As seen here, from OpEdNews Part of a much larger and very extensively documented article.
According to Forest Laboratories Annual Report for the year ending March 31, 2006, the company's antidepressant franchise, consisting of Celexa and Lexapro, accounted for 68% of the company's sales.
But the flip-side of the coin is that Forest Labs is currently facing a wide variety of legal problems involving civil lawsuits and government investigations that could result in fines and damage awards that will off-set the profits from its top selling drugs for many years to come.
Celexa and Lexapro belong to the relatively new class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Celexa was developed by the Danish pharmaceutical firm, H. Lundbeck A/S and was introduced into the US market by Forest Laboratories and Parke-Davis in September 1998.
According to its Annual Report filed with the SEC on June 14, 2006, Forest Labs is a defendant in approximately 25 active product liability lawsuits, with most of the complaints alleging that Celexa or Lexapro caused or contributed to persons committing or attempting suicide.
"The suits," the Report states, "seek substantial compensatory and punitive damages."
Possibly unbeknownst to Forest, the company is set to be hit with the first Celexa birth defects lawsuit in Kentucky alleging that the company has engaged in "repeated and persistent fraud" by misrepresenting, concealing and otherwise failing to disclose, information concerning the safety and effectiveness of Celexa in treating pregnant women.
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According to Mr Kwok, “Forest Laboratories is selling the idea of a depression epidemic to doctors and women, creating a market for its antidepressant drugs, and then reaping billions of dollars in prescriptions."
"But they sure don’t put the same level of effort into the science of their drugs," he notes.
"We’re exposing the fact," he says, "that the drug company is putting profits ahead of safety.”
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There is definitely plenty of evidence to support Mr. Kwok's assertion that SSRI makers are selling the idea of an epidemic of depression. According to, "The Marketization of Depression: The Prescribing of SSRI Antidepressants to Women," by Janet Currie, in the May 2005, Women and Health Protection, "SSRIs are also among the highest selling of all drugs in an industry that has been consistently ranked as one of the most profitable in the United States for the past twenty years."
"Prior to the introduction of SSRIs," Ms Currie reports, "depression was considered to affect only 100 people per million."
"Since the introduction of SSRIs," she states, "prevalence rates for depression are now considered to be in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 cases per million (a 500 to 1,000 fold increase)."
"Twice as many psychotropic drugs," she notes, "are prescribed for women as for men, and this holds true for the SSRI antidepressants."
One of the more recent marketing schemes put into play to recruit new SSRI customers is the designation of "National Depression Screening Days," in the US and Canada with advertisements for free depression screenings at sites set up in local communities. Funding for this scheme is provided by all the usual suspects including Forest Labs, Eli Lilly, Glaxo, Pfizer and Wyeth.
In Ontario, Canada, Mamdani et al found “tremendous cost implications” due to the shift from older antidepressants to the new SSRIs and that antidepressant costs rose by an estimated 347% between 1993 to 2000.
“Prescriptions have been written for Celexa for women from all walks of life," Mr Kwok says, "from Medicare recipients to college students.”
"That meant a lot of pregnant women were taking it," he points out, "and doing so without all the information they needed to protect themselves.”
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Families seeking legal advice for infants born with birth defects to mothers who were prescribed Celexa during pregnancy can contact Robert Kwok & Associates, LLP at (713) 773-3380; http://www.kwoklaw.com/about.php
By Evelyn Pringle
(This article is written as part of a series on Celexa related litigation and is sponsored by Robert Kwok & Associated, LLP)
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