DOCTORS DISHED THEM OUT LIKE SWEETS UNTIL, LIKE OPIUM, THEY GOT THE MASSES HOOKE

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DOCTORS DISHED THEM OUT LIKE SWEETS UNTIL,

LIKE OPIUM, THEY GOT THE MASSES HOOKED

 

The Independent, August 19, 1996

by Patricia Wynn Davies

 

Dr Reg Peart

Drug problem: Dr Reg Peart, one of 40 victims of

addiction to tranquillisers such as Valium hoping

to win compensation through the courts

 

The 'opium of the masses' was how Professor Malcolm Lader, a

psychopharmacologist, described benzodiazepines in an article in the

late 1970s, one of the first to warn of the dangers of addiction. By

1988 about 400,000 Britons were thought to be dependent and they

remain the most commonly misused prescription drugs in Britain. Now,

however, the victims of addiction to tranquillisers such as Valium and

Ativan are fighting back through the courts. Reg Peart, a former

atomic scientist, is one of those hoping to win compensation from the

manufacturers.

 

Now 62, he began taking Valium in his late 30s for attacks of nausea

and vertigo and has only latterly begun to piece his life back

together. As his addiction took hold he lost his career, his marriage,

and ended up one step from living on the streets. He says that at his

lowest point he had a mental age of 10. The only reason the majority

of people continue to take benzodiazepines for more than a few months,

he believes, is because they are addicted.

 

When he was eventually, abruptly, taken off the drug in 1985 he went

into cold turkey and given repeated electro-shock therapy to treat his

withdrawal symptoms. It took until 1992 until he began to feel right,

although tests showed he was still suffering 20 per cent intellectual

impairment. 'It was like a car running on low-grade petrol and then it

runs out. The car won't start.'

 

A number of the litigants in person suffer from agoraphobia and most

do not work. Michael Behan, a 42-year-old former teacher, began taking

Ativan in 1981 after getting panic attacks in lifts and underground

trains. He says he became addicted in a couple of months, but his

doctor took the view that his original illness was getting worse.

 

'You are told you are not addicted and you can't understand why you

feel so awful if you stop taking it. So you stay on drugs year after

year.' The addiction lasted seven years.

 

However, where the ultimate responsibility lies is unlikely to ever be

tested in a British court.

 

Up to 40 victims plan to press on with their claims against the makers

of Valium and Ativan, despite the spectacular collapse of what was

once tipped to be the biggest group negligence action ever. The

claimants are facing an uphill task to persuade the Court of Appeal to

reverse a little-noticed decision last month in which Mr Justice lan

Kennedy, the High Court judge in charge of the litigation, struck out

the remaining 70 writs in an action originally numbering more than

5,000. Dr Peart and other claimants in the Victims of Tranquillisers

group are protesting that the striking out was unfair because it was

due to early problems in the organisation of the group action, not on

the merits of individual cases.

 

If necessary, the complaint will be pursued to the European Court of

Human Rights, Dr Peart said.

 

Last month's ruling was the latest of a series of blows to claimants

in the benzodiazepine litigation which was launched in 1988 on behalf

of thousands of Britons who had become dependent on Valium, Ativan and

other tranquillisers and sleeping pills in the benzodiazepine group.

More than 17,000 people came forward and 13,000 were initially granted

legal aid after a group of lawyers announced plans to sue the

multinationals which developed and marketed the drugs on the ground

that they should have known about the risk of addiction and warned of

it. The Government had warned in 1988 that prescriptions should be

longer than two to four weeks. But after the Legal Aid Board withdrew

funding for claims against Roche Products, makers of Valium, Mogadon

and Librium, in 1993 and for those against John Wyeth and Brother,

makers of Ativan, the following year, the group litigation effectively

collapsed.

 

Around pounds £35million of public money had been spent on legal costs

without a penny reaching those who claimed to have been damaged

through taking the drugs. The 70 had soldiered on, all bar one as

litigants in person without legal representation. But Mr Justice lan

Kennedy struck their claims out as an 'abuse of process' because,

among other reasons, the Legal Aid Board had deemed them not

reasonable to support and the costs of a complicated and strongly

contested trial would be enormous compared with any small amounts of

damages recovered. There had also been 'inordinate and inexcusable

delay' in progressing the cases.

 

The two drug companies, which have always strongly denied liability,

and had hoped that the July decision would finally close the issue,

promised they would not enforce orders for costs they have been

granted since legal aid was withdrawn – but on condition that the 70

litigants do not appeal last month's ruling. About 30 are expected to

conclude that they would risk losing assets such as their homes, but

up to 40 consider they have nothing to lose. In any event, claimants

would have to exhaust all their UK legal remedies before applying to

Strasbourg. The Legal Aid Board refused funding for the appeal last week.

 

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights says that 'in the

determination of his civil rights ... everyone is entitled to a fair

and public hearing within a reasonable time'. Dr Peart said the

litigation had showed that the English legal system was totally

inadequate to cope with group actions. In the United States drug

companies have paid out billions of dollars to patients claiming they

were injured by their products. In Britain no group action against a

commercial company has reached trial, although the 1,200 victims of

the Opren anti-arthritis drug secured pounds £2.275million in an

out-of-court settlement in 1987.

 

The remaining claimants complain that they have been denied the right

to pursue their actions because the costs would dwarf any damages. The

root of the problem was that investigation of cases viewed as

unwinnable both slowed down the progress of the case and clocked up

enormous costs.

 

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