When Dr. John B. Buse testified at a U.S. Congressional hearing on June 6, 2007, he explained how a top executive at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) threatened him with a lawsuit because the doctor warned the public about Glaxo’s drug, Avandia.

Buse’s confrontation with GSK began in 1999, he said, when he told the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that Avandia raised the risk of chest pain and heart attacks by 50 percent. He said he was given 25 minutes to present two hours worth of research at that hearing.

After that hearing, Buse said “an executive,” later tabbed as Dr. Tadataka Yamada, the then-chief of research and development at SmithKline Beecham, called him a “liar” and a “scoundrel” for his research on Avandia.

According to Buse, the company went as far as suggesting to his boss that the doctor wanted to be paid off. Buse wrote in a letter to Yamada in 1999, in which he said “I was not upset when my chairman called me into his office to tell me that some in your company perceive me as being ‘for sale,’ as he knows me well enough to doubt it.”

In addition, GSK suggested Buse might be sued for lost profits. “The market capitalisation of the company had declined by $4 billion and there were people in the company who felt I might be liable for that,” he stated.

Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat from Kentucky, said in the June 6 hearing, “We cannot have a post-regulatory environment where manufacturers intimidate scientists.”

Sources: Stephanie Saul, “Doctor Says He Was Assailed for Challenging Drug’s Safety,” New York Times, June 7, 2007.