The Zyprexa Chronicles: The Netroots Strikes Back

There's a lot of news in this post. Happy reading.

An anonymous tipster pointed me to something called "zyprexakills." Apparently, it is a response by the netroots to the court order forcing Jim Gottstein, a lawyer in Alaska, to return various marketing documents concerning Zyprexa, which may or may not have established that Eli Lilly was encouraging its sales reps to downplay the risks associated with Zyprexa and press doctors to prescribe it for off-label uses. I haven't reached any conclusions. I haven't seen the documents. Sounds like the internist in the post below this has reached some conclusions based upon his experiences, though. But I have seen the New York Times articles based on the documents and I know Alex Berenson to be a bad ass reporter. Speaking of bad ass, here's what the zyprexakills site has to say for itself:

"Eli Lilly’s motion to suppress the evidence has been denied by an inter-galactic court of appeals. Justice will be served over HTTP. As we speak, the slick marketing plans drawn up by the smartest boys in the drug dealing business are propagating across the Internet."

Inter-galatic court of appeals? Oh my. I'm not even sure I know what that means. Thank you, anonymous tipster.

Speaking of tipsters, it amuses the hell out of me that there aren't more sales reps turned whistleblower out there. Maybe all those cheerleaders turned pharma sales reps didn't learn to blow...a whistle. Now, why would anyone need to blow the whistle on a pharma company? Right now, there are lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson/Janssen/et al in Texas concerning Risperdal (as I noted here, recently) and a lawsuit in federal court in Florida against AstraZeneca over Seroquel and there are still proceedings involving Zyprexa. And, now, there is news that Bristol Myers-Squibb, makers of Abilify, has agreed to a settlement of $499 million with the federal government to defer prosecution relating to allegations it overcharged the government for drugs and promoted medicines for unapproved uses. It is not clear to me specifically what BMS drugs were involved. U.S. investigators in Massachusetts also were examining promotion of the Abilify schizophrenia drug and "other current and divested products" for unapproved, or off-label, uses, said Bristol-Myers spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald, in the above linked article.

Given all these proceedings, to date, very little has come out in the way of evidence in these cases, despite very substantial accusations. (FYI: Corporations like to settle cases and get judges to seal documents and put lawyers under gag orders.) As a reporter that tells me that either the accusations are without merit (and the corporations are settling some of these cases because it's fun) or that people in positions to know are ignoring the fact that Risperdal, Seroquel, Abilify and Zyprexa are taken by on the order of 6 million to 10 million Americans (that's my guesstimate), and that these atypical Americans have an absolute right to know the substance of the evidence involved in accusations concerning the medications they take, but these people in a position to know are keeping their lips zipped all the same. The revenue for the four drugs I just mentioned is about $9 billion a year.