DavidHealy.org | Professional suicide

In 2001, 60 Minutes backed down under pressure – The Insider II.

Meanwhile 60 Minutes had had their chance to save lives (and save psychiatry) 11 years earlier. Against the backdrop of the Miller case (see Mystery in Leeds), they approached the Millers and their lawyer, Andy Vickery. Vickery asked first if they would back down under pressure — as they had infamously done with Jeffery Wigand (“The Insider”). They said, No, it would be the death of 60 Minutes to ever do that again (See Vickery email).

The program had Pfizer documents in which the attempted suicide of an 8-year-old boy had been put down by Pfizer monitors to Zoloft-induced activation. It had entirely independent academics with nothing to do with the case reporting that Zoloft could definitely trigger suicide.

Ed Bradley interviewed me, the Millers, Andy Vickery, and others. More than $50,000 had been put into the making of this show, and, at that kind of money, few 60 Minutes segments are ever canned (which is why The Insider was so famous).

But the producers came under pressure not to air. The show had been waiting to air for more than eight months when 9/11 happened, and the producer contacted the Millers to say that this was the reason why it wouldn’t air.

The tapes probably still exist in some CBS storage room.

via davidhealy.org

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