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Testimony of ‘paid expert’ questioned by drugmaker

By: Steve Metzer//The Journal Record//June 17, 2019//

Testimony of ‘paid expert’ questioned by drugmaker

By: Steve Metzer//The Journal Record//June 17, 2019//

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NORMAN – An attorney representing Johnson & Johnson chipped away at testimony provided by an expert witness for the state Monday in a trial playing out here to determine whether J&J should be held responsible for fueling an epidemic of opioid addiction in Oklahoma.

Attorney Michael Yoder cross-examined Dr. Andrew Kolodny for most of the morning in the courtroom of District Judge Thad Balkman, who is to decide if J&J should pay to help the state recover from the public-health crisis. According to Attorney General Mike Hunter, costs of treating Oklahomans addicted to powerful prescription painkillers and of preventing a new generation of victims could easily run into the billions of dollars.

Kolodny was on the stand for much of last week. Regarded as one of the nation’s foremost experts on the opioid epidemic, he laid blame for the crisis squarely at J&J’s feet.

“I think it’s fair to characterize Johnson & Johnson as a kingpin in our opioid crisis because it was their opium that they were selling and that other drug dealers or pharmaceutical companies were selling,” Kolodny said, referring to J&J’s ownership of Tasmanian Alkaloids, one of the chief growers and suppliers of raw poppy used around the world in production of drugs like OxyContin marketed by Purdue Pharma and of J&J’s Duragesic drug patch.

Yoder referred to Kolodny numerous times as the state’s “paid expert” and at one point asked the witness if he hasn’t been paid “substantially more” for his testimony than any of the so-called “key opinion leaders” who received fees from organizations funded in part by J&J to share opinions about benefits and risks associated with opioids. Kolodny confirmed that he had received several hundred thousand dollars in compensation for his time from various plaintiffs in claims against drug companies.

Yoder also questioned Kolodny about testimony he provided to the U.S. Senate, emphasizing that the witness held strong views about the role of the federal Food and Drug Administration in allowing the opioid crisis to spiral out of control.

“Isn’t it true that before you became a paid expert for the state … you said that the public health catastrophe could have been avoided if the FDA had enforced the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act?” Yoder asked.

“I said that at the time,” Kolodny responded.

Yoder pointed out statements Kolodny made in the past linking the start of the opioid crisis to the rollout of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma in 1995. Purdue was named in the lawsuit filed by the state in 2017 but opted to settle for $270 million prior to the start of the trial. J&J’s attorneys have attempted to show that J&J’s exposure in Oklahoma was minimal by comparison to Purdue’s.

Kolodny disagreed. He said that J&J was in a position to benefit from “unbranded marketing” of opioids “as a class” and not just from its own specific drugs, like Duragesic.

“It wasn’t simply the release of Oxycontin by Purdue that led to our opioid epidemic. It was the unbranded campaign to increase prescribing of opioids as a class of drug that affected all opioids. And that unbranded campaign wasn’t just Purdue Pharma behind it. Johnson & Johnson was hand-in-hand with Purdue,” he said.

Another expert witness called by the state Monday was Dr. Jason Beaman, who chairs the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa. He said he has no doubt that doctors in the state were influenced by free meals and other efforts of drug companies to get them to write more and more prescriptions for pain pills and opioid medications. Oklahomans became addicted and lost lives as a result, he said.

Beaman was asked how the Oklahoma Department of Health or other organizations might have acted to prevent or cut short the opioid crisis. He said agencies didn’t see the marketing campaigns of the drug companies coming and didn’t realize that there was an epidemic of abuse building until it was too late to prevent it.

“Had we known that the misinformation campaign was coming, we could have prepared for it,” he said. “We were caught off guard through the extreme manipulation of doctors and medical education.”

Even now, he said the state is struggling to get ahead of the epidemic.

“There’s been a lot of insinuations about why we haven’t done more in the state. We don’t have the money. To fight this epidemic, it’s expensive, and when you look at the amount of money that the pharmaceutical manufacturers are putting toward deceptive sales calls, we don’t have that ability. We need a well-funded abatement plan. … Certainly I think history has told us that once an opioid epidemic sets in, it can be very difficult to get it to leave. I’m optimistic that we aren’t going to lose as many bodies for (the next) 20 years, as long as we have a well-funded abatement plan. (But) we have to have a plan. Without it, we’re going to continue to lose Oklahomans.”