “The drugs are tranquilizers, and they were originally called tranquilizers. They are not curative.

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“I’VE LOST SO MUCH” How Abilify became the best-selling drug in America Part 1: “Psychiatry has destroyed my life" Part 2: A medicinal lobotomy Part 3: “Works like a thermostat” Part 4: “Chemically lobotomized" “In a low dose they can take the edge off, they can make you less preoccupied, you can get less stereotyped behavior, less stereotyped thinking, and it really only takes a very very low dose. And if a low dose doesn’t really do it, a high dose couldn’t do it either. What it may do is just the opposite, because it controls your behavior and prevents you from doing anything.” Doctor Healy emphasized the need to start patients on a low dose of the drug and carefully monitor its effects, discontinuing the drug if the desired effects are not achieved. “You really want to be sure that you’re getting the effect that you want, that is they are making them less preoccupied, less stereotyped.” Unfortunately, this nuanced approach, in which the benefits of these drugs are carefully monitored and balanced against the risks, is not the model which is always followed. Today, antipsychotic drugs are a $22-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Massive amounts of these drugs have been prescribed to elderly patients in nursing homes, children in foster care, and prisoners. They’ve even been handed out to clients in homeless shelters. These drugs have been touted as treatment for senile dementia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, and more. The history of Abilify (aripiprazole) is instructive in this regard. This drug was developed by Otsuka Pharmaceuticals and marketed in the United States in collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Abilify is a relative latecomer to the market, first approved by the FDA for use in psychotic patients in 2002. Two years later, the FDA granted approval for use in acute manic and mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder. Magazine advertisements for Abilify claimed the product “works like a thermostat to restore balance.” In 2007, the United States Department of Justice announced that Bristol-Myers had agreed to pay $515 million to settle a variety of claims of illegal marketing of its products, including allegations that the company illegally promoted the off-label use of Abilify for children and adolescents as well as for elderly patients suffering from dementia-related psychosis – despite a 2005 FDA black-box warning that elderly patients taking Abilify were at an increased risk of death. Soon after that, Bristol-Myers Squibb began efforts to expand into an entirely new market. Next: Part 4: “Chemically lobotomized” List of Sources
  1. Healy, D. 2012. Pharmageddon. University of California Press.
  2. Hyman, S.E. 2012. Revolution stalled. Science Translational Medicine 4:1-5.
  3. Lacasse, J.R. and J. Leo 2006. Questionable advertising of psychotropic medications and disease mongering.
  4. United States Department of Justice 2007. Bristol-Myers Squibb to Pay More Than $515 Million to Resolve Allegations of Illegal Drug Marketing and Pricing.
  5. FDA 2005. Increased mortality in patients with dementia-related psychosis.


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Patrick D Hahn -- Bio and Archives

Patrick D Hahn is the author of Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide, and Violence (Samizdat Health Writer’s Cooperative) and Madness and Genetic Determinism: Is Mental Illness in Our Genes? (Palgrave MacMillan). Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland.



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