Student kills herself after signing up for medical trial.

Melkor · Post by **Melkor** » 2004-04-02 04:10pm

Click here for your years dose of massive stupidity.

I don't know I've ever been more disgusted in my life.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-04-02 04:33pm

Goddamn, what a shame.

CrimsonRaine · Post by **CrimsonRaine** » 2004-04-02 04:43pm

You know, when discussing religion with my father, he once said to me, "Sometimes shit just happens. It's not for any reason, there's no divine intervention. It just happens."

Crimson Raine

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2004-04-02 04:45pm

Sounds to me like her 'strong belief' was because she had nothing else in her life. Something she felt or saw during her withdrawl was more than her belief could shield her from. When her faith broke, so did she.

Poor little butterfly............

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-04-02 04:49pm

It's a terrible tragedy, but hardly unforeseeable. There has been vocal and growing opposition to the use of antidepressant drugs because of precisely these kinds of side effects and mood swings, even suicides and homicides. Mind you, her silly belief that it couldn't possibly go bad because God was guiding her didn't help, but the primary problem here is the reckless manipulation of neurotransmitters for questionable benefit.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2004-04-02 05:28pm

Darth Wong wrote:It's a terrible tragedy, but hardly unforeseeable. There has been vocal and growing opposition to the use of antidepressant drugs because of precisely these kinds of side effects and mood swings, even suicides and homicides. Mind you, her silly belief that it couldn't possibly go bad because God was guiding her didn't help, but the primary problem here is the reckless manipulation of neurotransmitters for questionable benefit.

Exactly. Pharmacutical companies in the US are making multi-billion dollar profits off of America's need to drug the blues away, while at the same time our prisons are are overstuffed with drug offenders. JUst because it comes from the doctor does not mean it's good for you, amphetamines and valium were over-prescribed in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and hordes of addicts were created because of it.
Now, if you aren't happy and smiling all the time, you need a pill.

Anyhoo...
The fact that Lilly ignored clear signs of trouble, that this drug was developed to replace an expiring patent, and the desperation of the girl who killed herself all make this story nauseating in the extreme.

Symmetry · Post by **Symmetry** » 2004-04-02 06:02pm

Darth Wong wrote:It's a terrible tragedy, but hardly unforeseeable. There has been vocal and growing opposition to the use of antidepressant drugs because of precisely these kinds of side effects and mood swings, even suicides and homicides. Mind you, her silly belief that it couldn't possibly go bad because God was guiding her didn't help, but the primary problem here is the reckless manipulation of neurotransmitters for questionable benefit.

I'll agree that suicides among people are hardly unforeseeable, but not for that reason. The highest suicide risk associated with depression is shortly after symptoms appear, but the second highest is when the syptoms are going away. People who are in the midst of depression are often to depressed to actually go about killing themselves, and it is only at certain times that a persons motivation to kill themselves is matched by their ability to "take up arms against the sea of troubles" as Hamlet put it.

Because of this, even if antidepressants work perfectly there will be an increased risk of suicide associated with them. Given, the drug she was taking seemed to have a lot of problems apart from the risk of suicide

Melkor · Post by **Melkor** » 2004-04-03 12:27am

Lilly assured stockholders that the suicide would not delay the drug's release later this year. The company also reported Johnson's earlier pill-swallowing episode to the FDA and the scientists who were studying duloxetine for Lilly.

This part ticks me off to no end. They musn't let a little thing like a young womans suicide get in the way of their release date.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-04-03 12:36am

Would it be calous for me to admit that I find the description of the Bible 'college' more disturbing than the girl's actual suicide?

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-04-03 12:50am

Yes, it would be. Someone is dead, but you're more bothered by a religious institution.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2004-04-03 12:51am

Howedar wrote:Yes, it would be. Someone is dead, but you're more bothered by a religious institution.

No, I am bothered by the discription of the behaivour inside this 'institution'.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2004-04-03 02:00am

Crown wrote:Would it be calous for me to admit that I find the description of the Bible 'college' more disturbing than the girl's actual suicide?

I'm having difficulty deciding exactly what it is that disturbs me most about that article. It's a fucked up story any way you slice it.

