05/06/04

LC040506

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

A former child actress is crusading for animals, but stirs up
old pain about the death of a child.

Pamelyn Ferdin>> I'm sorry if they have been drawn back in, but
I don't feel I drew them back in. The whole controversy of
killing these coyotes drew them back in.

Val>> And then, the city through the eyes of a hard-boiled
detective. Mystery writer Michael Connelly takes us inside his
Los Angeles.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Protecting innocent animals. It's a noble cause and
scores of people are doing good work in that area, but is it
possible to go too far? Some say that's exactly what happened
when an effort to protect coyotes reopened a human tragedy.
It's all about the death of a little girl and new allegations
about the way she died. At the center of it is a former child
actress who's now a registered nurse. She's also a prominent
animal rights activist. But as Philip Bruce reports, critics
say her good intentions ended very badly.

Philip Bruce>> She is among that rarest of breeds, a former
child star who grew up without any serious mishaps. If Pamelyn
Ferdin's name doesn't ring a bell, her face just might. In the
TV land of the sixties and seventies, she was everywhere from
"The Odd Couple" where she played Felix's daughter to "Star
Trek" next to Captain Kirk to "Lassie", a fitting and even
prophetic role given that Pamelyn has devoted her life to
fighting for animals.

Pamelyn Ferdin>> It is challenging and it's a struggle, but
that's why we call the animals rights movement a struggle
because it takes sacrifice and it takes commitment and an
enormous amount of hard work.

Philip Bruce>> Pamelyn says her eyes opened after she
volunteered at a Los Angeles animal shelter. She expected to
find kind city workers trying to do their best for the poor
creatures behind bars, but instead Pamelyn says the shelter was
a glorifying slaughter house where the staff dealt with animals
as though they were garbage.

Pamelyn Ferdin>> You could tell that they were really -- they
knew what was going to happen to them. It still really bothers
me. The fear in their eyes was so poignant that it just changed
my life, you know? I saw them being taken in there. They
weren't treated well at all. They were literally thrown,
slapped, onto a stainless steel table where they were injected
with poison.

Philip Bruce>> That was the beginning of her crusade. She got
busted for standing outside a circus holding a hooked club used
by elephant trainers. Pamelyn was there to tell circus goers
how cruel those trainers really were. Soon she was out on the
streets leading fellow animal lovers in protest such as this one
aimed at the then general manager of Los Angeles's Animal
Services Department, Jerry Greenwalt.

>> "Your no-kill policy is a lie."

Philip Bruce>> They accused Greenwalt of trying to con the
public with a so-called no-kill policy at city shelters. In
fact, they claimed the plan would actually euthanize more
animals than before. When we talked with Jerry Greenwalt, he
had been getting death threats and felt that the animal
activists had placed him in their bull's-eye for no reason.
Some of your critics say that a dog that has a bad case of fleas
could be declared sick and therefore would be put down.

Jerry Greenwalt>> We treat that animal.

Philip Bruce>> Not long after this interview, Greenwalt called
it quits and retired, but not before someone splattered his home
with red paint. Pamelyn Ferdin says it wasn't her or her group,
but she's not sorry it happened.

Pamelyn Ferdin>> You know, people are very emotional when it
comes to suffering and torture of innocent beings. So even
though I don't participate in that type of activity, I
understand it and I would even say that I support it.

Philip Bruce>> Now she's turned her sights on the city of
Glendale where these hills are alive with an abundance of
coyotes. Homeowners have spotted the animals in their yards and
driveways at all hours, sometimes in packs of three or four.
That alone makes residents nervous, but it's especially true
since Glendale was the scene of the only known fatal coyote
attack in United States history.

It happened in 1981. Three year old Kelly Keen was mauled to
death by a coyote in her driveway. The attack happened in what
seemed like the blink of an eye. Kelly's mom left her in the
living room watching cartoons, but somehow the little girl
slipped out the front door. The next thing Cathy Keen remembers
is her husband running into the house carrying Kelly's bloodied
and lifeless body.

