Dr. David Egilman, a physician and expert witness who, over 35 years, testified in some 600 lawsuits involving corporate wrongdoing, resulting in billions of dollars in awards for victims and their survivors, has died on April 2 at his home in Foxborough, Massachusetts. He was 71 years old.
The cause was cardiac arrest, his son Alex said.
Many medical experts do side business in court, offering their informed opinions on the witness stand and helping to validate or undermine plaintiffs’ claims. But few make it a career-long passion like Dr. Egilman did. He taught at Brown University and ran a private practice, but spent most of his time consulting and testifying in up to 15 cases a year.
He did more than just give his opinion from the stand. A tenacious investigator, he unearthed incriminating emails and memos that showed that, in many cases, pharmaceutical companies knew the risks involved in putting a new drug on the market but went ahead anyway.
He provided critical testimony in a class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, alleging that it had failed to disclose the health risks posed by Johnson’s baby powder and other talc-containing products. “Although several settlements have been proposed in the lawsuit, including one for $8.9 billion in 2023, litigation continues.
Dr. Egilman’s work as an expert witness upset some people, especially defense attorneys and pharmaceutical company executives, who argued that he was too dogmatic to provide objective analysis. But Dr. Egilman saw things differently.
“As a doctor, I can treat one cancer patient at a time,” he said during a trial in 2018. “But by being here, I have the potential to save millions.”
His work extended beyond the courtroom: He helped legal teams strategize their cases and trained them on how to present complicated medical data to jurors.
“David was a game changer on many levels,” said Mark Lanier, an attorney who worked with Dr. Egilman for 25 years. “David helped me in cases where he testified, but also where he simply gave me advice and knowledge.”
He also rejected what he considered the intrusion of pharmaceutical marketing into the field of scientific research. Writing in peer-reviewed medical journals, he showed how pharmaceutical companies used tactics such as ghostwriting (doing their own studies and then paying a doctor to add their name) and “seeding,” in which companies conduct their own questionable studies to generate support for their drugs.
Dr. Egilman was instrumental in publishing a declassified 1950 memo that warned of the risks involved in government radiation testing on humans. Nevertheless, the tests were carried out.
“If this were done in humans, I think there would be considerable criticism from those interested in the Atomic Energy Commission, as there would certainly be a bit of Buchenwald in this,” said Dr. Joseph G. Hamilton, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote in the memo, referring to the Buchenwald concentration camp where Nazi doctors conducted horrific medical experiments on prisoners.
The US government apologized for the radiation tests in 1996.
At times, Dr. Egilman’s zeal got the better of him. In 2007, he agreed to pay drug maker Eli Lilly $100,000 after leaking confidential documents to a lawyer, who then gave them to the New York Times. He was involved in a case against the company over accusations that he had pushed its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for unapproved uses.
Eli Lilly donated the money from the settlement to charity. But the company’s victory was short-lived: In 2009, it pleaded guilty to the allegations and agreed to pay $1.4 billion, including a $515 million criminal fine, the largest ever in a health care case.
Dr. Egilman did not bow down to the ups and downs of the case.
“A doctor’s oath,” he told Science magazine in 2019, “never says to keep our mouths shut.”
David Steven Egilman was born on September 9, 1952 in Boston. His father, Felix, was a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust, including a period spent in Buchenwald, because, he said, German officers appreciated his skill as a shoemaker. His wife and two children were murdered in another concentration camp.
After the war, Felix Egilman emigrated to the United States, where he married Veta Albert, David’s mother, who died in a car accident when David was 10 years old. His father became emotionally withdrawn in the face of the mounting trauma, leaving David largely in charge of caring for him. of himself.
He won a scholarship to Brown University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology in 1974 and a bachelor’s degree in medicine in 1978. He earned a master’s degree in public health from Harvard in 1982.
Dr. Egilman married Helene Blomquist in 1988. Along with his son Alex, she survives him, as does another son, Samson.
After studying medicine and training at the National Institutes of Health, he moved to Cincinnati, where he set up a clinic as part of the United States Public Health Service. Many of her patients were industrial workers and miners who had developed medical conditions after years of working in unsafe environments.
The experience strengthened Dr. Egilman’s resolve to stand up to medical injustice. He returned to Massachusetts in 1985, where he opened a private practice and began teaching at Brown.
To handle his growing list of legal clients, he created a separate company, Never Again Consulting, a nod to both his father’s experience during the Holocaust and the importance of not allowing the horrors of Nazi medical experimentation to be repeated.
