The Golden Couple(18)
Now they were in Phase Three, a much bigger trial, with ten thousand human subjects.
Forty out of ten thousand.
Finley kept listening. She stayed crouched in her cubicle, her legs aching from holding the deep squat, until the two men finally left, passing just inches from her hiding spot.
As she lay in bed that night, snippets of the conversation she’d overheard ran through her mind: Hemorrhagic shock … Coma.… At least one percent already dead …
Scrapping Rivanux would be an enormous blow to Finley’s company. Stock prices would dip; shareholders would be furious. The ripple effects would include finger-pointing, layoffs, and stories in the pharma trade publications.
Finley returned to work, assuming that production of Rivanux would immediately be halted. Instead, a few weeks later, her boss emailed her a press release to proof.
The headline made her gasp: RIVANUX POISED TO WIN FDA APPROVAL. According to the release, the drug had performed exceptionally well during its trials, with only minor side effects.
As she stared at the words on the press release, Finley realized her company was engaging in a massive cover-up. She theorized that they must have altered the data on the trials, knowing the FDA would never sanction a deadly drug.
My company is going to kill people.
As I watched Finley sink lower into her chair, her words ebbing into a hoarse whisper, I knew what I was supposed to do: Maintain a proper professional distance. Discuss Finley’s feelings and fears. Encourage her to explore the possibility of coming forward to the authorities.
That’s exactly what I did, for the rest of the session. Though Finley seemed to be telling the truth, I couldn’t help wondering if she was exaggerating. So after she left, I did a little research of my own. The headlines I saw left me equal parts terrified and enraged:
Bayer and Johnson & Johnson are charged with downplaying the life-threatening risks associated with Xarelto … Merck pleads guilty and pays $950 million to settle liabilities for misbranding the safety of the painkiller Vioxx … Eli Lilly misbrands the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for the treatment of dementia and other disorders in elderly patients and has to pay millions in criminal and civil settlements.
And on and on, case after case. One article claimed that millions of prescriptions for unsafe drugs had been filled in the United States within the past two decades alone.
During Finley’s next session—her second—I looked at the hunched, scared twenty-six-year-old who’d stumbled upon an explosive secret and realized that, even though a percentage of people who took Rivanux would likely die, I wasn’t sure she would ever report her employer.
She knew what could happen to her because it had happened to other whistle-blowers: They’d start by creating a reason to fire her. Then they’d discredit her—much like a prosecutor going after a defendant on the stand. They could launch a social media smear campaign against her. They could physically threaten her, or her family.
And perhaps they would follow through.
After all, Finley could cost her company hundreds of millions of dollars. And her company had already shown that to protect its profits it would play fast and loose with the health and safety of individuals.
Finley wasn’t strong enough to speak out and endure all that would follow.
So I did it for her.
I phoned the FDA’s anonymous whistle-blower hotline and spoke to the man who answered, giving him all the details I knew. I trusted the system would do what it promised—provide anonymity—so I called from my cell phone.
I didn’t reveal my name and I kept Finley completely out of it.
My second phone call was to Finley, so I could explain what I’d done.
Before I finished talking, she hung up on me.
Still, I felt a rock-solid surety in my decision: violating my professional oath by breaking the confidence of a client was the right thing, the moral thing, the only thing, to do.
Forty out of ten thousand.
If I hadn’t called the FDA, pharma reps would have carried free samples into doctors’ offices, urging them to pass the pills out to patients. Hospital aides would have placed the tablets into little paper cups and dispensed them. Husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and even a few teenagers would have shaken the pills out of prescription bottles, washing them down with a swig of water or juice.
I thought back to Paul in his final days, the sun seeping through the blinds after another sleepless night for both of us, as I held a glass of water to his lips so he could take his pills, the ones that made his pain tolerable. I trusted that his drugs would do exactly what they promised.
Yet, a reputable company—one that made products ranging from baby shampoo to a sunscreen I’d used in the past—was knowingly manufacturing medicine that would make 4 percent of its users suffer terribly. And a subset of those people would bleed to death.
I couldn’t have that blood on my hands.
The following Wednesday at 7:00 P.M. sharp, my doorbell rang. It was Finley, arriving for our third session.
She claimed her usual seat, but instead of curling up with her feet tucked beneath her, she sat up straight. Her eyes were bright and clear.
At first I felt really betrayed by you, but I’ve actually been sleeping well for the first time in ages, she said. I feel different, somehow, since you took the decision out of my hands. Like this weight that was crushing me is gone. I’ve decided to start looking for a new job; I don’t want to work for that company.