Cathy Keen>> I didn't know the extent of it then, but she was
limp, moaning, profusely bleeding. I grabbed my other two
little girls, Karen and Kristin, and put them in the back seat.
He carried Kelly to the car. He held her while I drove as fast
as I could to Glendale Adventist Hospital. We ran into the
emergency room and I called a priest.

Philip Bruce>> For more than two decades, the Keen family has
lived with the horrible memories, but they never dreamed it
could get even worse, the way it did the night they just
happened to tune in to a cable broadcast of the Glendale City
Council meeting. That's when they saw Pamelyn Ferdin addressing
the Council wearing a shirt covered in fake blood urging the
city not to start trapping and killing coyotes. And then the
bombshell, Pamelyn's suggestion that little Kelly Keen hadn't
been killed by a coyote after all, but that she had died as a
result of some kind of abuse.

Pamelyn Ferdin>> "That child had a ruptured spleen from the
medical records and, as an R.N. who works in the emergency room,
that comes from blunt trauma. Blunt trauma comes from a
beating, not a bite to the spleen."

Cathy Keen>> When Pamelyn just so blatantly said that our child
had died of a ruptured spleen and that could only have been
caused by a beating, there's nothing else to assume other than
she was accusing us of beating this precious little child. I
cannot describe to you my feelings, really. It's just pain,
disbelief.

Philip Bruce>> A little later, one of Pamelyn's colleagues went
even further claiming that, after digging around in hospital
records, he discovered discrepancies and missing documents. In
effect, Michael Bell said the coyote story was a cover-up for
how the child really died.

Michael Bell>> "The fact that you keep eluding to the fact that
a coyote killed a child is wrong. You don't know the facts. I
do."

Cathy Keen>> When Michael Bell said that he had gone to the
hospital and had gone into our medical records and that he had
interacted with the hospital looking for our records and that
somehow this particular file had been expunged, that was it. My
husband said, "Put your shoes on. We're going down there right
now."

Philip Bruce>> Stunned and furious, the Keens raced down to the
Glendale City Hall and responded to the shocking allegations the
Council had just heard.

Cathy Keen>> "My heart is pounding. I cannot believe someone
has accused my husband or me of child abuse. She died from
injuries because of the coyote attack. I have the death
certificate in my hand."

>> "I understood exactly what they were saying, what they were
insinuating, and it was totally absurd. For someone who said
she was an R.N. or claimed to be an R.N. to make those kind of
statements and some of the other statements is just beyond
belief."

Pamelyn Ferdin>> I'm not saying that it was a case of child
abuse, but I can say that, after looking at the research, I
don't believe that that child was killed by a coyote.

Philip Bruce>> But do you think this family has gotten drawn
into this thing after all these years and had this pain reopened
for them?

Pamelyn Ferdin>> Well, you know, I'm sorry if they have been
drawn back in, but I don't feel I drew them back in. The whole
controversy of killing these coyotes drew them back in.

Philip Bruce>> For the Keens, it's been like losing little
Kelly all over again and, to them, the irony is that it all
starts with that other little girl who grew up before America's
eyes. Cathy Keen has never met Pamelyn Ferdin, but if she ever
does, she knows what she'll say.

Cathy Keen>> I'll tell her she broke my heart.

Val>> Ferdin is used to being controversial and doesn't mind
being labeled an extremist. She believes her cause is just and
she says she's vowed to do whatever it takes to keep Glendale
from trapping and killing coyotes.

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Val>> They are everywhere, ads for prescription drugs, but it
didn't used to be that way. For a long time, drug companies
could only market to doctors. But about seven years ago, the
FDA allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to
you, the consumer. Since then, the money spent on ads has
increased more than ten-fold. But studies show that consumers
watching the ads often don't know what the drugs are for.

