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Enbrel Made a Believer Out of Former Legislator |
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Written On: July/August 2004 |
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John Pennington is a walking testimonial for Enbrel, Amgen’s amazing anti-rheumatoid disease drug.
Pennington, a southwest Washington Republican state Representative, was at the height of his political power in early 2001. Only in his mid thirties, he was the youngest speaker pro tem in the history of the Washington State Legislature.
Then, one February night, after eating a bad steak, Pennington fell ill.
“Within a period of about two to three weeks, my entire system fell apart,” Pennington recalled. “I literally woke up in the middle of one night and my upper spinal cord was inflamed, my knees were flaming and my hips were burning on the inside. I lost weight rapidly and was limping, getting to the point where I couldn’t even walk. I didn’t know what was going on.”
Pennington’s doctor at first thought his condition might have been bone cancer, but this diagnosis proved to be incorrect. Two to three months after becoming ill, Pennington was scheduled to go to the Mayo Clinic when he received a call from the University of Washington’s (UW) rheumatology department.
Weak and in tremendous pain, Pennington had lost 35 pounds in two months and was walking with a cane and wearing leg braces when he learned his illness was ankylosis spondylitis, a cruel rheumatoid disease. Fortunately, the UW doctors had a new, experimental weapon to use against this disease – Enbrel, produced by Amgen’s predecessor, Immunex.
Enbrel had not yet been approved for treating Pennington’s condition, but he had nothing to lose by trying it. As it turned out, this experimental treatment worked.
Combined with physical therapy, Enbrel had amazing effects on Pennington after three months. Thanks to twice weekly Enbrel injections, Pennington now walks upright with ease. Always athletic before his illness, he even jogs on a regular basis.
Perhaps most surprisingly, after years of attempting to have a child, Pennington and his wife finally succeeded with the birth of a daughter in 2003. As a result, Pennington has now become a test case for Enbrel’s effects on fertility.
Although Pennington left the Legislature due to his illness, it did not take him long to find a new job. In late 2001, while rebounding on Enbrel, he was appointed regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration for Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.
“It sounds like a commercial, what I’m telling you, but it’s just the honest-to-God truth of what happened to me,” Pennington concluded. “The story’s an amazing one, and it’s proof that between R&D, experimentation and just good, old American ingenuity that we can do some amazing things. I’m walking proof.”
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