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Vol IX, Issue 3
Date of Publication: July 17, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2024.022
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Interview
Nancy Olivieri: Sometimes, truth has only one face
Abstract:
Nancy Olivieri is a senior haematologist and professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. In the early 1990s, she was conducting investigator-initiated research of an experimental drug, deferiprone, in children with thalassaemia, for which a pharmaceutical company, Apotex, started giving some supplemental support. In the course of her work, Dr Olivieri found that deferiprone might not be very effective and was also possibly toxic. When she signalled her intent to disclose the risks to participants, the trials were immediately shut down and she was threatened with “all legal remedies” should she disclose her concerns. This led to 18 years of attacks from the CEO of Apotex as well as fabricated charges and harassment from the University and the Hospital for Sick Children where she worked.
Copyright and license ©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2024: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license ( CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits only non-commercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Thank you for standing strong all these years. You are a beacon of light for many within and beyond your own field. Congratulations on your prestigious award.
Thanks for this interview. It’s inspiring for those of us struggling against our respective establishments for the sake of truth and public welfare. This line is particularly impactful: “The sad fact is that many in academia do not seem to appreciate the significance of a struggle until it is honoured with public recognition — which of course almost never happens — and until or unless it does happen, many view it as simply a fight with two “opinions”, not between right and wrong.”
The experience of Dr Nancy Olivieri should be included in the training curriculum of not only all researchers but all who work in areas where necessarily ignorant and therefore vulnerable people are likely to suffer from corruption and exploitation. She was one of the founding members of RxISK.org which still survives many years later as the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine based now in Wales UK. with some changes to those still involved
RxISK
RxISKMaking Medicines Safer for All of Us
Founding Team
There are few professionals who have the profile and international reputation of our founding team, which includes people who have risked their careers in speaking out about adverse drug events.
Dr. David Healy, CEO and principal founder of Data Based Medicine Global Ltd., is an internationally respected psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist, and author. A professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff University in Wales, David is a former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other pieces, and 20 books.
David has been involved as an expert witness in homicide and suicide trials involving psychotropic drugs, and in bringing problems with these drugs to the attention of American and British regulators, as well raising awareness of how pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders, ghost-writing their articles. His latest book, Pharmageddon, documents the riveting and terrifying story of how pharmaceutical companies have hijacked healthcare in America and the life-threatening results.
He also publishes through his blog DavidHealy.org and on Twitter @DrDavidHealy.
Dr. Derelie Mangin
Dr. Derelie (Dee) Mangin, our Chief Medical Officer, is a family doctor originally from New Zealand, where she was director of the Primary Care Research Unit at Otago University in Christchurch. Dee was an advisor to the New Zealand government on drug treatment funding priorities and served on the Southern Region Ethics Committee. She is a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners and in 2011 received their Distinguished Service Medal.
Dee has moved to Canada and is now the David Braley & Nancy Gordon Chair in Family Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
An advocate for better independent information for patients and their doctors on drugs, Dee has published widely on the rational use of drugs, including ‘deprescribing’ trials for polypharmacy and for individual drugs. She is co-editor of a WHO manual for medical and pharmacy students on understanding and responding to drug company promotion, as well as articles and book chapters addressing polypharmacy in older age. Dee is interested in the influence of commerce and politics on the science of medicine and was involved in a campaign to ban direct to consumer advertising of medicines in New Zealand. She is a frequent speaker at international conferences for family doctors with a focus on patient-centred medicine and rational drug use.
Dee is on Twitter @DeeMangin.
kalmanapplbaum
Dr. Kalman Applbaum is Professor of Medical Anthropology and Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin. He is a pharmaceutical industry expert and former marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management.
Dr. Ralph Edwards
Dr. Ralph Edwards was Director of the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) from 1990 to 2009. UMC is the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring located in Sweden. Under his management the global coverage of pharmacovigilance now actively involves work, in over 120 countries. The UMC provides necessary IT and other support for pharmacovigilance centres, as well as training. Ralph has campaigned for better communication of drug safety issues, better benefit-to-risk assessment of drugs, performance assessments of pharmacovigilance centres, and better individual patient safety consideration during medication in clinical practice. He was a founding member of the European Society of Pharmacovigilance, was the founding President (2000-2004) of the ensuing International Society of Pharmacovigilance, and is among the world’s leading experts on pharmaco-vigilance, and has published widely.
Dr. Brenda Gallie
Dr. Brenda Gallie is Director of the Retinoblastoma Program at The Hospital for Sick Children, and Professor of Ophthalmology, Molecular Genetics, and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Her research has revealed basic molecular processes in cancer. She has developed a time-line for medical adverse events to enable patients and doctors to better understand how the adverse event might have evolved — this is incorporated into RxISK.
Robert Whitaker
Robert Whitaker is the co-founder of Centerwatch (in 1994), an early provider of market intelligence on pharmaceutical companies for investment analysts and others. He is the author of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, which analyze the consequences of the indiscriminate use of medications. Robert also publishes through his blog, Mad in America.
Dr. Joanna Lenoury
Dr. Joanna Le Noury is Senior Research Scientist in the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine. She trained as a biological psychologist and has previously been involved in the development of an international programme aimed at improving health and nutrition in young children, which has since been implemented across several European countries and the US. More recently her research interest has focussed on looking at the incidence and prevalence of serious mental illness, along with comorbidity and mortality rates associated with psychiatric disorders. In addition she has analyzed several large pharmaceutical databases in the course of litigation cases. Jo is lead author on Restoring Study 329, an article with one of the highest recorded impact factors that the BMJ has ever published.
Dr. Nancy Olivieri is a Senior Scientist at Toronto General Hospital, and a Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her work explores the role of the pharmaceutical industry in society, and its influence on research and on the evidence base of medicin