That led me to ask some questions about the ads and why so many
of them are so vague. I talked with Dr. Michael-Anne Browne of
Blue Shield of California and got some straight answers about
prescription drug ads. We have been seeing hundreds of
prescription ads on television and you often hear people say I
can't even tell what that drug is for. What's going on? And
tell us a little bit about these ads.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> There are several different kinds of
ads that are regulated. The most common ad probably is the
product claim ad and that is where they will describe the
product, state what it's for and balance that with some of the
side effects and risks. Usually the side effects are in a lower
voice that talks very, very rapidly and says, "Side effects may
include nausea, vomiting, flatulence, diarrhea, constipation,
headaches or insomnia." (Laughter) You kind of go, "I don't
think I needed to hear that."

Val>> These ads, called product claim ads, are very specific.

>> "Side effects may include drowsiness, dizziness and
diarrhea. You shouldn't take it with alcohol. All persons
taking sleep medicines have some risk of becoming dependent on
the medicine."

Val>> And then there are these ads that are so vague that we
can't even tell what they're for.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> Well, the first kind is a reminder ad
that will state the name of the drug.

Val>> Example? This ad is for Cialis. Can you tell what it's
for?

>> "Cialis is here. Are you ready?"

Val>> Well, guess what. These reminder ads as they're called
are intentionally vague. Why?

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> Because once they do that, then they
have to tell you those wonderful side effects that we just
discussed that you probably don't want to hear about and they
don't want to remind the patients about. They just want to talk
about how wonderful it is. So you'll see the name of the drug
and you'll see people having a marvelous time in a field of
flowers. They feel great and you say this must be for
depression, but in truth it's for hay fever because they're in
the field of flowers. Or you'll find that it's a drug for
arthritis and what you're seeing is someone who is active and
happy with their family out and about. But again, it's hard to
figure out if it's a drug that's stopped their diarrhea that's
made them so happy or is it a drug that's stopped their hay
fever or stopped their depression or --

Val>> -- you can't tell.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> You can't tell. So the idea there is
just to name the drug and give you an impression that your life
can be fabulous too. Just ask your doctor.

Val>> So they're intentionally vague in order not to have to
name the side effects. But what good is that ad? Aren't they
spending money on an ad that people can't even tell what it's
for? It seems like a waste of money.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> It might, except that an amazing
percentage of patients actually will go in to their doctor and
say, "I saw this ad. Would that pill be good for me?" People
really do go in to their doctor and say, "What about that purple
pill? Would that be good for me?" Or even, "Hey, that might
help my mom."

Val>> And if you think that drug ads are watched and approved
by the FDA, think again.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> Not at all. The FDA has set up a
criteria that the ads are supposed to follow along, but the
policing happens after the fact, if you will. So once an ad is
on, if a complaint is registered, then the FDA investigates. If
they find a problem, they may send out a regulatory letter
saying you have claims that it has powers and effectiveness
beyond what the data shows, you have minimized the side effects
of the risks, you have claimed superiority over another drug
when there is no data to back that up. You must either pull the
ad or change it before you run it again. In some years, there
have been over one hundred such letters issued by the FDA.

Val>> But most of the complaints don't come from consumers
because how do we know?

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> They would come from competing --

Val>> -- competitors, okay. So as a consumer, there's no way I
can tell whether the claims that the ads make are backed up my
medical research or not. That's where talking to doctors is so
important, right?

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> Yes, and your pharmacist. The
pharmacists are usually very well informed about what a drug is,
what its indications are, how it works, what the interactions
are, what the side effects are, but you really do need to talk
to your doctor to find out if a drug is for you.

Val>> In fact, all prescription ads say this:

>> "Ask your doctor about Lamisil. Talk to your doctor about
Ambien. So ask your doctor about Detrol LA."

Val>> That's because the FDA requires ads to refer consumers to
their doctors and offer a toll-free number or website for
further information. Do physicians like what they call direct-
to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs? Do you think
it's a good thing?