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 2004-04-03 03:26am

Why wasnt the clinic doing daily psychological evaluation to begin with? It seems to me that if your testing a anti-depressant drug, the patients state of mind would be under close examination.

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2004-04-03 11:20am

*Why* is the whole bit about religion added to this article? Am I supposed to feel moved? I don't.

I can empathise about the college tuition and why she would have signed up for the clinical trial; 150 clams a day for 49 days is pretty good money for a college student.

And what Macross said.

Ravenwing · Post by **Ravenwing** » 2004-04-03 11:43am

Crown wrote:Would it be calous for me to admit that I find the description of the Bible 'college' more disturbing than the girl's actual suicide?

Oh good im not the only one

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-04-03 11:54am

EmperorMing wrote:*Why* is the whole bit about religion added to this article? Am I supposed to feel moved? I don't.

99% of the time when religion is thrown in it's to bring in sympathy for the victim by making the person look like a perfect person with no problems because she sits around waiting for her god to make everything better for her. Most Americans have the "Godly=Good" mentality, so showing her as coming from a deeply religious family and going to a ultra-religious college makes her look like an old time saint, complete with a premature halo. Thus the company is doubly evil for killing a girl whose only goal in life was to be a preacher's wife.

It's like every time some guy goes on a murderous rampage and you get the inevitable comments from the friends and neighbors, "But he was such a good chuchgoing man! He was always praying and helping with the church; I don't understand why he killed all those people."

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2004-04-03 12:01pm

Ravenwing wrote:
Crown wrote:Would it be calous for me to admit that I find the description of the Bible 'college' more disturbing than the girl's actual suicide?
Oh good im not the only one

Ditto.

GlaxoSmithKline? Wasn't that name mentioned in John Grisham's novel, The King of Torts?

This stuff is really sad. A dead girl, amoral company pushing with their stuff, not caring a single bit, only wanting money despite the dangers. And the worst thing is that this stuff isn't rare.

Now I'm wondering. Why do anti-depressants increase the chance of suicide?

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2004-04-03 01:50pm

EmperorMing wrote:*Why* is the whole bit about religion added to this article? Am I supposed to feel moved? I don't.

You're a heartless bastard if that part didn't move you.

Sad story, but nothing especially tragic. Worse things happen.

sketerpot · Post by **sketerpot** » 2004-04-03 04:06pm

EmperorMing wrote:*Why* is the whole bit about religion added to this article? Am I supposed to feel moved? I don't.

Personally, I thought it made a good touch, enhancing the intensely disturbing atmosphere that pervaded the entire article. The bit about "TVs banned and girls must wear long skirts" really made me think, "Disturbing shit coming up!", and I was right.

A family friend said the overdose occurred after Johnson's first boyfriend broke up with her, and involve a cholesterol-lowering medication used by her father, not Tylenol.

Here we have evidence that she was none too mentally stable, but she played this down to get the money. And after all, God was protecting her.

Still, she found time to socialize. And there was a young man, a sophomore, a Christian. "I LOVE his love for you," she wrote to God about the boy in her diary. "God, please work it out."

It seems that she was only able to think about love, sex, dating, and all that other fun stuff in terms of Christianity. That's messed up, and it should come as no surprise that she would be particularly vulnerable to drug induced emotional fluctuations.

Really, this is one of the parts I found most disturbing. Why couldn't she just say she loves him, or some euphimism for a milder form of love? Is she really that God-centered that she can't even figure out what those nice feelings are telling her?

Johnson believed that faith would protect her — faith that God had led her down a path to $7,000, that other people at the Bible college wouldn't participate in an unsafe study, that a company as huge as Eli Lilly would not let anything happen to her.

Sort of ironic that in the end, none of those entities could save her---only she could. And she didn't.

[/quote]

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2004-04-03 04:19pm

Crown wrote:
Howedar wrote:Yes, it would be. Someone is dead, but you're more bothered by a religious institution.
No, I am bothered by the discription of the behaivour inside this 'institution'.

I'm bothered by this as well. This isn't a college where normal well-adjusted people go. It seems to be a college where people who are fervent in their faith to the point of obsession go. Probably not a school where you want to recruit subjects to test dangerous mind-altering drugs on. But, anything to fill their quota of test subjects, I suppose.

