Image: wacountry.health.wa.gov.au
Reflections On An Obsession... Part I - The Eulogy
Reflections of an Obsession - Part II - Unredacted
Reflections On An Obsession... Part III - The Emporers Clothes
Reflections On An Obsession... Part IV - Lundbeck
The story of Sheryl Tilbrook, as written by her father, Stuart Jones.
Analysis of a Nightmare. 17th of May 2007.
I had a dream last night, the same dream I’ve had many times before, but this time I spoke of it to Claudette …. “It doesn’t make any sense to me“, I complained to her - as I was driving home to Wales from my daughter’s house in England - “I mean, in real life I don’t feel fear, but in this dream I keep on making simple mistakes in the job I’m doing, and have been taught to do, but the ground rules seem to keep on changing and I’m afraid I’ve upset the boss, then make up the most pitiful, inane excuses for not doing the work properly. In the dream I’m actually so afraid of upsetting the person in charge I procrastinate and even lie to protect myself … I don‘t understand it, I’ve always fought my monsters, or at least come to terms with them.”
“Well?” I queried after a few more miles on the road home, “What do you make of it?”
For another mile or two she carried on with knitting a matinee jacket for our nephew and his partner’s latest expected, then simply said; “It’s that time of year!”
“I know that, there’s always that! …. but the dream was just more vivid and disturbing than is usual, and in any case, I don’t see what me being afraid in dreams has to do with Sheryl’s death.”
She put the knitting in her lap and stared out through the windscreen at the road ahead. “It’s the eighteenth of May tomorrow, exactly six years since Sher was given the prescription for Cipramil that set off the cataclysmic chain of events.
You were never trained for what followed, you learned, and all things considered, you learned well ….”
Her voice had cracked a little and I turned to look at her. Her eyes had welled with water, not quite enough to form tears. She rarely cries but her moist, widened eyes jolted her pain through me like an electric charge.
I wanted to pull the car over and comfort her, but drove on knowing how much she hates to be pitied or touched because then she does break into tears and despises herself for showing weakness.
Claudette picked up her knitting but didn’t resume her work. “I’ll tell you what I believe about your dream.” she said, continuing the conversation, her voice even and normal now. “Your boss is you, or more accurately, the promise you made to Sher that you would bring those responsible for her death to account, and that’s proved to be impossible.
You learnt it was Lundbeck who made Cipramil, and by not warning that their me too version of an SSRI antidepressant could cause people to become suicidal, they caused her death.
And when you investigated how this was allowed to happen, how such a potentially dangerous chemical could be granted a licence to be prescribed to anyone for almost any reason, you learnt that the regulatory body set up to examine whether drugs are safe and effective, was wholly funded by the pharmaceutical industry …. Worse, you discovered the history of SSRIs was written in controversy and the blood and death of many ordinary people, and that many others have to live with their devastating side-effects.
You learnt these matters were already being addressed by the pharmacovigilance arm of the MCA in the form of an Ad Hoc EWG working group, set up to examine the safety and efficacy of all antidepressants, but innapropriately, many of it’s members had conflicts of interest, in that they had pecuniary, or other, vested interests in the very drug makers, whose SSRIs had caused the controversy which led to their investigation. And even though we helped to get this tainted committee disbanded, it was not enough for you, or for that matter me ….”
We failed in our attempt to sue Lundbeck for murdering Sheryl, breaching her human rights and breaching product information law, as we also failed in our attempt to get the CPS to initiate a criminal case for corporate manslaughter.
The monster you were fighting was the pervasive influence of the pharmaceutical industry, it’s a monster you can not beat, nor come to terms with. You’ve hit out at it many times, and you’ve probably bothered it once or twice, but if you have, it will have been like a small insect bite, an annoyance.
Had it been a person who had killed Sheryl, and all else had failed, you or any one of us would have killed that person and suffered the consequences. You know it!
We easily forgive and forget many things but not the death of our child.
You see Stuart, I too have a nightmare, I live in it on a daily basis and relive it every night. There is no way of getting away from it because that is what Lundbeck left us with … A nightmare."
I’m sharing this very personal conversation with you to inform, and just maybe prevent you from suffering the same nightmare.
Stuart Jones. UK.
Bibliography: SSRI. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor; MCA. Medicines Control Agency (Now the MHRA, not much has changed) CPS; Crown Prosecution Service; EWG. Expert Working Group.
WARNING: If you are currently taking an SSRI do not suddenly stop taking them. Dose related change of these drugs can be dangerous. Get the help of a conversant health professional.
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