Justice for Dr. Cornbleet

Back to http://drdavidcornbleet.blogspot.com


As I mentioned before, this site is to be an open forum for everyone to share their thoughts and opinions on the case. Dr. Peterson does not feel that he has been afforded this right either on other websites or through the media. At his request I have posted the thesis below. If you have feedback on these comments, please click - http://drdavidcornbleet.blogspot.com - and place them in our forum section

A Tragedy with Multiple Victims and Multiple Villains

By Rebecca Heckman and Thomas Peterson M.D.

Like most boys, Hans Peterson enjoyed sports, especially football. We have photos of Hans in full football gear - one when he was about 8 and one when he was probably 14. He was not a talented athlete; not really fast or coordinated enough to play football well, but in both photos, he has a glowing smile.

Hans tended to be shy from the time he was a child through high school. At times, his shyness and inability to be social made him sad. So sad, that he sometimes was depressed and needed medication. Like a lot of teenagers, he had times when he was happy and times when he felt especially lonely and sad.

Eventually, Hans went to college in Wisconsin where he studied economics and philosophy. He was especially intelligent, though few realized how smart he was because he did not talk a lot. He did exceptionally well in the intellectual pursuits he enjoyed, such as mathematics and games. His mathematical talents and skills led him to a career in the Chicago stock market as an options trader.

In 2002, Hans had a mild case of acne, which, of course, neither helped his shyness nor gave him any social confidence. Since he did not know a lot of people in Chicago, he chose a dermatologist from the phone book. According to Hans, when he got to his appointment, there was no receptionist to welcome him or check him in. The doctor, Dr. David Cornbleet, appeared and invited Hans into his examination room.

After briefly examining Hans, Dr. Cornbleet wrote a prescription for Accutane, a commonly prescribed acne drug with a long history of various horrendous adverse effects.

Dr. Cornbleet told Hans to take the 2 daily 40 mg doses of Accutane at one time although the prescribing information states otherwise. Hans later told his father, a medical doctor, that he’d spent only five minutes with Dr. Cornbleet. The doctor simply looked at Hans’s acne and prescribed the drug. No personal or family history was ever taken.

Within two weeks, Hans was completely unable to care for himself and had lost his job. His father, Tom, realized that something was deeply wrong with his son and managed to bring his son to live with him. Seeing the changed persona of Hans was deeply shocking. The young man, once shy, but who smiled and laughed easily and was able to care for himself was no longer that person. From that day until today, Tom never again saw his son smile. What had happened to his bright, gentle son; the one who loved to toss the ball around and play with his dog? Who was this stranger, lying on the couch and holding his head in pain? Hans’s blue eyes no longer shone with the joy of youth and the promise of his future. The blue eyes looking back at his father but not making contact were vacant, yet tormented.

Tom made appointment after appointment for Hans with medical experts, psychiatrists, psychologists. Tom took Hans to hearing specialists because Hans was in turmoil –the ringing in his ears never ceased. Clearly, something terrible had happened to his son, but there were no clear medical explanations.

After a few months, Hans went to France and later to live with his mother. She, too, was unable to communicate with her son. She watched his torment and saw the vacant look in his eyes. He hardly spoke. He seemed lost.

In time, Hans appeared to improve or somehow adapt to this. He was able to care for himself and even to take the LSAT exam. Although the emotional part of his brain was damaged, his brilliant calculating, reasoning brain was intact—and he gained a scholarship to a law school in New York. While both parents breathed a sigh of relief when he went off to law school, they never saw their son smile again and could never again have a real human to human conversation with him.

Nearly ready to graduate from Law School, Hans dropped out. He had become a successful online gambler. This did not require human to human communication. The last year of Law School demands far more human interaction than Hans could do.

Hans continued to live in New York, making a lot of money at times and barely surviving at other times. He had no social life. He barely spoke and never looked anyone in the eye. Relating to a cold technological world was far preferable than trying to be a person in the human social world.