NapoleonGH · Post by **NapoleonGH** » 2004-04-03 04:32pm

Melkor wrote:
Lilly assured stockholders that the suicide would not delay the drug's release later this year. The company also reported Johnson's earlier pill-swallowing episode to the FDA and the scientists who were studying duloxetine for Lilly.
This part ticks me off to no end. They musn't let a little thing like a young womans suicide get in the way of their release date.

a single suicide isnt statistically significant in the least for a trial of that magnititude, thus there would be no reason for such a suicide to in any way jeopardise the patent and release of such a drug.

Hobot · Post by **Hobot** » 2004-04-03 06:37pm

I think that those what brought her up (her parents, community and their religion) should take the lion's share of the blame in this case. She seems like she was totally naive and way too trusting. She was probably raised to accept, without question, the authority of others.

Having intimate experience with both religion and anti-depressants (though not anywhere near this extreme) I can say that I truly empathize and sympathize with her.

It's all very tragic and it pisses me off.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2004-04-03 06:54pm

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Now I'm wondering. Why do anti-depressants increase the chance of suicide?

The theory is that someone who is deeply, deeply depressed may want to die, but they're so incapcitated by their illness they can't act on those feelings. In some cases, the ability to plan and act returns before the really awful bad feelings abate. So you have someone who not only wants to die, they now have the capacity to act on those impulses. Thus, this risk of suicide goes up briefly after treatment starts.

I just don't understand this impulse on the part of some Christians to put their entire lives under the whim of Jesus. In my religion you get taught young to NOT go asking for every little thing because 1) you might get what you ask for - exactly what you ask for (so ask VERY carefully) and 2) there are consequences to getting what you want, and you might not like all of the consequences. As a general rule, you're better off taking responsibility for yourself and doing things without a request to divine intervention. From my viewpoint, she put herself at risk by volunteering for a trial of a mind-altering drug despite a psychiatric history. Maybe it was the devil tempting her instead of Jesus, who would have preferred her to do something else. Anyhow...

Is the drug company a Big, Evil Corporation? No. Look, folks, every drug used in a human being must be tested in human beings at some point. These tests usually involve doses in excess of therapeutic levels. SOMEBODY has to be the guinea pig. As a general rule, young healthy people without medical issues are at less risk from such trials than older, sicker people. The money is compensation for the volunteers time and somewhat for their risk.

The issue here is informed consent. Do these kids really understand that they are at some risk? Clearly, some do, and certainly with the discussion of some people getting ill during drug trials this is not an entirely abstract risk. Problem is, someone convinced a Magical Sky Pixie is constantly hovering over them, watching their every hearbeat, ready to save them from every harm, is operating out of such a different set of initial premises about the world that I'm not sure "infomred consent' as we scientific/rationa/atheist types would define it can even exist.

That, to me, is the most disturbing thing about these "Bible schools" (I used to work with students from one). The kids grow up and live in an artifical world, and they aren't equipped to deal with people from outside the enclave. Most of them do learn - but it takes time, and some get seroiusly hurt along the way. The one I'm most famillar with is Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Some of the kids there suffered real culture shock, and became physically ill from the stress of confronting mainstream reality. One of them took a header out of his dorm room - he wan't in a drug study, just depressed. Seriously depressed. Adolescence and early adulthood is an enormously stressful time - those of you currently going through it are probably nodding your heads - and there's a definite jump in the suicide rate in that age range. Maybe we shouldn't be testing any psychoactive drugs in that age range - stick to new antibiotics or something.

This article doesn't tell me enough about the screening procedures used for this trial - did the girl say it was a psychiatric problem with her overdose, or did she explain it as an "accidental" overdose? (The lethal dose of Tylenol is surprisingly low, and people do accidentally exceed this level every year). And if it wasn't Tylenol used in her prior attempt but she lied and said it was - well, the screening process for clinical trial volunteers depends on honesty. If she wasn't honest it was HER fault, not the pre-screener and not the drug company's. Granted, the drug company doesn't really give a damn about anyone, but a corporation does have self-interest of a sort, and it is in NO ONE's interest to have fatalities in a drug study of any kind. There is no malice involved, just indifference. Even so, it's pretty rare for there to be egregious carelessness. The company wants positive results, and death is never a postive. That's why they screen in the first place - they don't want trouble. Could the screening process be more effective? Almost certainly - but again, it depends on the screener obtaining accurate information.

