Alberto Espay was not prepared for how his world would be upended when he published a study on the number of people who have died while taking new, high-profile Alzheimer’s drugs.
Last October, the neurology professor and his colleagues posted the results of their study online, writing that patients taking Aduhelm and Leqembi were two to nearly three times as likely to die as those treated in the clinical trials. The reaction was immediate and furious: Colleagues accused Espay of using “alarmist” language and having a financial stake in maligning the drugs. The University of Cincinnati, where Espay works, told him not to talk to the press without consulting the university’s communications department. Then, law enforcement warned him of a credible death threat against him and his family.
Amid the controversy, the publisher withdrew the article.
There were obvious reasons why some people would want to silence Espay. The new Alzheimer’s drugs are projected to reach $17 billion by 2033, and anything that jeopardized those sales posed a threat to the pharmaceutical companies and their stakeholders. Both academic detractors who posted criticisms of the study online received consulting and research fees from drugmakers.
More shocking was the response from federal regulators tasked with ensuring drugs like Aduhelm and Leqembi are safe.
An official of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cast doubt on Espay’s findings last October, noting in a comment to the study that the medical data his team had used for its calculations was unreliable. But the information had come from the agency’s own database of medication-related complications and deaths. When asked to provide the correct numbers, the agency refused.
In response to two Freedom of Information Act requests filed this year by the Lever and the international medical journal the BMJ, a government official said the number of deaths associated with the drugs doesn’t have to be released….
Auteur: Shannon Brownlee
