The Case for Giving Eli Lilly the Corporate Death Penalty
Belief:
Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus
Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence?
Scott Thill
DrugReporter:
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze
Steve Fox
Environment:
Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers
Makenna Goodman
Food:
Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
Health and Wellness:
New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable
William Ehart
Immigration:
NYC Marathon Raises Question of Who Is American Enough?
James E. Johnson, Jr.
Media and Technology:
Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones
Annabelle Gurwitch
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
Ann Neumann
Rights and Liberties:
"My Kids Want to Hide Their Identity; They're Scared Someone Will Attack Us": U.S. Muslims Being Targeted
Jaisal Noor
Sex and Relationships:
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better?
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox
World:
With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police
Lal Aqa Sherin
Eli Lilly & Company's rap sheet as a public menace is so long that for Lilly watchers to overcome the "banality-of-Lilly-sleaziness" phenomenon, the drug company must break some type of record measuring egregiousness. Lilly obliged earlier this year, receiving the largest criminal fine ever imposed on a corporation.
If Americans are ever going to revoke the publicly granted charters of reckless, giant corporations -- well within our rights -- we might want to get the ball rolling with Lilly, whose recent actions appalled even the mainstream media. And with Lilly's chums, the Bush family, out of power, now might be the right time.
On January 15, 2009, Lilly pled guilty to charges that it had illegally marketed its blockbuster drug Zyprexa for unapproved uses to children and the elderly, two populations especially vulnerable to its dangerous side effect. Lilly plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and agreed to pay $1.42 billion, which included $615 million to end the criminal investigation and approximately $800 million to settle the civil case.
One of the eight whistle-blowers in this case, former Lilly sales representative Robert Rudolph, says the settlement will not completely change Lilly's business practices, and he wants jail time for executives. "You have to remember, with Zyprexa," said Rudolph, "people lost their lives."
Rudolph is not exaggerating. Zyprexa, marketed as an "atypical" antipsychotic drug, has been promoted as having less dangerous adverse effects than "typical" antipsychotic drugs such as Thorazine and Haldol. However, on February 25, 2009, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the rate of sudden cardiac death in patients taking either typical or atypical antipsychotic drugs is double the death rate of a control group of patients not taking these drugs.
Zyprexa -- though not nearly as well known as Lilly's previous blockbuster Prozac -- is today one of the biggest-selling drugs in the world. Zyprexa has grossed more than $39 billion since its approval in 1996, with $4.8 billion of that in 2007 (and it was projected to equal or surpass that gross in 2008 when earnings are reported).
Lilly has had other Zyprexa scandals, but in this current one, Lilly executives matched Charles Dickens scoundrels. Zyprexa is approved by the Food and Drug and Administration (FDA) for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but Lilly illegally marketed it for sleep difficulties, aggression, and other unapproved uses. Lilly sales reps aggressively pushed Zyprexa as a wonderful drug to chill out disruptive children and the elderly who were not schizophrenic or bipolar. The lawsuit against Lilly stated, "In truth, this was Lilly's thinly veiled marketing of Zyprexa as an effective chemical restraint for demanding, vulnerable and needy patients."
Doctors can prescribe drugs for unapproved uses (called "off-label prescribing"), but drug companies are not allowed to market drugs for unapproved uses. Many drug companies break this rule, but Lilly broke it with gusto. “The company made hundreds of millions of dollars by trying to convince health care providers that Zyprexa was safe for unapproved uses," said Laurie Magid, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania where the case was prosecuted. Magid said that Lilly was responsible for "putting thousands and thousands of patients at risk."
One marketing effort consisted of the Lilly sales force urging geriatricians to use Zyprexa to sedate unruly nursing home and assisted-living facilities patients. Lilly sales reps distributed a study claiming that elderly patients taking Zyprexa required fewer skilled nursing staff hours than were necessary for patients taking competing medications. Magid stated that Lilly sales reps were "trained to use the slogan five at five, meaning five milligrams at 5 o'clock at night will keep these elderly patients quiet." Illegally marketing Zyprexa for elderly patients was especially troubling for prosecutors because Zyprexa increases the risks of heart failure and life-threatening infections such as pneumonia in older patients.
See more stories tagged with: eli lilly, pharmaceutical companies, prozac, zyprexa, thimerosal
Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).His Web site is www.brucelevine.net
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.