CBS Attacks Amgen for Not Distributing Drug
Drug
companies cant catch a break on TV news shows. After months of
media complaints about companies selling allegedly unsafe medicines
such as Vioxx, the September 11 edition of 60 Minutes included a
segment that attacked a drug company for not distributing a
potentially dangerous drug used in an experimental treatment.
Less than a month ago, CBS sang a different tune. The
August 15 Evening News was criticizing the safety of medical
studies, saying a recent death exposed weaknesses in a system that
many are now pushing to change, according to reporter Sharyl
Attkisson.
The 60 Minutes story did just the opposite,
highlighting complaints from patients in the study who wanted it to
continue. The piece was a typical network lawsuit story, telling the
tale through the eyes of the plaintiff and making the defendant
Amgen look like the bad guys in keeping with a trend found in a
Business & Media Institute study.
Lesley Stahl began the segment with this dramatic
introduction: Say you got an incurable disease and went on
medication that you believed was making you better? Imagine the
anguish if the company that made the medication took it away from
you?
She followed with more than 12 minutes of a largely
one-sided story about Amgen ending a test for a new drug to aid
sufferers of Parkinsons disease. As Bob Suthers, one of the test
patients, complained of Amgen, What they did was unconscionable.
They they took hope away from us.
Stahl was persistent in her comments about the company
agreeing to continue providing the drug, even though all of the test
subjects had signed contracts saying they understood that Amgen
might discontinue the test. Aware of the company's fear of
liability, the patients have made assurances they will never sue
Amgen.
She questioned why the company would not give in to
patients requests, asking bioethicist Arthur Caplan, Even if these
particular patients promise, write every kind of legal contract that
they will hold Amgen, the company, liable, even if they give away
every chance they have to come back and sue?
Caplan didnt give her the answer she appeared to be
seeking. Instead he made a point that Stahl didnt grasp: The
companies don't believe them. We're in a litigious society to the
point where people will say, That won't be worth anything. You
can't waive your rights to sue me. Stahl failed to connect the
fact that the patients had already made an agreement with Amgen that
allowed for the company to end the test and they were suing because
they didnt like the result.
Stahl hammered her point a third time: Even though
they all signed a consent form acknowledging the company could stop
the experiment, they hired attorney Alan Milstein to argue that the
decision about continuing the drug should be in the hands of the
principle investigators, the patients' own doctors, not the
company. That statement underlined Caplans point that You can't
waive your rights to sue, though Stahl never connected the dots.
The report also included an interview with neurologist
John Slevin, from the University of Kentucky, who was convinced that
the drug actually works for Parkinsons, despite warnings from a
recent study of possible damage to patients. Slevin spoke highly of
the drug. According to Stahl, He took his evidence to the FDA.
Slevin said the FDA was OK with its use. What the FDA told us, they
didn't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to continue
having the drug as long as things were being monitored, he said.
That assessment ignored both legal realities and
reporting even on CBSs own Evening News. In the August 19
broadcast, Anthony Mason pointed out how expensive the Vioxx
decision could be. This was just the first of 4,200 Vioxx-related
suits filed against the company, and estimates are that together,
they could cost Merck tens of billions of dollars. Vioxx had been
approved by the FDA.
Despite this, Stahl persisted, asking Slevin, Still,
Amgen wouldn't do it? When he said no, she responded, Ooh, you
must have been so frustrated.
Stahl went on to discuss one patients theory that the
drug had been discontinued because Amgen wanted a new delivery
method. The method used in the drug trial involved a combination of
having two pumps inserted into the patients abdomen, along with
holes drilled in his head to install a catheter. Stahl pointed out
that the patient couldnt afford that method. She even tracked down
a video of a speech by Amgen's vice president of research, Roger
Perlmutter, where he said the method was unrealistic. Still, she
continued to paint Amgen in a negative light.
She capped this revelation with the fact that Amgen had
filed for a new patent for the drug that included other delivery
methods including an encapsulated form. In other words, Stahl went
to great lengths to prove that a drug company might try to make a
pill form of a medicine.
