Atypical Nation: How Pharma Got Doctors To Promote Antipsychotics For Everything

There was an excellent and exhaustive article in the St. Petersburg Times on Sunday, detailing how the newer atypical antipsychotics were deemed no betetr than older antipsychotics by the FDA, so pharma companies went out and got docs to tout the drugs for them. Along the way, the companies alleged bribed a state official in Texas to help him create the Texas Medications Algorithm Project, the infamous TMAP, as well as a state pharmacist in Pennsylvania, and in Florida Eli Lilly helped start the Florida Behavioral Health Collaborative with a $10 million grant.

Lilly defends its practices:

"According to Lilly spokeswoman Janice Chavers, the goal was not to help the company's profit margin, it was to give patients the best care: 'Patients always must be the top priority. It can't always be about the bottom line.'

"The Florida collaborative convened an expert panel to recommend state standards for treating mental illness. National scholars were invited — all with financial ties to drug companies.

"To treat schizophrenia, the panel decided, doctors should try an atypical first. If that didn't work, they should try a different atypical. If that still didn't work, they should try a third atypical or, if they would rather, one of the older generation drugs."

Oh, yes, patients have always been the top priority for Lilly, as the company's marketing of Zyprexa, an unsafe drug, clearly demonstrates.

The rest of the article is excellent and details how pharma companies basically twisted the influence of just a few doctors and state officials into billions of dollars in sales--and tens of thousands of patients with diabetes.

Like PHrMA's Ken Johnson and spokesmodel Montel Williams like to say, "America's pharmaceutical research companies."