Hans believed that it was Accutane that caused him so much pain and anguish. Since the murder, many, many blogs that Hans wrote about how Accutane ruined his life have been discovered. Reading the blogs is like reading the secret diary of a young man who is going mad. In fact, the Accutane had caused Hans to become psychotic, a permanent condition that developed in the first two weeks after ingesting the drug. The effects do not go away, there is no antidote, and Hans, an exceptionally intelligent man, knew that his life was over. He blamed Dr. Cornbleet and eventually decided that vigilante justice was the only justice possible.

According to one of his final blogs, Hans wrote:

Justice will not be found through the legal system…would taking some

of their money even be justice? Their lives would go on, just with a little less money. Our lives will never be the same.

The Science and Politics of Accutane

Accutane is isoretinoin, a potent synthetic form of vitamin A. The effect of vitamin A on the brain was first noticed in Arctic explorers who lived off of bear meat and liver which is very high in vitamin A. Many of them developed psychosis.

Accutane was originally studied for use as a chemotherapy drug because of its ability to kill cells. During this research it was found that those taking it that had acne showed a marked improvement in their skin condition.

This drug was approved by the FDA in 1982 although it was put in the highest risk category. Since that time, Roche has made annual profits of over $700 million annually.

Within one year of approval, cases of severe psychiatric disorders began showing up in the medical literature [J Am Academy Dermatology 9: 278-79, 1983].

The FDA has repeatedly threatened to take it off the market but Roche has prevailed. In January 1998, FDA medical review officer Kathryn O’Connor wrote a memo that stated: “Given all the pieces of evidence available, it is difficult for me to avoid the conclusion that Accutane can adversely affect the adult human brain in clinically significant ways and that Accutane use is associated with severe psychiatric disease in some patients.”

Accutane is also known to cause severe birth defects—mostly to the brain. Accutane is especially toxic to the brain because it is lipophillic (especially soluble in fat cells). Brain cells are lined with a protective layer of fat cells.

Dr. Frank Yoder, one of the two NIH scientists who had discovered Accutane as an acne remedy wrote a letter to the Journal of the AMA [Isoretinoin: A Word of Caution 249 JAMA 350 (1983)] “I wish to express my concern and anxiety over the potential tragedy that might arise from abuse and misuse of Accutane…the potential toxicity of this drug has been seriously under-emphasized.”

Since its original approval in 1982, the FDA has made 57 changes in the labeling, packaging and prescribing information for Accutane because of reports of adverse reactions. The prescribing information has become much longer and with now so much boxing, underlining, and bold type that it has become confusing to say the least. The FDA has allowed Roche to continue to market this drug by putting more responsibility on the prescribing doctor. Unfortunately, not all doctors are responsible.

Accutane is being over-prescribed. It was approved for use in severe cases of cystic acne, and only when other treatments fail. Today, dermatologists have made it first line treatment for acne. J O’Donnell of the Department of Pharmacology at Rush Medical College in Chicago says: “This product is over-prescribed for all forms of acne, including mild and moderate cases that have not been treated with alternative medications with less risk of depression and suicide.” [Am J Therapy 10; 148-59, 2003] Hans had mild acne and Accutane was wrongfully prescribed as a first line drug.

In 2001, the son of Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak committed suicide while on Accutane. In congressional hearings following this, some statistics came out. It was found that 4% of Accutane users developed psychiatric problems. A doctor prescribing Accutane is like playing Russian roulette with his patient’s brain. For example, there may be 25 chambers in the gun and one bullet (4%). The doctor can improve the odds of an adverse psychiatric event by following the prescribing information that warns against its’ use for those with a personal or family history of psychiatric disorder because these patients are more susceptible. Apparently, Dr. Cornbleet did not follow the prescribing information when he prescribed Accutane for Hans.

In 1997, Liam Grant from Ireland committed suicide while taking Accutane. His father was wealthy and funded research on the physical effects of Accutane on the brain.

