Bloomberg is reporting today on documents recently unsealed in federal court in Florida in the ongoing case against AstraZeneca concerning claims that the company did not properly notify the public of risks (principally, diabetes and weight gain) associated with its...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 22, 2009 12:51 PM
A new batch of Zyprexa documents was unsealed in US District Court in New York last month, something that escaped my notice due to all the Seroquel documents being released elsewhere. Bloomberg got the documents--which I'll attempt to obtain myself--and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 12, 2009 12:03 AM
A new study is out in the journal Social Science & Medicine examining how Eli Lilly marketed Zyprexa, its controversial atypical antipsychotic, in primary care settings (meaning to non-psychiatrists). The paper's author, a psychology prof at Metropolitan State University in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 29, 2009 12:03 AM
As I noted last year, America's uber mental health advocacy group the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) was getting oodles from pharma companies, including $490,000 from Eli Lilly. What NAMI uses that money for isn't clear to me, but...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 6, 2009 03:02 PM
Bloomberg reported yesterday that after being ordered to warn doctors in Japan about Seroquel in 2002, AstraZeneca continued to insist in the US market that there was no link to diabetes. "The London-based drugmaker issued a letter to Japanese physicians...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 3, 2009 12:03 AM
The other day, I heard from a new reader who ran into a post from last May on a study asserting that bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed (or perhaps misdiagnosed) 43.4 percent of the time, at least according to the data...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 13, 2009 12:05 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
There's been a lot of news out lately about how Wall Street bankers are pulling down millions in bonuses despite running their banks into the ground, and now it's Big Pharma's turn to look just as brilliant. According to FiercePharma.com,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 11, 2009 01:31 PM
This paper (pdf here) in the American Journal of Psychiatry should be a big wake up call to patients (your doctor simply isn't very thorough or doesn't have the time to be thorough) and doctors who prescribe atypical antipsychotics, a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 30, 2009 12:05 AM
I was reviewing an FDA staff document this morning, wherein FDA staffers recommend additional warnings for Zyprexa for pediatric cases (ie, teens) and ran across a startling statistic. According to the agency's own adverse events database summarized in the report,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 17, 2008 09:51 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
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
Late last week, US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein shot off his mouth in an opinion he filed in the midst of a merry-goround of opinions being filed as various Zyprexa cases under his purview are shaped up to march...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 22, 2008 11:39 AM
Excellent piece on Slate.com today detailing Big Pharma influence on "health and science" programs in the media. It paid particular attention to "The Infinite Mind," a program hosted by Fred Goodwin, who as most of you know is one of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2008 01:34 PM
Eli Lilly's first quarter sales and earnings were announced today. Worldwide sales of Zyprexa were up 1 percent to $1.1 billion, but US sales of the controversial antipsychotic were down 5 percent "because of competition from newer products and worries...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 21, 2008 11:40 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
A UCLA PhD candidate in History who's a reader of this site came upon a genius idea: making a video of himself reading one of the Zyprexa documents on YouTube. His name is Brad Fidler (website) and the document he...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 25, 2008 10:02 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
I noted yesterday that the State of Connecticut had become the tenth state to sue Eli Lilly over various accusations surrounding the company's alleged handling of the drug Zyprexa and that the state AG's office had issued a nuclear weapon...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 13, 2008 12:05 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
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
No single entity has accessed the leaked Zyprexa documents more than Eli Lilly & Company itself. I've seen instances where single employees have gone to particular documents where they were named. I'll read nothing into that behavior! Today, perhaps for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 7, 2008 01:17 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
I forgot to note the other day that Feb. 7 marked the one-year anniversary of this site's hosting of the leaked Zyprexa documents. They are still online for the public to peruse. Happy reading....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 11, 2008 09:00 AM
It's hard to believe that Lilly could look worse after settling about $1.3 billion in civil claims and being on the verge of working out a $1 billion deal with the feds in an attempt to escape federal prosecution and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2008 12:05 AM
A new shareholder lawsuit has been filed against Eli Lilly over allegations involving the drug Zyprexa. Some shareholders are angry with the company because they contend that the lost money on their Lilly stock due to news reports of coverups...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 1, 2008 12:03 AM
Eli Lilly just announced that it's settled another 900 lawsuits against the company over allegations of injuries involving its drug Zyprexa. By settling the company avoided going to trial on five of the cases, including one which was scheduled for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 24, 2008 08:10 AM
So New Year's is approaching and I wanted to thank all of you for your readership and support of this site in 2007, especially during my fracas with Lord Google and the very heated controversies around the bipolar child debate....
