Bart had focused his legislative attention less on suicide itself than on a psychiatric adverse drug reaction to an acne medicine, which he believed was the trigger of his son’s depression. (There are many common medications—including the top-selling class of antibiotics, the quinolones—that can, in some patients, trigger depression, psychosis, and suicidal ideation; the FDA was already making label changes on the drug, Accutane, that Bart Stupak Jr. had used.)
