Lilly Waited Too Long to Warn About Schizophrenia Drug, Doctor Testifies

[flashl]

ANCHORAGE — Eli Lilly, the drug maker, could and should have warned physicians as early as 1998 about the link between Zyprexa, its best-selling schizophrenia medicine, and diabetes, an expert witness told jurors Friday in a lawsuit that claims that Zyprexa has caused many mentally ill people to develop diabetes.

Instead, Lilly hid Zyprexa’s risks from doctors to protect the drug’s sales, according to the witness, Dr. John Gueriguian. Lilly waited until 2007 to add strong warnings to Zyprexa’s label to reflect the drug’s tendency to cause severe weight gain and blood sugar changes.

Lilly put “profit over concern of the consumer,” Dr. Gueriguian said Friday near the end of four hours of testimony.

...

The company has said it did nothing wrong and fully disclosed what it knew about Zyprexa to the Food and Drug Administration.

NY Times

[Celebration]

1. Another pharmaceutical company coverup?

Nah.

Honestly, all this stuff may have more to do with CEO pay and bonuses than anything else. I wonder if the Lilly chief had stock options that could have expired worthless if they had warned against this side effect? Whatever. Follow the money.

I can hardly think of a worse combination than having schizophrenia AND diabetes!

Gotta love these state attorney generals!

[Celebration]

2. Adding one more thing re: Lilly

Lilly and a couple of other companies have an oligopoly on insulin production. I'm sure that is just a coincidence.

[saltpoint]

3. Just my take on Big Pharma, but I think it would be great to hold

accountable the marketing zealots if they are guilty as charged but find a way not to punish the scientists. Zyprexa is widely prescribed in psychopharamcology and if specific people are guilty of this allegation I'd like to see the courts see it through to the end fully exposed, while somehow getting an outcome that doesn't punish the scientists.

If a first round of this class of compound is not to its purpose it doesn't mean the information and data collected so far is without value, and I hope that process -- a long-term process -- is preserved for the the second round of development.

Unless it has changed in very recent times, there is no law which prohibits physicians from owning stock in the compounds they prescribe. With Pepsi-Cola, that is not really an issue. But in psychotropic medications it is.

[Celebration]

4. here is what generally happens

The executives take their profits and run.

The patients are hurt by doctors that are fed incomplete information.

Scientists are not hurt.

The long term stockholders are hurt.

The system is broken.

[saltpoint]

5. Ja. Also the marketers must be considered as working against the

interests of the patients whose products their companies create and distribute.

Cost is not weighed as greatly as it could be in any health care plan I've seen so far. It's weighed in all. But I think for many older Americans it remains a tantamount issue.