Three years before Prozac received approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in late 1987, the German BGA, that country's FDA equivalent, had such serious reservations about Prozac's safety that it refused to approve the antidepressant based on Lilly's studies showing that previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug had a fivefold higher rate of suicides and suicide attempts than those on older antidepressants, and a threefold higher rate than those taking placebos.
Using figures on Prozac both from Lilly and independent research, however, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that "probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated.
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Now a decade later, Lilly has targeted Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, whose book "Prozac Backlash" has apparently incensed Lilly executives.
Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinician at the Harvard University Health Services, says he wrote the book because he was alarmed by the number of patients who were reporting severe side effects from the serotonin-boosting antidepressants including Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Luvox. "The two most upsetting side effects were patients becoming suicidal on the drugs, and the development of disfiguring facial tics," he said in an interview.
The Boston Globe, 2000.
