Down on the Factory Pharm

All too often in the corporate world, when the needs of the many conflict with the needs of the few, when the health and well-being of the public is pitted against the profits of the company, common sense is kicked to the curb by dollars and cents. The latest culprit is the pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly, as reported here by the New York Times:

Eli Lilly Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill

The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers.

The documents, given to The Times by a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, show that Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa’s links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar — both known risk factors for diabetes.

Lilly’s own published data, which it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors, has shown that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. But Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa’s sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, according to the documents, which cover the period 1995 to 2004.

Zyprexa has become by far Lilly’s best-selling product, with sales of $4.2 billion last year, when about two million people worldwide took the drug.

Critics, including the American Diabetes Association, have argued that Zyprexa, introduced in 1996, is more likely to cause diabetes than other widely used schizophrenia drugs. Lilly has consistently denied such a link, and did so again on Friday in a written response to questions about the documents. The company defended Zyprexa’s safety, and said the documents had been taken out of context.

But as early as 1999, the documents show that Lilly worried that side effects from Zyprexa, whose chemical name is olanzapine, would hurt sales. [full text]

3 thoughts on “Down on the Factory Pharm”

  1. Many children and teens are also prescribed Zyprexa off-label, and I have seen firsthand the weight gain issue. As a social worker I advocate for the side effect and long-term effects of this drug to be considered more seriously, particularly for children and teens.

  3. Eli Lilly ZYPREXA LIES!

    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.
    I was ordered to take it beginning in 1996 for my PTSD for 4 years more,it was useless for my symptoms.Lesson learned…you shouldn’t give a major tranquilizer like zyprexa which makes you ‘sleepy’ to a hyper-vigilant patient.

    There is a clinical difference between hyper-vigilant and harmful aggression.
    Only 9 percent of adult Americans think the pharmaceutical industry can be trusted right around the same rating as big tobacco.

    —
    Daniel Haszard zyprexa-victims.com

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