David Egilman, Doctor Who Took On Drug Companies, Dies at 71

Dr. David Egilman, a doctor and knowledgeable witness who, over a 35-year span, gave testimony in some 600 trials involving company malfeasance, leading to billions of {dollars} in awards for victims and their survivors, died on April 2 at his residence in Foxborough, Mass. He was 71.

The trigger was cardiac arrest, his son Alex stated.

Many medical specialists make a aspect enterprise in courtroom, providing their knowledgeable opinions on the witness stand and serving to to validate or undermine plaintiffs’ claims. However few make it a career-long ardour in the best way Dr. Egilman did. He taught at Brown College and ran a non-public apply however spent most of his time consulting and testifying in as many as 15 circumstances a yr.

He did extra than simply opine from the stand. A dogged researcher, he dug up incriminating emails and memos displaying that, in lots of circumstances, drug corporations knew the dangers concerned with placing a brand new remedy available on the market however went forward anyway.

He offered important testimony in a class-action lawsuit towards Johnson & Johnson, claiming that it had did not reveal the well being dangers concerned introduced by Johnson’s child powder and different merchandise containing talc. After years of litigation, the corporate settled for $8.9 billion in 2023.

Dr. Egilman’s work as an knowledgeable witness rubbed some folks the fallacious method, particularly protection attorneys and pharmaceutical firm executives, who argued that he was too dogmatic to supply goal evaluation. However Dr. Egilman noticed issues in another way.

“As a health care provider, I can deal with one most cancers affected person at a time,” he stated throughout a 2018 trial. “However by being right here, I’ve the potential to avoid wasting thousands and thousands.”

His work prolonged past the courtroom: He helped authorized groups strategize their circumstances, and he coached them on the best way to current sophisticated medical knowledge to juries.

“David was a recreation changer on so many ranges,” stated Mark Lanier, a lawyer who labored with Dr. Egilman for 25 years. “David helped me in circumstances the place he was testifying, but in addition the place he was merely giving recommendation and perception.”

He additionally pushed again towards what he noticed as pharmaceutical advertising and marketing intruding on the realm of scientific analysis. Writing in peer-reviewed medical journals, he confirmed how drug corporations used ways like ghostwriting — drawing up their very own research, then paying a health care provider so as to add their title — and “seeding,” wherein corporations run their very own questionable research to construct assist for his or her medicine.

Dr. Egilman was instrumental in publicizing a declassified memo from 1950 that warned of the dangers concerned in authorities radiation checks on people. The checks have been however carried out.

“If that is to be finished in people, I really feel that these involved within the Atomic Vitality Fee can be topic to appreciable criticism, as admittedly, this might have a bit of the Buchenwald contact,” Dr. Joseph G. Hamilton, a professor on the College of California at Berkeley, wrote within the memo, referring to the Buchenwald focus camp the place Nazi docs carried out horrific medical experiments on prisoners.

The U.S. authorities apologized for the radiation checks in 1996.

At occasions, Dr. Egilman’s zeal acquired the higher of him. In 2007, he agreed to pay the drug maker Eli Lilly $100,000 after leaking confidential paperwork to a lawyer, who then gave them to The New York Occasions. He was concerned in a case towards the corporate over allegations that it had pushed its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for unapproved makes use of.

Eli Lilly donated the cash from the settlement to charity. However the firm’s victory was quick lived: In 2009, it pleaded responsible to the allegations and agreed to pay $1.4 billion — together with a $515 million legal superb, the most important ever in a well being care case.

Dr. Egilman was unbowed by the ups and downs of the case.

“A doctor’s oath,” he advised Science journal in 2019, “by no means says to maintain your mouth shut.”

David Steven Egilman was born on Sept. 9, 1952, in Boston. His father, Felix, was a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust, together with a interval spent in Buchenwald, as a result of, he stated, his ability as a shoemaker was prized by German officers. His spouse and two youngsters have been killed in one other focus camp.

After the battle, Felix Egilman immigrated to the US, the place he married Veta Albert, David’s mom, who died in a automobile accident when David was 10. His father withdrew emotionally within the face of the mounting trauma, leaving David largely to deal with himself.

He gained a scholarship to Brown College, the place he obtained a bachelor’s diploma in molecular biology in 1974 and a medical diploma in 1978. He earned a grasp’s diploma in public well being from Harvard in 1982.

Dr. Egilman married Helene Blomquist in 1988. Together with their son Alex, she survives him, as does one other son, Samson.

After medical faculty and coaching on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, he moved to Cincinnati, the place he arrange a clinic as a part of the U.S. Public Well being Service. A lot of his sufferers have been industrial and mining employees who had developed medical circumstances after years of working in unsafe environments.

The expertise steeled Dr. Egilman’s willpower to face up towards medical injustice. He returned to Massachusetts in 1985, the place he opened a non-public apply and commenced educating at Brown.

To deal with his rising record of authorized purchasers, he arrange a separate firm, By no means Once more Consulting, a nod each to his father’s expertise in the course of the Holocaust in addition to the significance of not permitting the horrors of Nazi medical experimentation to be replicated.