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Monday, December 18, 2006

Trust Us, We're Here to Help


For 10 years Eli Lilly has played down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia. Hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers were collected as part of lawsuits on behalf of mentally ill patients against the company. For example, "unless we come clean on this, it could get much more serious than we might anticipate." Or this one, "Although M.D.’s like objective, educational materials, having our reps provide some with diabetes would further build its association to Zyprexa."


The problem with the drug is that it has been shown to cause substantial weight gain and diabetes. The dilemna for Lilly was that this was their biggest seller, with sales of $4.2 billion last year, when about two million people worldwide took the drug.


What are the scientists saying about Zyprexa? According to an article in the New York Times, "some top psychiatrists say that Zyprexa will continue to be widely used despite its side effects, because it works better than most other antipsychotic medicines in severely ill patients. But others say that Zyprexa appears no more effective overall than other medicines." I guess it's a matter of opinion. But the side effects do not seem to be a matter of opionion. Unless of course you ask Eli Lilly and the FDA. Lilly has never conducted a clinical trial to determine exactly how much Zyprexa raises patients’ diabetes risk.




Does anyone see a trend among corporate types? In order to rise to the top you have to be a certain type of person. These people know the fate of whistle blowers. None of them would dare stop what was happening for fear of ruining their career. What can we do? How can we stop these types of people from making sick people sicker?


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Eli Lilly Zyprexa scandal

Zyprexa off label promotion scandal is all over the news now.
Lilly drug reps are alleged to have called their marketing ploy,"Viva zyprexa".

Eli Lilly zyprexa cost me over $250.00 a month supply out of my own pocket X 4 years and has up to ten times the risk (over non users) of causing diabetes and severe weight gain.

Zyprexa which is only FDA approved for schizophrenia (.5-1% of pop) and some bipolar (2% pop) and then an even smaller percentage of theses two groups.
So how does Zyprexa get to be the 7th largest drug sale in the world?
Eli Lilly is in deep trouble for using their drug reps to 'encourage' doctors to write zyprexa for non-FDA approved 'off label' uses.

The drug causes increased diabetes risk,and medicare picks up all the expensive fallout.There are now 7 states (and counting) going after Lilly for fraud and restitution.

Only 9 percent of adult Americans think the pharmaceutical industry can be trusted right around the same rating as big tobacco.

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Daniel Haszard zyprexa-victims.com