“In theory. It has happened before. But the DSM includes criteria that are specifically intended to help weed out false reports.”
“Got it. Now, still sticking to general information . . . is it true that someone with manic-depressive disorder might be more prone to coercion?”
“Certainly. In a depressive state, the person might not have the will to withstand pressure. They don’t really care about the downside because they’re feeling hopeless anyway, plus they don’t have the mental energy to counter the coercion.”
“And in a manic phase?” she asked.
“That one’s less intuitive. You might think that mania would cause a person to fight back. But in a manic episode, the person is not thinking about consequences at all. They start out dropping a buck in a homeless man’s donation cup. It feels so good to help another person that they hand the guy a twenty instead. The next thing you know, they’re at the bank, closing out their accounts to hand out cash on the street. In the situation you describe, a manic person might comply with one request, and before they know it, they’ve lost all control.”
“What about credibility? Might a manic-depressive be more likely to lie if he thought it would somehow help him?” She was thinking now about the credibility of Brandon Sykes.
“I mean we’re talking generalities, but, yes, that would be fair to say, for essentially the same reasons.”
“What about murder?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Might a manic-depressive suddenly become violent and kill a friend during what should have been a minor argument?”
“It has certainly happened before. Manic episodes can be completely uncontrollable.”
“So if we have a homicide defendant who may be manic depressive, we’ll need to know whether they were taking drugs for the condition, right?”
“Well, the whole purpose of treatment is we hope it helps people. We hope that, with continuous use, it keeps them at normal for longer periods of time. We may not be able to cure the disorder, but we try to reduce the frequency, longevity, and severity of the swings between the two poles.”
Ellie smiled. She had thought Dr. Bolt’s offer to speak only in generalities would be a waste of time. She jotted down his last sentence verbatim in her notebook. He had just given them what they needed to force him to turn over Casey Heinz’s and Brandon Sykes’s patient files.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Max leaned back in his chair and let out a small groan. “Fuck. First Social Circle’s Internet traffic records, and now a doctor’s files from a drug study? These document demands could mark a new circle of hell for lawyers.”
Ellie gave his shoulders a quick squeeze until she felt the tension drop. “Sorry, dude. Catching bad guys is, like, soooo hard.”
“Fine, I’ll stop whining, but this is a little tricky.” He stared at the keyboard in front of them. On his computer screen were the beginnings of a search warrant application for David Bolt’s files. Max was planted at one computer, drafting the affidavit in support of the warrant, while Rogan helped pull up information as necessary on a separate laptop. “Okay, we’ve got everything in here about what you learned from Dr. Bolt. Tell me what you know about the expert himself—education, credentials, that kind of stuff.”
Rogan pulled up a copy of Bolt’s curriculum vitae and let out a whistle. “Academic appointments at NYU and Harvard. Hospital appointments from New York Presbyterian, Columbia Medical Center, and Sloan-Kettering. Recipient of all kinds of NIH and private grants. A trillion awards. Two books. Residency at Mount Sinai. Graduated from Harvard Med, Yale for undergrad, oh—and how sweet, the Casden School as a wee lad. That enough?”
Max was typing away. “Looking good. Just want to make it sound like we’ve done our homework. And what about the two drugs in Equivan?”
Rogan looked up the information for Equilibrium and Flovan. Ellie laughed as he struggled to pronounce the drug’s ingredients. He finally gave up and turned the screen toward Max.
“Got it. And the companies who produce the drugs?”
Ellie recognized the names of two large pharmaceutical corporations. “Does the judge really need to know all this?”
“Hopefully not. My worry is that the judge will want us to pull in the drug companies, too, in which case we’re looking at months of stalling. We only have four days to make a decision on Casey.”
“Would they really care about two patient records?”
“If the drug companies are funding the research, they might have privacy interests at stake: confidential business information, proprietary research and development stuff, etcetera.”
Rogan was still surfing for additional information to fatten up the warrant application. “Based on Bolt’s history, I’d say the likelihood of private funding’s high.” He swung the laptop back toward Max and Ellie.
“The Blood Pact Between the Psychiatric and Big Pharm Industries.”
It was a post from two years earlier on a website called Healthcare Is a Right. The author purported to document the incestuous relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the psychiatric industry. The American Psychiatric Association was phasing out the funding of its trade conventions by drug companies to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. The decision followed a multipart exposé in the New York Times highlighting the millions of dollars’ worth of perks flowing to the very doctors responsible for writing the prescriptions that fueled the burgeoning business of psychopharmacology.
At the bottom of the post was a list of the twenty “poster children” for the “blood pact” between psychiatry and “big pharm.” Number twelve was Dr. David Bolt, thanks primarily to the research money he’d received from drug makers in recent years.
“This is interesting,” Rogan said, scrolling back up into the heart of the article. “It says here that in the wake of the recent controversy, the leading med schools required their faculty and attending physicians to disclose to their boards of trustees all income received from private sources. Looks like Bolt resigned his appointments at NYU and Harvard rather than comply with the new regulations. Apparently most of his research is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.”
Ellie had never had occasion to think about the sources of funding for drug research. “That’s ridiculous that companies control the testing of their own drugs.”
“Given these days of reduced spending, who else is going to pay?” Max said. “One blogger says David Bolt is the medical equivalent of a war criminal, but New York magazine lists him as one of the top child psychiatrists in the city.”
“But it’s not just a matter of opinion if Bolt’s research is being funded by the companies that manufacture Equilibrium and Flovan. Bolt said Equivan was about combining the best of two treatments. Obviously both companies would have an interest in the tests going well. More kids medicated means more drugs sold.”
Max was too busy reading his own composition on the screen to continue following her rant. “Let’s just stick to Casey and Brandon’s files for now, okay?”
Ellie thought there was more to the story, but she also knew that an investigation into a drug company’s research practices would take far longer than the few remaining days they had to make a decision about Casey Heinz’s guilt. Not to mention that the last time she checked, drug research protocols were well beyond the NYPD’s jurisdiction. She’d have to settle for a phone call to the Food and Drug Administration. Hopefully they’d see the same red flags.