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 31, 2007 12:00 PM
Here's the first installment of my year-end wrap up. So much happened in mental health news this year that I broke it into two posts. 2007 was that busy of a year. The second one will be up tomorrow. January...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2007 03:38 PM
I am having a little go-round of back problems again, so I am going to be kind to myself and back off the computer until later today. In the meantime, read on: Military suicides set a record. The New York...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 17, 2007 12:01 AM
Today is the one-year anniversary of Alex Berenson's New York Times article that made public internal Eli Lilly documents establishing that the company had told its sales force to downplay all manner of problems associated with Zyprexa. I remember seeing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 16, 2007 02:52 PM
David Healy and his colleague Joanna Le Noury have a new paper out, which examines the rise of bipolar disorder in both adults and children and puts it all in some kind of historical context. It's a lengthier examination of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 13, 2007 12:05 AM
Another thirty Zyprexa patients sued Eli Lilly this week: "The attorneys represent 30 plaintiffs from Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and New Jersey who claim Zyprexa negatively affected their blood sugar and endocrine system gradually over time and duration. The plaintiffs specifically...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 30, 2007 12:03 AM
There was an alarming letter in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry, reporting on a child born with a clubfoot and a hole in its heart (the baby's gender is not specified). The case occurred in Israel and the doc's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 7, 2007 12:03 AM
Here's the now-infamous Pharmed Out video of former Eli Lilly sales rep Shahram Ahari explaining how he was told to shade the truth about problems with Zyprexa. Fascinating entre into the dark side of Big Pharma. (Via Kmarek.) I'm getting...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 24, 2007 12:20 PM
Eli Lilly, makers of Zyprexa, today announced its third quarter financials. Despite reams of bad publicity about its top-selling drug over the last year and reports of eroding market share, the company says its Zyprexa revenues are up 8 percent...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 18, 2007 08:59 AM
I've had a surge of interest--if interest is the word for it--in my writing from pharma companies and their lawyers recently. Not that they weren't around before. Yesterday, BMS came by looking for info on whistleblowers. Someone from Roche. And...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 10, 2007 12:03 AM
The following is an interview with Ellen Liversidge, mother of Rob. He was a 39-year-old with bipolar disorder who died in 2002 after taking Zyprexa. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death. Tell us about your son. Rob grew...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 5, 2007 12:05 AM
As I mentioned the other day, I plan to roll out a few tidbits from the Zyprexa documents. Here's the first installment. In an internal "business planning purposes" document from Feb. 20, 2004, an unidentified Lilly official summarizes "competitive information"...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 3, 2007 12:01 AM
The French news program "Complement d'enquete" on the France 2 network had a piece on Zyprexa last week. The piece was mostly shot in the US. Because of a bad video feed, I haven't been able to assess what it...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 29, 2007 12:12 PM
As I noted earlier today, a new study of Zyprexa use in teens was just published. I've just reviewed the full paper and will have more thoughts in a bit. Until then, take a look at the disclosure statement for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 27, 2007 11:23 AM
Late last night, a study touting the use of Zyprexa in teens aged 13 to 17 years with bipolar disorder hit the web. It's published in the October issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study was lead-authored by...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 27, 2007 12:33 AM
And just in time for the new school year. Pharmalot has news that an FDA official has overturned objections of colleagues, who recommended not approving a new indication for Zyprexa, and set the drug on its way for almost-certain approval...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 26, 2007 08:03 AM
Psych Central kindly gave me a thinking blogger award the other day and now I am supposed to mention five blogs in return. When this went on six months ago or so, we ended up with a rotating list of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 24, 2007 12:01 AM
Last week, there was much media coverage of a large jump in adverse events reports and deaths due to the use--and, perhaps, misuse--or prescription drugs. Most of the coverage cited the general trend, noted how many thousands of deaths occurred...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 19, 2007 12:28 AM
According to Decision Resources, a market tracking firm, Risperdal and Seroquel have overtaken Zyprexa as the go-to antipsychotics in treating schizophrenia. I mostly pass along this news on a for-what-it's-worth-to-ya basis. I also found this quote from the press release...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 18, 2007 12:03 AM