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> I think most physicians are
comfortable with the notion of consumers becoming more aware and
informed, but the difficulty comes in that, of course, it's a
marketing focus on here much more than an educational focus.
When it's marketed, they emphasize the positive aspects and
minimize the risks. They don't tell you about what the
alternatives are at all. Usually for these drugs, there are
many alternatives, some of which are drugs that are generic
drugs that are much less costly. But, of course, the big
pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be spending money to market
the generics.

Val>> At the same time, ads for a particular drug have been
shown to help sales of other drugs for the same ailment.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> Now sometimes what doctors do is
prescribe a drug in that category, but tell the patient, well, I
agree that you have high blood pressure and you need a medicine
or you have high cholesterol and a medication might be good for
you. Doctors don't necessarily write for that one drug that was
advertised on TV that the patient mentioned.

Many people have a health insurance plan that has a restrictive
formulary and there are different co-pays for choosing a drug
that's on the formulary versus one that's not. Generally, if
the doctor feels that there is another drug that's at least as
effective if not more effective at a lower cost, they'll
recommend that one. So it's very interesting. Some of the data
shows that, with direct-to-consumer marketing, there is a bigger
increase in the class of drugs as a whole than there necessarily
is even with one particular drug that gets mentioned on TV.

Val>> Do you think regulation is adequate on the ads as they
exist now?

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> I think it's hard to give a full
picture of a medicine and its indications and how to use it in
thirty or sixty seconds. Patients complain now that their
doctor only spends ten minutes with them, so we're going to use
a thirty or sixty second ad to educate them fully? It's not
possible.

Val>> But the watch word is, absolutely talk to your doctor.
Don't stop at the ad. Check and research much further.

Dr. Michael-Anne-Browne>> That's right. Your doctor is there
for you.

Val>> Dr. Browne, thank you so much for your time. We really
appreciate it.

Dr. Michael-Anne Browne>> Thank you, Val.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Val>> Michael Connelly is best known for his crime novels set
in the gritty side of Los Angeles. His stories are cutting
edge, but his style hearkens back to the classic noir detective
stories of the forties and fifties. Now Connelly is trying
something new, a video that captures the side of Los Angeles
that's inspired so much of his work. It's called "Blue Neon
Night" and it's being released in conjunction with Connelly's
latest novel, "The Narrows". Here's a brief look.

Michael Connelly>> "Los Angeles is a wonderful place to live.
I think it might be a better place to write about. It's got so
much going for it. It's got beauty, it's got magnificent
climate of creativity, of weather. It's got tremendous
diversity in the people who were born here and the people who
have come here to live. Yet underlying all of that is this
stark sense, this sense of chaos and danger. It's in that scene
where I work. That's the line between good and evil, between
chaos and order, between the haves and have-nots, between safety
and danger. It's in that area that I put a detective, Harry
Bosch.

This is an old Red Car station. It's part of a transportation
system that was replaced by the freeways decades ago. On the
day I first arrived in Los Angeles in 1987, the first day I was
here, I was given a gift by the city that turned out to be very
valuable to me in terms of my storytelling and writing books.
There had been a bank robbery. The suspects used all-terrain
vehicles. They went in at this tunnel entrance, went in about a
mile, where they connected with a storm water tunnel and took
that basically into downtown to get into the proximity of the
bank that they were going to hit. They drilled up, or dug up,
into the vault and spent a whole weekend in there popping open
safe deposit boxes and getting away with it.

It's been many years now and the case has never been solved.
Obviously, they've closed up this entrance, but they've never
caught the guys who did it. It was a big crime and a big story
and, being a reporter, I had access to the detectives on the
case. I also had access to the details and that's where the
gift came in because a couple of years later is when I really
used all these details. I had been in Los Angeles for a few
years and I thought I was ready to start writing some crime
fiction about it and I used the details of the robbery in my
first novel, "The Black Echo"."

Narrator>> "The tunnel alternatively curved left and then right
for fifty yards, causing Bosch to become confused about his
location. At times he could hear the rumble of traffic, making
the tunnel sound like it was breathing."