J Douglas Bremner, Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology and Director of the Emory University Medical School Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit has done this research [Am J Psychiatry 2005; 162:983-991] and it is showing damage to the emotional part of the brain from Accutane through PET scans. He asked Roche to provide him with Accutane to help with further research. They refused. They do not want any research to show that Accutane damages the brain because that would be detrimental to their future legal cases. Their defense is that there is no scientific evidence of any damage, and they dismiss these cases of psychosis and suicide as people who were going to go insane anyway.

The Lucifer Effect

In his book , The Lucifer Effect, renowned social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo explores the “process of transformation at work when good or ordinary people do bad or evil things” (2007, p. 5) . Professor Zimbardo worked as an expert witness at the trial of one of the U.S. soldiers prosecuted for the Abu Ghraib abuses and tortures. His research led Zimbardo to believe that “‘the military and civilian chain of command had built a ‘bad barrel’ in which a bunch of good soldiers became transformed into “bad apples’”

(p. x).

Professor Zimbardo discusses the power of the System, (the “big picture…big power”) to create a situation in which evil triumphs over good. He calls this phenomenon, “The Lucifer Effect.”

America’s health care system is now so corrupted by the millions of dollars being fed into it by big pharmaceutical companies that, arguably, the system is creating unknown numbers of situations ripe for the Lucifer Effect to prevail. Accutane is just one of an unknown number of drugs still on the market because Big Pharma is plowing millions of dollars into Congress, the overseers of our Health Care System.

The following is a brief history of how the Lucifer Effect has taken hold of the Health Care System in the United States, using the drug Accutane as an example of how evil has triumphed over good.

1. Accutane is one of the 5 drugs that FDA senior safely officer (David Graham) named in his Senate testimony as a possible candidate for withdrawal from Marketing. Big Pharma’s big dollar lobbying campaign kept Accutane on the market.

2. When Roche’s company’s own safety experts recommended in 1997 changing the U.S. label on Accutane to reflect the evidence that the drug “probably caused” depression and other psychiatric illnesses in some patients, the marketing department warned that such a warning would impact the marketing strategy and profits (estimated at over $700 million).

3. In 2002, the FDA had reports of 3,104 adverse psychiatric events involving Accutane. The FDA assumes this is approximately 1% of all cases. The rest remain unreported.

4. Although not Accutane related, the January, 2004 report by Campaign Money Watch, “Buying a Law” (www.campaignmoney.org)describes the link between Big Pharma money and how it uses millions of dollars to affect the decision of members of the U.S. Congress:

a. In 2002, pharmaceutical corps, their political committee and employees contributed $44 million in campaign contributions since 1999.

b. Eleven ‘decision makers’ in now President George Bush’s campaign received over $3 million.

c. Drug lobby spent $544 million lobbying congress, federal agencies, and the White House from 2001– 2002. During that same time, Big Pharma hired 675 lobbyists (more than one for every one of the 535 congress members).

d. Pharmaceutical companies spent $82 million in the 2000 and 2002 elections attempting to influence the outcome of presidential, congressional and senate races.

5. In short, the powerful drug lobby carries the clout to decide which drugs remain

available and which are banned from the market. Big Pharma spend millions of

dollars convincing congress not to crack down on their profits.

6. Since 1982, Accutane has been responsible for one of the highest numbers of FDA reported adverse side effects.

7. Accutane labels have been changed 57 times since its approval to reflect the various adverse side effects. The PDR first page notes in large letters, “Causes birth defects.”

8. Since Congress has not compelled them to do so, Roche has failed to adequately inform health officials, physicians, and patients of the dangers of the drug.

9. Accutane is Roche’s number one selling product. Roche refuses to supply information on the adverse reaction reports they receive.

10. The FDA has implemented programs; including writing letters warning prescribing physicians to have patients sign an “Informed Consent” form. Big Pharma negotiated to make this a voluntary, rather than a required, form.

According to Professor Zimbardo, “Powerful Systems Exert Pervasive Top-Down Dominance” (2007, p. 9). Big Pharmaceutical’s million of dollars are at the top of the United States Health Care System. It is this system that has created “Multiple Victims and Multiple Villians.” There is plenty of blame to go around in the Peterson/Cornbleet tragedy.

Back to http://drdavidcornbleet.blogspot.com