Liam Grant was a young man with all of life’s advantages on his side. The 19 year old was handsome, popular and academic, in his second year of an engineering degree at UCD.
He was equally talented in sport and in music, played in a band and had built a recording studio in the garden of his family’s comfortable suburban home in Terenure, Dublin.
He had a firm eye on the future, working his way towards a career as a sound engineer. He was “an outgoing young man”, his only concern apparently a mild case of acne on his neck and shoulders. For this, Liam was prescribed Roaccutane, a strong acne medication, by a dermatologist in February 1997.
Thirteen years on, his father, Liam Senior, pinpoints this as the time when his son’s character changed dramatically. The young student withdrew from friends and family, spending more time in his bedroom, the curtains drawn because he said light bothered him. He instructed his younger brother to tell friends who called to see him that he wasn’t at home.
In June 1997, Liam was found hanging from a tree in the foothills of the Dublin mountains. He left a note expressing his belief that he had few friends and that the turnout for his funeral would prove it. In that respect he was entirely, poignantly, wrong.
Since an inquest jury returned a verdict of death by suicide for Liam, his father has been battling to prove that his son had taken his own life as a direct result of taking Roaccutane – and that Roche, the pharmaceutical giant that manufactures the drug, knew of the risks and failed to sufficiently warn patients of them.
Roche denies that Roaccutane causes “psychiatric events” but in a victory for father-of-four Mr Grant this week, the European Ombudsman has ordered the European Medicines Agency to collate and hand over to him all adverse reaction reports it has received relating to Roaccutane. The information will be vital when Mr Grant finally squares up to Roche in a High Court case within the coming 12 months.
“It has taken seven years to get to this point,” Mr Grant, now 61, told Review this week. In 2004, he sued Roche in the High Court. The company offered to pay him the maximum compensation under law for the death of his son – about €30,000 – as well as his costs and special damages. This offer would not, however, include any admission of liability on Roche’s part for Liam Junior’s death.
