VMAC Statements/Speeches, January 31, 2005

By Janice Storey

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.