Affiliations: Emeritus Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Co-Founder of DIPEx, Emeritus Fellow of the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford, London, UK | Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University, Wales, UK | Department of Psychiatry, Waikato Clinical School, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Note: [] Address for correspondence: A. Herxheimer, 9 Park Crescent, London N3 2NL, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: In courts case histories play a central part when a crime may have resulted from an effect of a prescribed drug; in civil cases where a person may have suffered damage from a drug; and in coroners' enquiries into the cause of unexplained deaths. The court must decide two important questions: 1. Can the suspected medication(s) cause this kind of effect? 2. Did it (or they) do so in this particular case? Many judges and coroners have not addressed these questions clearly and have not used expert witnesses consistently, on occasion disregarding scientific evidence. Courts need to appoint experts to explain and interpret the scientific evidence. Few judges are equipped to resolve contradictions between different experts. Brief accounts of five cases from four countries illustrate these points. The reluctance of legal processes to implicate drugs as a possible cause of violent behaviour leads to injustice. Courts must be required to obtain appropriate expert evidence, and be given independent data on which drugs can cause such behaviour.
