The AP reported last night that the House health care reform bill indeed contains provisions for end-of-life counseling, which generated so much controversy over the summer when it was included in earlier version of the bill. Former Alaska Governor Sarah...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 30, 2009 12:01 AM
The National Center for Health Statistics recently released final mortality data for 2006 and the report shows that the age-adjusted suicide rate in America was 10.9 people per 100,000 people, the same as in 2005 and the same as in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 16, 2009 12:03 AM
In an email today, Jim Gottstein, president of the Alaska-based PsychRights group, announced the opening of the new Soteria-Alaska project. The project is modeled on the now-defunct Soteria House in California. Explains Gottstein: "The original Soteria House proved that outcomes...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 24, 2009 12:24 PM
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (known as Psych Rights) yesterday sent letters to several members of Congress, including Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), alleging that since the 1990s Medicaid has been paying for psych meds used in kids off-label and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:03 AM
The State of Georgia yesterday settled its claims against Eli Lilly over accusations of off-label marketing of its antipsychotic Zyprexa for $15 million, according to the Atlanta Journal_Constitution. The feds will get $9 million of that to cover payouts from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 30, 2009 12:03 AM
It's snowing in Seattle today and it's clear we've got a winter this year that just won't quit. But it's not just that. The American economy is in total meltdown, we've got a new President who makes me very uneasy,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 1, 2009 11:08 AM
This is all very sad to pass along, but news is out that Nicolas Hughes, the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, killed himself in Alaska, according to the Times of London. He was 47 years old and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 23, 2009 12:03 AM
After putting up the original post, I went back and slightly changed the portion where I discuss RS's handling of patient accounts in the article. I had overstated something and wanted to correct it. PD Two weeks ago, I noted...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2009 12:01 AM
From time to time, I stop to ponder where this amazing, weird country of ours is as a culture, trying to connect some of the dots as it were, and then I shoot off my mouth about it. I promise...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 10, 2008 12:01 AM
News is just out via the New York Times that Lilly and a combine of 33 states--which were pondering suing the pharma giant over off-label marketing of Zyprexa--have settled those claims for $62 million. It's not clear to me if...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 7, 2008 12:05 AM
Once upon a time, Daily Kos used to be a pretty good political blog, given to the extremes of progressive-liberalism but doing a decent job of calling BS on the Bushies and the mainstream media. I'm not much of a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 30, 2008 10:43 AM
I was talking to a friend on the phone last Thursday morning when my call waiting lit up. The caller ID read, "Isikoff, Michael" so, of course, I took the call. And I spent much of that day and the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 17, 2008 11:36 AM
About an hour ago I learned that District Court Judge Jack Weinstein had ordered that numerous confidential documents be unsealed in the class action lawsuit, settled in 2005, against Eli Lilly over accusations about its antipsychotic Zyprexa. It's not clear...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 5, 2008 10:18 PM
As I noted a few weeks ago, the Bloomberg wire service fought to get some documents unsealed in the Alaska v. Lilly lawsuit, settled earlier this year, over allegations that the company's antipsychotic Zyprexa had serious problems and that the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 4, 2008 12:03 AM
A lawsuit was filed yesterday in an Alaska superior court seeking to stop the de facto forced medication of children under the state's care (foster kids, juvenile detainees) and children covered under state health programs with psychiatric medications. Named as...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 3, 2008 12:03 AM
Several of the recently-released Zyprexa documents from the Alaska lawsuit against Eli Lilly, the drug's maker, are accounts of sales calls (or detailing, as it's known in the pharma biz) on PCPs in the state and what things sales reps...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 19, 2008 12:03 AM
Over the weekend, about 1,000 pages of documents recently unsealed by an Alaskan court--which had been overseeing the recent Alaska v. Lilly case up there--hit the Internet. The documents were unsealed because of the efforts of the Bloomberg wire service...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 18, 2008 12:03 AM
There was an ironic intersection of various forces in the mental health world yesterday. Fuller Torrey's Treatment Advocacy Center had a post trumpeting new forced treatment laws in Illinois, Louisiana and Idaho and the group made its usual argument that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 1, 2008 12:01 AM
I know more than a few readers are disappointed in the $15 million settlement reached between Alaska and Lilly on Tuesday. Yes, the settlement was a bit of a surprise, especially this late in the game as the New York...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 27, 2008 12:03 AM
Here's Eli Lilly's statement regarding its last minute settlement with the State of Alaska in the Zyprexa case: "The agreement resulted from ongoing mediation ordered by trial Judge Mark Rindner before the trial began. Presiding Judge Morgan Christen renewed mediation...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 26, 2008 08:30 AM
I am stunned to report that the Alaska v. Lilly trial settled yesterday for a mere $15 million. This move will be picked apart by many in the mental health and pharma worlds--and since I learned of it very early...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 26, 2008 02:06 AM
The New York Times' Alex Berenson, whom I hold in very high regard, stumbled onto an amazing real life paradox while in Alaska last week and turned it into a fascinating story. Brief summary: upstairs in the court house, Lilly...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 26, 2008 12:03 AM
There's been spotty coverage of the Alaska v. Lilly trial ever since Lilly began to mount its defense last week. That's apparently because Lilly's lawyers are taking the tactic of putting an expert on as a witness, who claims that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 24, 2008 10:46 AM
The stakes could hardly be any higher for Eli Lilly as it defends itself against the State of Alaska's allegations that the company failed to warn doctors and patients about problems with its drug Zyprexa. According to Bloomberg, losing in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 19, 2008 12:05 AM
