Few prescription drugs were as popular as the antipsychotic Seroquel. Psychiatrists trusted it, nursing homes used it and addiction specialists prescribed it. Annual sales exceeded $3 billion.
But in the winter of 2009, one of the top pharmaceutical sales representatives selling it, Allison Zayas, began to have her doubts.
According to Zayas, one of her best clients, a doctor at a New York City outpatient clinic, told her that a patient had died while taking the drug and that the combination of Seroquel and methadone might have played a role.
Soon after, Zayas recalled, two other doctors told her as many as 10 patients at New York methadone clinics had died taking Seroquel and methadone together. Zayas said she reported the deaths to her company, drugmaker AstraZeneca, but that it continued to aggressively market the blockbuster drug, even to methadone clinics.
"Their goal was to get in there and sell Seroquel," she told the Tribune in an interview. "It was not, 'Let's draw back. Let's take a look at the information.' It was, 'Get in there and sell.' Everything is sell, sell, sell."
Alarmed at the inaction, Zayas quit AstraZeneca and filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the firm, alleging it concealed the true cardiac risks of Seroquel when taken with certain other medications.