-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------

Memorials/Survivors
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------

-----------------------

-----------------------
-----------------------

"Awesome Site!"
-----------------------

"Spectacular job!"
-----------------------
"High Quality Content"
-----------------------

Canines of America's!

"Top Dog Award"
-----------------------
Save our dogs!
Remember our dogs!
Spread the Word!
-----------------------
"All truth passes through three stages:
First it is Ridiculed.
Second, it is Violently Opposed.
Third, it is Accepted as being Self-Evident."
~Arthur Schopenhauer~ (1778-1860)
-----------------------
 
 

 

VMAC Public Speeches (page 4)

(taken from VMAC transcript)


MS. PAULAUSKI: My name is Georgene Paulauski. I’m a clinical specialist at St. Anthony Medical Center. I’m a clinical educator for Indiana University, and I --- college. I have no financial gain. I filed an adverse reaction report in December of 2003 after Cletius received a ProHeart 6 injection. I was contacted by CBS-2 News in regards to what happened to my dog. The segment aired. Fort Dodge gave their account of what happened and published this both on the internet and through mailings to your peer vets throughout the United States.

I would like to read to you an excerpt of what Fort Dodge printed about my dog. "Initial testing identifies some abnormalities. Hemolytic anemia was a possible diagnosis. He was placed on antibiotics and corticosteroids. The dog’s steroid dose was decreased. Shortly thereafter he presented not acting right again. After increasing the dosage, the dog’s condition improved."
Now I would like to show you and let you see in reality during the seven months. These are the real facts, not what was published. Cletius received ProHeart 6 on September 27, 2003. No other injection. Immediately he developed a hot spot. Within weeks anorexia and became lethargic.
(Slide.)
Looking at the first slide I have up, in Fort Dodge’s word there were some abnormalities noted. Anybody that knows a basic CBC, these are not some abnormalities. There are grotesque. These are panic value levels. This is the case of Cletius and hemolytic anemia. He is in your packets. That’s his number.

(Slide.)
Medical visits, we went through 45 office visits, two separate visits in ICU stays at Purdue University, multiple emergency visits, surgery.

(Slide.)
He had 102 lab draws, multiple types and cross-matches, multiple cultures including blood, urine, gastric, blood gas analysis, and ABGs.

(Slide.)
He had two ultrasounds, abdominal scans, numerous x-rays.

(Slide.)
This next page is hideous. These are the drugs it took to keep my dog alive during his hemolytic anemia. I am not going to go through the numbers. You can look at them and gasp.

(Slide.)
The fluids to keep him alive. Multiple keep opens, 0.9 normal saline, lactated Ringers, Hespan, blood transfusion, Oxyglobin, potassium chloride, Hetastarch.

(Slide.)
Due to all this multiple complications resulted. You can’t imagine anything worse on a hemolytic anemia than a dog starting to hemorrhage. That is exactly what took place. The dog started hemorrhaging, vomiting blood, tarry stools. At this time he also had grossly elevated liver enzymes. My dog’s appearance became grotesque. Pot belly, enlarged liver, muscle wasting, the inability to walk, foot flop, swayed spine.

(Slide.)
Numerous attempts were made to try to wean Cletius from his immunosuppressants while the ProHeart 6 was in his system. Every attempt failed, and a lot of those attempts resulting in having to increase doses of Pred.

(Slide.)
Eventually he became over-suppressed and leukopenic. I then had to deal with bladder, bowel, and gastric infections, cystocentesis, diarrhea, numerous antifungals, antibiotics, LONOX were added. Little did we realize his over-suppression would finally become a turning point.

(Slide.)
After a lengthy conversation with Purdue and our vet, the debated on whether to decrease the dose of the immunosuppressant or finally withdraw it. The comment was made, "If it is truly the ProHeart 6, we should be able to remove all meds and this dog should do perfectly fine."

(Slide.)
After him living on over 100-and-some medications weekly, on 6/2/2004 all meds were DC’d. I spent the entire summer rehabbing Cletius, walking, swimming, rebuilding his muscles.

(Slide.)
He is since now symptom free and drug free for 209 days. He has gone back to Interceptor without any incident. I am one of the fortunate ones here today He is healthy, happy, and extremely active.

(Slide.)
As a point of interest, my dog did have mild skin allergies. This was not his first injection. If you go back and look at your data, along with the ProHeart 6 when I went to the vet he said, "Is your dog itching?" If he was they gave him a shot of Depo-Medrol. Did that save him from a previous reaction? Absolutely. The steroid protected him.