Working in medical research, and having access to information on drugs the public never sees, I can say that given a large enough study of anything you're going to have a death or two. Is that because of the drug -- or because people die every day of various causes? If someone is testing skin cream an keels over from a brain hemorrage that doesn't mean the skin cream is at fault. It might be - but it's far from proof. And ALL the deaths that occur during a study ARE reported - that doesn't reflect callous indifference but rather truthful reporting of the facts at hand.

Back when I worked at a drug treatment clinic we had between 2 and 14 deaths every month I worked there - all duly reported. Does that mean we were killing people? Does that mean our treatment was killing people? No - drug addicts die every day, and they are at much higher risk of death than the general population. It would have been suspicious if we reported no deaths at all, because it would have been so unlikely for there to be none.

What I'm saying here is that, despite how easy it is to hate the Faceless Corporation, there is no proof they are at fault. They might be - but maybe not. As I said before, I have to question the wisdom of testing psychoactive drugs on a population that is highly stressed and at an age where psychiatric disorders frequently first arise. On the other hand, if you tested these drugs on 70 year olds someone might think that unethical as well. Do I trust drug companies? - hell no, I despise them. But if they're using 10,000 college students a year as paid guinea pigs you're going to have at least one or two among them attempt suicide, maybe even succeed. That's the demographics of the population. Be careful about assigning the wrong cause to the final effect.

To me, this looks like a tragic accident. You know, accidents do happen. Bad things can happen even with the best of intentions, and no one entirely at fault. There are at least a dozen things that could have been done better - the girl could have told the truth, the screener could have erred more on the side of caution, the trial people could have been observed more closely... hindsight is 20/20. But foresight doesn't cover pretty young Bible college students who appear well-adjusted and healthy.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and cynical.

Yes, it's tragic a young woman died hanging from her own belt in a shower, no doubt her final piss running down her legs and dripping off her toes, her eyes and tongue swollen and bulged out, blood vessels broken in the whites of her eyes and her face purple. I do not in any way trivialize that death, or think it's unimportant. It is horribly important. But I'm not convinced it was solely the drug at fault. The drug may have triggered something, or maybe there was something else going on and she would have done this regardless of whether she was in the drug trial or not. That's one of the hellish aspects of suicide - at some level, the person dead is the one responsible for the act of murder. I know - I went through this with my own sister when she killed herself. You want to find someone, something to blame other than her. No, she wasn't in her right mind. But how do you know, how do you distinguish between ordinary upset/grief and suicidal depression? How do you know that this person over here is reacting to a new drug but will be OK, but that one over there is going to off herself in an hour? You can't, not for sure. Like really is that uncertain.

Is the drug company at fault? I don't know - there isn't enough information here. Is the college somehow at fault, either encouraging or tolerating a form of risk-taking that maybe shouldn't be tolerated? I don't know. Are the kids at this institution truly mature enough to give consent to such a study? I don't know. Is there a better way to do medical research? I don't know - but I do know that no matter how careful a researcher is, there is always the risk of a bad reaction and a bad outcome. Always.

Lt. Dan · Post by **Lt. Dan** » 2004-04-04 12:42am

This is very sad. But I don't like the fact that they'er using the college to make you feel things. I was feeling sorry for her. But then I realized how hipacritical I was being. This past week, a student at my school commited sucide. Then there were games being held in his honor and collections being taken. I was so pissed that they were honoring him. I hated the fact that they were making him some kind of marter out of him. People just need to live. Die when you old and seen the world.

Is there nothing against the places that do this to people? Can they give out anything as long as they pay the people?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-04-04 04:38am

I take it you've never seen one of those Catholic "books of martyrs". I had the dubious pleasure of a coworker proudly showing me his treasured book of martyrs at my last job, and I couldn't believe it. A whole book devoted to the effusive praise of people who died for their religion. Martyrdom has been considered a glorious thing in religious circles for a very long time.