About Justice Art
Justice Art is a monthly feature that shares the stories behind selected pieces of artwork displayed in our law offices. Creativity has long played an important role in how we understand, prepare, and try cases. These works reflect the philosophy, imagination, and humanity that shape our approach to advocacy, and the belief that powerful stories are often best told visually.
This month’s selection includes two pieces of art created by our friend Merrilee McCommas McGehee from Dallas, Texas. Both hang in prominent places in our Firm’s headquarters offices in Houston. They do so because they capture the essence of the major focus of my law practice from 1997 through 2013.
That focus was on the fact that, sadly, there is frequently undisclosed “HARM” in pHARMacy, and also some “ILL” in pILLs. They continue to inspire and motivate us to “seek justice” for people who are the victims of misleading marketing of “blockbuster” drugs.
The American pharmaceutical industry is the world leader in beneficial medicines for mankind. We have great respect for their research and accomplishments. Prozac and its SSRI cousins Paxil and Zoloft revolutionized the treatment of both depression and anxiety in America. These drugs were neither toxic nor addictive in the traditional sense.
But when Prozac was launched, marketing trumped science. The pre-approval studies showed that a 5mg pill worked. But, on the eve of the launch, the CEO insisted that Lilly only market a 20mg pill. Why? It seems that this was because the majority of the “market” was primary care doctors who needed a “one size fits all” pill, rather than psychiatrists who are truly the experts in brain chemistry.
Eli Lilly knew that for a “small vulnerable population” of patients, these drugs would trigger “akathisia” and/or “manic” episodes. It knew that these side effects could result in violence towards self or others. But until our 2001 verdict in a Paxil wrongful death case in Wyoming, the industry, and even the FDA, refused to acknowledge that these were indeed drug side effects.
However, our verdict in the Tobin case led to regulatory scrutiny and, ultimately, in 2004, to the “black box” warnings that now appear on the drug’s label, and unfortunately, only in small print at the bottom of the television and magazine ads that were used to market these multi-billion-dollar pills to the masses.
The pHARMacy piece includes real pill bottles, some from our own personal prescriptions, of numerous drugs. It also includes some bottles that have the names of SSRI drugs on the labels … but none of those are mine!
Merrilee McGehee is an incredibly talented actress, artist, and now interior design specialist. You can explore her current creative work at www.merrileemcgehee.com, which, happily, still notes that she “creates commissioned art pieces and custom murals.”
Although our Justice Art page usually features only one image, in this case, both of her pieces in our collection are just too irresistible not to share. Interestingly, the white pills that spell out pILLs were not created by Big Pharma chemistry. Rather, these very therapeutic medicines are God’s own creation, aspirin.
Please enjoy the following, and if you would like to provide feedback, do so in the comments section below.
— Andy Vickery