I hear through the grapevine that the State of Alaska wrapped up presenting its case against Eli Lilly yesterday over allegations of its handling of the drug Zyprexa. I'll have more on how the case wrapped as soon as I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 18, 2008 12:05 AM
I've paid attention before on this site to the fact of Japanese label changes concerning hyperglycemia and diabetes that the Japanese government imposed on Zyprexa in early 2002. On Thursday, jurors in the Alaska v. Lilly case heard from plaintiff's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 17, 2008 12:05 AM
Alex Berenson at the New York Times has a piece that just hit the paper's website detailing an email that was presented in the Alaska v. Lilly Zyprexa trial earlier this week. In the email, according to the Times, John...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 14, 2008 11:58 AM
There was an interesting turn of events in the trial of Alaska v. Eli Lilly in Anchorage yesterday: Duane Hopson, a psychiatrist at Alaska's state hospital, was originally supposed to be a witness for Lilly but instead testified on behalf...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 13, 2008 08:12 AM
The state now becomes the tenth in a string of states suing the maker of Zyprexa. It's the usual set of allegations, as WSJ's Health Blog notes, and then there is some eye-popping detail: "Connecticut is looking to recover more...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 12, 2008 12:05 AM
As I noted on Friday, I did a lot of thinking over the weekend and have decided to keep charging ahead with the work I do here. For one, it appears that the winter fundraiser may have exceeded its $2,000...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 10, 2008 12:05 AM
Some of you may have noted that in recent coverage of the Zyprexa trial in Alaska that Lilly's outside attorney, Nina Gussack, has pointed out what she considers a discrepancy in Alaska's case. Namely, that the state alleges that Lilly...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 7, 2008 01:57 PM
I have little to offer today since I am far too tired from some outside work I've been doing to keep myself alive while I try to keep this site going to even think much less write. The fundraiser brought...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 6, 2008 12:05 AM
Trial began Monday in the case of the State of Alaska v. Eli Lilly over the latter's handling of Zyprexa. The first day and Tuesday involved jury selection and today Lilly's bigshot outside lawyer, Nina Gussack of Pepper Hamilton, is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2008 09:05 AM
A civil trial brought by the State of Alaska against Eli Lilly over accusations involving its atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa is expected to begin in Anchorage tomorrow with jury selection. Last week, the trial judge tossed out a portion of the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2008 09:06 AM
Another $80 came in yesterday, which brings the total for this site's winter fundraiser to $1,093. That's over halfway to the goal of $2,000 by the end of Friday. I cannot even begin to thank you enough for your contributions....
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2008 12:05 AM
A couple of things. Thanks to the reader (or was it readers?) who threw the bipolar blood test post of a few days ago up on StumbleUpon yesterday. I've been getting slammed with hits ever since. Speaking of hits, February...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 1, 2008 02:08 PM
That's the word from the New York Times yesterday. To whit, that Lilly and the Department of Justice and Lilly and the many states preparing to sue the company are in settlement talks. A settlement with both groups would absolve...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 31, 2008 12:05 AM
On Sept. 7, David Egilman, a Brown University professor and expert witness in one of the Zyprexa class action lawsuits, and Eli Lilly settled outstanding claims related to Egilman's leaking of court-sealed documents in the case last year. The settlement...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 10, 2007 12:05 AM
Pharmalot is reporting that David Egilman, the Brown University doctor and expert witness who was instrumental in getting the infamous Zyprexa documents into the public realm late last year, has settled with Eli Lilly on claims the company had against...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 7, 2007 01:22 PM
Jim Gottstein, the Alaska lawyer who helped get the Zyprexa documents into the public realm, is soon to receive an award from a Jewish temple in Alaska. Congrats to Gottstein, who is owed the thanks of many for forcing certain...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 30, 2007 12:01 AM
I bumped into an interesting legal article yesterday. It was mostly interesting because it's now becoming obvious that Eli Lilly may be looking at many more lawsuits by states over the company's behavior regarding Zyprexa. The news just keeps getting...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 4, 2007 12:03 AM
Two of the central figures in the Zyprexa documents case are Jim Gottstein and David Egilman. Gottstein is a lawyer in Alaska who does tons of pro bono work on behalf of psych patients, and Egilman is a doctor and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 14, 2007 12:00 PM
Last week, several of the parties to a federal court order pertaining to the release of the Zyprexa documents offered US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein their final briefs. In each the parties argue that they've done nothing wrong and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2007 10:19 AM
There is now online a complete transcript of the two-day hearing on January 16th and 17th concerning Eli Lilly's attempt to end dissemination of the recently-leaked Zyprexa documents. If you are legal dork, and I am, then they are fascinating...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 25, 2007 12:15 AM
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...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2006 12:05 AM
Just as I thought I was going to drift off for a few days, the New York Times has yet another revelation: "The original results showed that patients on Zyprexa, Lilly’s pill for schizophrenia, were 3.5 times as likely to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 21, 2006 12:05 AM
I have several thoughts in light of Saturday's revelations in the New York Times that Eli Lilly, according to documents obtained by the paper, had been telling its sales reps to downplay risks of weight gain, boosted sugar levels and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 18, 2006 12:01 AM
I'm not sure whether to call this a blow for patient rights and the anti-psychiatry movement, a defeat for the forces of forced medication, or what, but the Alaska State Supreme Court ruled in June (no idea why I just...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 11, 2006 12:03 AM