(Slide.)
The long-term effects of all the meds to keep Cletius alive are yet to be seen, but what my family and this dog went through were pure hell. It consumed seven-and-a-half months of our lives. I can’t begin to tell you the bills, the time lost from work, without a single dollar recovered.

(Slide.)
It is very disheartening to know after seeing the clinical trial data after the fact I would have never have injected my dog with this knowing what you have published as an adverse reaction. Can I just give a closing comment? I say to Fort Dodge stop making excuses. You printed fluff about my dog, not faxes. As for the paper, shame on you. The hell that my family went through and what my dog went through? You continue to create a facade. You put it out on your internet, published it --


(Five minutes up)

************************************************************

MS. STOREY: My name is Janice Storey, and my dog died in October of 2002. Two-and-a-half years I’ve been waiting for this product to be recalled. Many thousands of dogs have been affected. I have in my possession two other dog owners have asked me to cite the conclusions that veterinary specialists after determining, after thorough examinations and extensive testing, how ProHeart affected their dogs, and the case numbers have been presented to the FDA and Wyeth. One of them is in California, an attorney, and that case number is 80840-05. The other one is a -- the name of the dog is Pickles. The other one is case number 200402016, Rusty, a six-year-old champion Doberman in Dallas.

Also my dog, four vets, not one, not a single on vet would ever admit -- the product had only been on the market one year -- that my dog could possibly have been harmed -- actually I was told could never be possibly harmed by ProHeart 6. However, my new personal vet, I submitted his x-rays which had a huge amount of spots on them, to him. He submitted it to an utmost heartworm specialist. I can’t say names here, but he appears on the Wyeth front page of your website, so you would know who that would be, and he is at Auburn University. So you all can all figure it out. He looked at my x-rays and he said that it is difficult for vets sometimes to look at these x-rays and determine if it is in fact heartworms or if in fact it is cancer. So he looked at my x-rays and he determined as told to my personal vet that it was pulmonary thromboembolisms. Furthermore, my own dog’s testing, the very first vet that I took him to, he had written down PTE remarkable. I had no idea what PTE is. I later found out it means pulmonary thromboembolisms.
My dog had hidden heartworms, and he had tested 11 years due to being on Heartguard Plus. Any monthly preventative out there is capable of making the female worm sterile with prolonged use. The testing is inaccurate on low female worm burdens. Therefore any dog that receives a ProHeart 6 is at risk. I have documentation whereby the dog in Dallas, it cleared the adult heartworms in 33 days and the microfilaria in 45. Has Wyeth ever contacted this specialist? No. Furthermore, the personal vet of that same dog, Rusty, heard from Wyeth one time. They have yet to have ever been paid, and that was a year-and-a-half ago. But Wyeth will pay the vets that don’t speak out against ProHeart, and that is the problem the public has. We can’t convince our vets if they are brainwashed by Wyeth. They are afraid of Wyeth. They buy products from Wyeth. It is very difficult for us to prove to you. Furthermore, any of you vets here know that in the clearance of microfilaria that it can create IMHA. You also know -- I have a study here from Japan, a clinical research data, a published veterinary journal. It shows what happened to microfilaria-positive dogs.

So, yes, I’m emotional about this. I’m mad about this. I am not going to read to you everything. You can read it. You have the case numbers. You can read what the vets concluded. I’m tired of the vets that promote the product like Banfield who is going to acquire a lot of money because we come in every six months and spend our money. This product -- and I’m mad at the FDA. They should have never approved this product. There was not enough research done. Only 200 dogs in Australia for microspheres, but that was extensive testing. It was in two veterinary clinics and students were overseeing it. Why don’t you all investigate the microspheres?

Why don’t you investigate what’s really going on here? They are obtaining research on our dogs, and they are using it to further their vaccines in my opinion, and that testing can be tied to the fact that in October of ‘03 they had a first injection for humans that they announced. Okay? And in March of ‘04 they announced their affiliation with TR and World Health Organization. So this isn’t about just a heartworm shot. You vets have been mislead. You are being used as a tool to inject the dogs, and they pay for the tests and they win. We lose. Our dogs die. We can spend thousands of dollars to protect them. So I’m angry. I’m sorry, but I am angry.

(Five minutes up)

************************************************************