I am just going to let this speak for itself, from a Swedish account of a television appearance by Rolf Adolfsson, a professor of psychiatry at Umea University in Sweden. Make of it what you will. “'There is nothing worse...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 13, 2007 12:03 AM
Most of you know who David Egilman is by now, so I'll dispense with the preliminaries and get right to this post he did on The Pump Handle, which is a public health blog. He's referring to silence on the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 12, 2007 12:03 AM
Yesterday, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a study asserting that there's been a huge increase in adverse event reports over prescription drugs to the FDA from 1998 to 2005. Press coverage here. The annual number of serious adverse event...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 11, 2007 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
The whole world is apparently watching the news around the massive increases in diagnoses of bipolar disorder in kids, teens, and adults. My earlier post on this is here. Hundreds of references from the mainstream media and news sites such...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 4, 2007 12:17 PM
A young college grad in Texas with an MBA and a future in accounting develops an unspecified mental disorder. His name was Scott Sexton. He gets treated with Zyprexa. He dies due to pancreatitis. His family is suing Lilly. I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 28, 2007 12:05 AM
Scientific Misconduct has an excellent post up about the Rita Pal case. For those of you who missed the fun here the other day, the background is right here. Since Aubrey Blumsohn is based in the UK, he appears to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 27, 2007 12:05 AM
On Monday, I spoke with the Oregon State Attorney General's Office, asking if they had undertaken any actions against Eli Lilly over Zyprexa. To date, the state is not among the eight that have filed a lawsuit against the company...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 11, 2007 12:05 AM
US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein has moved along many of the outstanding lawsuits against Eli Lilly over Zyprexa to such a point that he is now calling for a trial on many of the remaining suits beginning October 15....
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 25, 2007 12:01 AM
Via Psychdata, here's an initial bit on a class action lawsuit in Australia field against Eli Lilly (or its Aussie subsidiary I'd assume) over injuries allegedly caused by the company's star drug, Zyprexa. I know squat about the legal system...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 18, 2007 12:01 AM
Eli Lilly, maker of Zyprexa, has settled another 900 lawsuits against itself by patients alleging that the company downplayed risks associated with the drug. This comes five months after Lilly settled a second round of lawsuits for $500 million and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 13, 2007 09:55 AM
I recently took a look at the Wikipedia entry on Zyprexa and it struck me as being a bit thin and unbalanced. For example, the entry makes the PRIME study almost sound like it was a success. I'm wondering if...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 29, 2007 10:17 AM
Pharmalot has a good rundown of the major allegations in the lawsuit filed by the Utah State AG last week. Most relate to off-label marketing of the drug. A pdf of the lawsuit is available here. Among other allegations: "The...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 21, 2007 12:03 AM
I haven't seen the complaint yet for myself, but Pharmalot reports that the State of Utah has filed suit against Eli Lilly over Zyprexa marketing. That makes 8 states who have now sued the drug giant, which also faces a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 18, 2007 11:53 AM
The New York Times' Alex Berenson is at it again, this time spurring an investigation by the FDA of possible misreporting of hyperglycemia caused by Zyprexa in 2000. A February 2000 document reported that patients in clincial trials who took...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 25, 2007 12:05 AM
Yet another class action suit on behalf of Eli Lilly shareholders has been announced. That makes two or three now--frankly, I am tired of counting--and there are the usual accusations of fraudulent behavior, etc. Who ever thought those secret documents...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 13, 2007 12:05 AM
After the usual delays attendant to class-action lawsuits, US District Court Jack Weinstein has lowered fees that lawyers will get from the 10,000 lawsuits settled in 2005 for about $700 million. The suits were against Eli Lilly and related to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 6, 2007 12:05 AM
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and now its ranking member, has requested that Eli Lilly turn over the documents leaked to the New York Times in December. The committee has authority over Medicare and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 5, 2007 12:05 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
