Andy Behrman Resorts to Spam in Fight vs. BMS and Abilify

Professional patient Andy Behrman is trying to turn his 15 minutes of Wall Street Journal fame into gold. Shortly after the Journal published a story about how he decided to become a critic of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abilify following the company’s decision to stop paying him, Behrman sent a rambling email to his “friends” and “3,000+ mental health support groups” asking them “to forward this e-mail to everyone you know.” The email is a long plug for Behrman’s new book.

But it is also a description of just how thin Behrman’s case against BMS seems to be. As BNET noted a few days ago, Behrman only began his crusade against BMS after the company refused to make him a millionaire. Now he is claiming that BMS is at the center of a shadowy conspiracy to prevent him from speaking. His email says:

I published an online article about the drug’s terrible side effects. I said it was the worst drug that I had ever been prescribed and that it had nearly killed me. Within twenty minutes of the article being posted on a website owned by the New York Times, the article came down. Turns out, BMS was a sponsor of the website.

I believe that BMS will go to almost any lengths to stop me and the publication of the book.

Folks, BMS can’t negotiate a simple patent challenge properly, let alone organize a Pelican Brief-style silencing of one of its former consultants. It’s hard to see how Behrman is being silenced if he has received a front-page profile in the WSJ just weeks after his non-disclosure agreement with BMS ran out. His email continues:

The sad reality is that the drug companies won’t tell you the truth about the side effects of their drugs …

This just isn’t true. The side effects of Abilify are right there on the drug’s web site. The very first warning is:

Elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis treated with antipsychotic drugs are at an increased risk of death.

Behrman has a website, of course, and a YouTube video that he wants us all to watch (more examples of BMS’s chilling ability to censor its critics?). But the one thing he doesn’t provide in his book-blurb spam is the URL to the “front page story about my experience.” And that, as BNET readers know, is because the story makes Behrman look like a self-involved money-grubber who only found his voice against BMS after the company declined to pay him $7.5 million to keep his mouth shut.

Read Behrman’s full email after the jump.

• Previously:
• BMS and Abilify Emerge Mostly Unbruised in Fight With Professional Patient Andy Behrman
• BMS Braces for Tell-All Book by Abilify Whistleblower

Email from Andy Behrman:

I URGE YOU TO TAKE 60 SECONDS TO FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO EVERYONE WHO YOU KNOW WHOSE LIVES ARE AFFECTED BY “BIG PHARMA” EVERY DAY!  Dear Friends, Three years ago, after working as a spokesman for Abilify, a hugely profitable drug manufactured by Bristol Myers Squibb, I published an online article about the drug’s terrible side effects. I said it was the worst drug that I had ever been prescribed and that it had nearly killed me.  Within twenty minutes of the article being posted on a website owned by the New York Times, the article came down. Turns out, BMS was a sponsor of the website. Today I am preparing to sell a new book, Adventures in the Drug Trade, which details my nightmarish experience with Abilify, my treatment by Dr. Mark Frye, a former UCLA psychopharmacologist now at the Mayo Clinic and curiously no longer a medical consultant for BMS, and my experiences as a pusher of their not-so-wondrous wonder drug.

I believe that BMS will go to almost any lengths to stop me and the publication of the book. It’s time to hold drug makers like BMS accountable for their corrupt practices and harmful products.  Just as culpable, if not more so, are the licensed physicians that aid and abet them. Do no harm?  I don’t think so. Today, The Wall Street Journal published a front page story about my experience titled, “A Celebrity Patient’s Backing Turns Sour for Drug Company.”  I urge you to click here for an informative sixty second video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VzMZX4nBz8

This youtube link will give you more information about the dangers of Abilify.  And then forward the link to everyone you know.

The sad reality is that the drug companies won’t tell you the truth about the side effects of their drugs and for that matter, neither will your doctor.  Did you know that pharmaceutical companies actually send some of these doctors on an all-expense-paid ten-day Caribbean cruises just for “writing prescriptions?” I urge you to forward this e-mail to ten friends, family members and mental health care professionals, whose lives are affected by Big Pharma every day and who might be interested in hearing the truth. If you’re one of the 3,000+ mental health support groups around the country receiving this e-mail, I  urge you to pass this on to your entire mailing list - - everyone should see the youtube video about the dangers of Abilify:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VzMZX4nBz8

We can beat big Pharma and their lies - - and even save some lives in the process –  but it has to begin with everyone standing up and telling the truth to anyone who will listen.Thanks,  Andy Behrman

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