Lexapro, Celexa For Kids Scandal Widens, Harvard Prof. Helped Promote Off-Label Use

I've now seen a copy of the federal complaint against Forest Labs for allegedly illegally promoting Lexapro and Celexa for use in children, both uses for which the company has no approvals. It's the usual tale of ignoring negative clinical trials, pimping the heck out of a positive trial by none other than the University of Texas' Karen Wagner (already snared in one of Sen. Grassley's investigations, involving Paxil), and flat-out marketing the drug to docs for use in children, despite evidence of suicides and suicidality in one of the trials. Read the complaint for yourself. Forest Labs itself announced today that an unnamed 11 states and the District of Columbia will join in the federal suit.

Then this bombshell:

From 1999 through 2006, one pediatric specialist, Dr. Jeffrey Bostic, Medical Director of the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project at Massachusetts General Hospital, gave more than 350 Forest-sponsored talks and presentations, many of which addressed pediatric use of Celexa and Lexapro....Dr. Bostic became Forest's star spokesman in the promotion of Celexa and Lexapro for pediatric use. As one sales representative wrote, 'Dr. Bostic is the man when it comes to child psych!' Between 2000 and 2006, Forest paid Dr. Bostic over $750,000 in honoraria for his presentations on Celexa and Lexapro."

Bostic is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard. Harvard has been embroiled in these crazy scandals around psych meds over the last couple of years, most prominently involving Joseph Biederman, who is under investigation by Mass. General. It'll be interesting to see how the
hospital and university address these revelations around Bostic.

This is simply sickening. Numerous Forest execs knew exactly what was going on, according to the complaint.

There's more detail over at Bnet.com.