Michael Connelly>> "Los Angeles is like that old friend of
yours who has a good heart and means well and wants to do well,
but somehow always seems to come up short of the mark. You love
that guy just the same, but you always sort of wish that one
time he would put it all together, that one time when he reaches
for the brass ring, he'd actually get it."

Narrator>> "Rachel's plane landed a half hour late because of
the rain and wind. It had not let up through the night and the
city was cast in a shroud of gray. It was the kind of rain that
paralyzed the city. Traffic moved at a crawl on every street
and every freeway. The roads weren't built for it. The city
wasn't either. By dawn, the storm water culverts were
overflowing. The tunnels were at capacity and the runoff to the
Los Angeles River had turned the concrete-lined canal that
snaked through the city to the sea into a roaring rapids. It
was black water, carrying with it the ash of the fires that had
blackened the hills the year before. There was an end-of-the-
world gloom about it all. The city had been tested by fire
first and now rain. Living in L.A., it sometimes felt like you
were riding shotgun with the devil to the Apocalypse."

Michael Connelly>> "Probably the strangest night I ever spent
in Los Angeles was the second night of the riots in 1992. I was
working as a reporter and I was assigned Hollywood Boulevard. I
watched a mob of people, multi-racial and multi-ethnic, descend
on Frederick's of Hollywood and break out the windows and go in
there and loot the place. This is a place that sells underwear.

In the meantime down the block, buildings were burning and there
were fire trucks all over the place and police, and people took
the time to loot an underwear store. The surrealism of that
just kind of always underlined the idea that Los Angeles in some
dimension is a Hieronymus Bosch painting, a world gone wrong, a
world of chaos, and that was one of the reasons why I used the
name of Hieronymus Bosch for one of my characters.

This is the wheel house of the historic Angels Flight Railway.
It's been one of the grace notes of this city for more than a
hundred years. We're at the top of Bunker Hill. Over the
decades, it has changed pretty dramatically, but Angels Flight
has remained the same. I think that's why I love it so much and
why I built a whole book around this spot. In their own way, I
want my books to be love letters to Los Angeles. Yes, I write
about bad people and the bad things that happen, but I'm always
looking for ways in showing the special places of this city. So
I often look for places like Angels Flight and the Bradbury
Building, places that I think are unique and beautiful, and help
celebrate the city."

Narrator>> "The Bradbury was the dusty jewel of downtown.
Built more than a century before, its beauty was old but still
brighter and more enduring than any of the glass and marble
towers that dwarfed it, like a phalanx of British guards
surrounding a beautiful child. Its ornate lines and glazed tile
surfaces had withstood the betrayal of both man and nature. It
had survived earthquakes and riots, periods of abandonment and
decay, in a city that often didn't bother to safeguard what
little culture and roots it had. Bosch believed there wasn't a
more beautiful structure in the city."

Michael Connelly>> "When I write about Harry Bosch, I hope I'm
writing about Los Angeles. My hope is, or my idea is, that if I
write about one person's journey through this place, of his
experiences, assimilating and understanding this place, I'll be
touching something in my readers and that will work whether they
know Los Angeles or not."

Narrator>> "I looked out at the city and thought it was
beautiful. The rain had cleaned the sky out and I could see all
the way to the San Gabriels and the snow-covered peaks beyond.
The air seemed to be as clean and pure as the air breathed by
the Indians and the padres so many years before. I saw what
they had seen in the place. It was the kind of day you felt you
could build a future on."

Val>> And in case you're wondering, that other voice in Michael
Connelly's video belongs to actor, William Petersen, of CSI
fame. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at
Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, a one-of-a-kind public
school where every classroom is a museum.

>> They feel like nothing is too far for them to reach. They
can do anything. They've spent hours on weekends at the museum.
They go to museum events. They are really engaging with this
curriculum and with this content in a way that, in my nine years
of teaching, I've never seen them do in another class.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.