Fla. teen pilot's acne drug carried suicide warning
TAMPA, Fla., Jan 9 (Reuters) - A 15-year-old Florida pilot who crashed a stolen plane into a Tampa office building had a prescription for an acne drug that carried a label warning it might cause depression and suicide, police said on Wednesday.
Charles Bishop killed himself Saturday when he flew a single-engine Cessna into the 28th floor of the 42-story Bank of America building in downtown Tampa, an echo of the Sept. 11 commercial jet assaults on New York and Washington.
Police said they found a suicide note on Bishop's body expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden and support for the attacks, in which hijacked airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing some 3,300 people.
Washington holds bin Laden, a Saudi-born Islamic militant, responsible for the attacks and launched its war in Afghanistan to hunt him down.
Tampa police said a prescription for Accutane, a powerful acne drug, was found in Bishop's home. But investigators were not sure if he had taken the medicine, which carried a label warning it may cause depression and, in rare cases, thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts.
``We did locate a prescription for the drug Accutane in the name Charles Bishop that had been issued by a doctor,'' Tampa police spokeswoman Katie Hughes said. ``We cannot comment or attest to his use of the drug, dosage, any of that information.''
Hughes said the results of toxicology tests on Bishop's body would not be available for weeks.
SUICIDE MYSTIFIES MOTHER, FRIENDS
Bishop's mother and his teachers and fellow students at East Lake High School near Clearwater have all said they could not understand why he would kill himself. They said he was a patriotic American who was outraged by the Sept. 11 attacks.
A spokeswoman for Hoffman-La Roche, the Nutley, New Jersey-based U.S. unit of Accutane manufacturer Roche Holding Ltd. , was not immediately available for comment.
An article in the March-April 2001 issue of FDA Consumer, a magazine published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Accutane was the most powerful medicine developed for problem acne. But it noted that ``while Accutane may help lift psychosocial distress such as embarrassment, evidence suggests that it may actually cause serious psychiatric disorders in some people.''
While the relationship between Accutane and depression remains unproven, the article said, the FDA strengthened the label warning in 1998 to say Accutane may cause depression and psychosis, and in rare cases may cause thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts and suicide.
``From 1982 (FDA approval for the drug) to May 2000, FDA received reports of 37 U.S. Accutane patients who committed suicide, 24 while on the drug and 13 after stopping the drug.''
The FDA also had reports of 110 U.S. Accutane users hospitalized for depression and thoughts of suicide in the same period, the article said.
Bishop stole the Cessna from a flight school at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater airport, where he had been taking flying lessons for 10 months.
He flew over Tampa Bay and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa before he crashed. The U.S. Central Command, which is running the war in Afghanistan, has its headquarters on the base but base officials said they did not take any action against Bishop because they did not think he posed a threat.
An unarmed U.S. Coast Guard helicopter tried to get Bishop to land but he flew into the building.
Hughes said she did not expect the contents of Bishop's suicide note to be released this week, but it could be released next week.
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