A former British Columbia government health economist who was fired under controversial circumstances says that his research was showing that 60,000 Americans now taking antipsychotic medications will die prematurely, reports The Tyee.
“There are 60,000 people who are going to die needlessly because they haven’t been warned of the side effects of these drugs,” Bill Warburton tells The Tyee. Warburton previously had research access to the health records of millions of British Columbia citizens, but was dismissed by the government during a controversial “purge” of an entire team of pharmaceutical drug policy analysts in 2012. The government has been gradually backtracking on the firings after media exposed questions about pharmaceutical industry influence.
The Tyee reports that, “Bill Warburton’s notice of claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court in 2013 said, ‘The province’s acts against Dr. Warburton are part of a bad faith program by the defendants to end the investigation of harmful effects of drugs which risk leading to diminishing payments to their political contributors.'”
Dismissed Researcher Made Shocking Drug Finding (The Tyee, March 25, 2015)