With the recent nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the nation’s premier federal health agency, it’s important to remember that Kennedy’s star began to rise decades ago by exposing fraudulent medical and corporate research and food safety issues.  In a sense, Kennedy is a kind of whistleblower on a national level.

But he’s not the only one and, with Kennedy’s rise to power, AbleChild is reminded of another whistleblower, Allen Jones, whose exposure of dirty dealing between the pharmaceutical industry and state mental health agencies needs to be remembered and recognized.

It takes courage to stand up to corruption.  Jones, not one to shy away from controversy or be strongarmed into walking away, stood up to the behemoth pharmaceutical industry and ultimately protected children in ways they will never fully understand.

In a nutshell, Jones, as an investigator with the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, was tasked with investigating the state’s chief pharmacist, Steve Fiorello, who was reported to have been receiving payments from drug companies — a clear violation of Pennsylvania law.  But Jones uncovered a much deeper financial scheme, where the money flowing into Fiorello’s unregistered account was also flowing out of it and into an account belonging to the director of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation.  Jones had no idea that he was about to run head-first into the then-controversial Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP).

Basically, TMAP was a system of collecting information about pharmacological management and providing an algorithm-driven mental health management program — in other words, what psychiatric drugs work best for specific mental health diagnoses.  Then those chosen drug treatments would be used by state mental health programs.  Aside from the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all psychiatric drug regimen, the problem is that TMAP was compromised because Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Janssen, were paying state officials in a number of ways to promote it.

Promoting TMAP has been called little more “than an off-label marketing program funded by drug companies which used flattery, cushy travel, expensive restaurants and pocketed honoraria to get key state officials to green light switching massive numbers of patients from low-cost mental health drugs to then new atypical antipsychotics, such as Risperdal, that cost ten times as much.”  Risperdal, approved for the treatment of bipolar disorder and autism spectrum disorder, risks some extreme adverse events, including breast growth in men and boys.

Jones took these findings to his superiors and, much to his surprise, was told to leave it alone.  It was “too political.”  When Jones refused to walk away, he was taken off the case.  Soon after, he learned that TMAP would be implemented in Pennsylvania.

Jones filed a First Amendment civil rights lawsuit and told his story to the New York Times.  Pennsylvania state officials did not appreciate Jones’s honesty and summarily fired him.  Not only did Jones file new lawsuits, but his case drew the interest of the Texas attorney general’s office.  In 2011, the Texas A.G., with the help of Jones’s documents, settled with Johnson & Johnson for $158 million.  Three other states filed and settled similar cases.

Janssen’s and Johnson & Johnson’s off-label Risperdal cases culminated in the U.S. Department of Justice settling a global suit to the tune of more than two billion dollars.  AbleChild had the opportunity to speak with Jones over the holidays, and we are honored to include Jones as one of our biggest supporters.

It’s been more than two decades since Jones took on the pharmaceutical industry.  Jones is an honorable man who sees his intervention as a necessity and hopes that some children will have benefited from his efforts.  He also understands that “the drug industry is burrowed into our government to an unbelievably deep and unhealthy degree.”  “The problem,” says Jones “is that nothing changes, no matter how you call out the ethical problems among government, universities, and the pharmaceutical companies.”

Jones is hopeful that Kennedy will be confirmed at HHS and act immediately to remove pharmaceutical advertising from television.  Jones also hopes that “Kennedy will take a look at these mental health advisory committees and the extent to which industry has infiltrated the drug approval process.”

Jones agrees that the top executives at the pharmaceutical companies need to be held personally responsible for the harm created by their companies’ misdeeds.  “The financial settlements are baked into the drug profits by the bean-counters,” explains Jones, “so there have to be stronger punishments. ... They need to do some jail time.”  “The top guys,” said Jones, “have to be held responsible for the harm these drugs cause.”

Jones understands the power of pharmaceutical companies and acknowledges that his fight two decades ago was all-encompassing.  Would he do it again?  “I would hope that people would step up,” says Jones, “but it takes an irrational amount of dedication. ... It can take over your life.”  “For me,” explains Jones, “there was something there that I could not ignore, but it will take over your life and can hurt you.”  “I would encourage anyone who sees impropriety to expose it,” concludes Jones, “but just be aware there is great personal risk.”

Jones was later acknowledged for his whistleblower efforts by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and Taxpayers Against Fraud.  AbleChild honors Jones for his integrity, without which children in many of the fifty states would have been subjected to harmful drug prescriptions.  And, ultimately, thanks to Jones and other whistleblowers, TMAP is no longer used by the states as a psychiatric drug medication program.

Image via Pixabay.