What Exactly Was Cho Seung-Hui On?

from the Mother Jones Magazine blog

The Times reported that Cho Seung-Hui was taking a psychoactive medication. What was he on? Was it an antidepressant? No doubt antidepressants save lives, but they also cause side effects. Psychiatrists know they trigger mania, exacerbate delusional thinking, and agitate suicidal tendencies. In short, they can push troubled people over the edge.

For obvious reasons, it's kinda hard to clinically research any link between antidepressants and shootings. But I'm certainly not the first person to notice one. For example, the wife of comedian Phil Hartman was on Zoloft when she killed herself and him. Most notoriously, Eric Harris of Columbine was on Luvox.

For more common violent crimes, antidepressant manufacturers years ago actually teamed up with district attorneys to make sure the Zoloft defense didn't fly. As Rob Waters reported:

In the early 1990s, Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, started the practice of aiding district attorneys who were prosecuting defendants who blamed the drug for their acts of violence. Lawyers for Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, later created a “prosecutor’s manual” for the same purpose.

The Zoloft manual itself is a closely held secret -- and Pfizer has fought hard to keep it that way.

In 2001, a widow sued Pfizer because her husband shot and killed himself after six days on Zoloft. Her lawyers discovered in Pfizer’s records a reference to a document called “prosecutor’s manual,” and requested a copy.

Pfizer fought the request, claiming it was privileged information between the company and its attorneys. The judge allowed the manual to be introduced -- noting it was designed to prevent “harm to Pfizer’s reputation” if a defendant successfully raised “a Zoloft causation defense” -- but he agreed to thereafter seal the manual and keep it out of the public record.

James Hooper, an attorney for Pfizer, says that “in rare cases” the company’s attorneys have provided the manual to prosecutors if a defendant “is attempting to blame some sort of criminal behavior on the medicine."

Here is the link to the article Prosecuting for Pharma: Antidepressant manufacturers team up with district attorneys to make sure the Zoloft defense doesn’t fly.