Well, you had to kind of know this was coming: A Pennsylvania law firm announced yesterday that it had filed a complaint against Eli Lilly as part of a class-action suit against the company. A press release states: "The Complaint...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 3, 2007 12:05 AM
The New York Times is out today with an article concerning Eli Lilly's advisory role to doctors seeing MedicAid patients in various state programs around the country. The gist is that, in order to keep Zyprexa from being pushed out...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 23, 2007 09:42 AM
Seroquel was approved by the FDA for bipolar depression in October. Since then, I've noted that AstraZeneca is trialing the drug for a host of conditions, clinical depression and anxiety among them (and it's for kids too!). Apparently, the trials...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 23, 2007 12:03 AM
Ever. Yep, CMPI's founder Robert Goldberg makes the following point over at Drug Wonks concerning Zyprexa's static sales: "Except people don't switch to something else. They just stop taking drugs. Period. Or, as with the case when the media fed...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 16, 2007 12:03 AM
As I noted the other day, the State of Montana has sued Eli Lilly for its marketing of Zyprexa. I obtained a copy of the complaint yesterday (1 MB .pdf here) and the allegations are intense and mostly revolve around...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 14, 2007 12:52 AM
The Indianapolis Business Journal today reports that the State of Montana has filed a lawsuit against Eli Lilly, maker of Zyprexa. "The lawsuit alleges the Indianapolis drugmaker owes the state for drug costs and harming patients after promoting the drug...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 12, 2007 02:30 PM
A couple of new mental health blogs--both bipolar disorder focused--have popped up recently. One is by a frequent reader of this site, and it's good stuff. Like this post on benzo withdrawal and this one wherein she categorizes all my...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 8, 2007 11:21 AM
As I noted yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) last week requested that Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca provide the House's Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Waxman chairs, with a slew of documents relating to the companies' research, testing and marketing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 6, 2007 12:32 AM
Today, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) subpoened documents from both Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca concerning allegations about how the makers of Zyprexa and Seroquel have marketed their drugs, among other allegations. More in the morning after I have had a chance...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2007 05:23 PM
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued the makers of Zyprexa, Risperdal and Seroquel on February 26, it was reported last week: "Lilly, based in Indianapolis, hid the risks and exaggerated the benefits of its antipsychotic medication Zyprexa while persuading doctors to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2007 12:01 AM
At 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST, etc.), I will be a guest on Australia's Radio National "All In The Mind" Program. The subject is Zyprexa, the leaked Zyprexa documents and a few other things. If you wish to stream...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 2, 2007 03:57 PM
One of the oddest situations I have seen in the blogosphere has cropped up around this blog of late. Other blogs fear linking to my site, especially to posts on the Zyprexa documents, I have learned through communicating with some...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 24, 2007 10:06 AM
During my flurry of work on Zyprexa this week, I have neglected to point readers to the excellent work CL Psych has done the last few days on Zyprexa and Eli Lilly's possible off-label marketing of the drug for use...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 22, 2007 12:01 AM
I don't often use the term "scandal" on this site. It's one of those over-used terms in the media like "epidemic" and "public health problem" that has been watered-down over time. In fact, I've only used the term four times...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 21, 2007 12:14 PM
This is an extremely lengthy post, one that requires use of the extended entry below, as well as numerous links to various Eli Lilly internal documents. Eli Lilly and the FDA were contacted repeatedly to answer questions. Neither replied. Since...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 21, 2007 02:28 AM
It probably comes as no comfort to Eli Lilly that yesterday Slate.com wrote up one of the Zyprexa documents, apparently downloaded from this here website. Go read their nice piece here. Many thanks to Slate. This makes me wonder where...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 16, 2007 12:01 AM
My my. There continues to be much commentary about the federal court ruling in the Zyprexa documents case and New York Times reporter Alex Berenson's role in the mash-up. Who woulda thought that this end of the story would have...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 15, 2007 12:01 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
As most of you know by now, yesterday US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein handed down his ruling in the Zyprexa documents case. It was a mixed decision--defending the rights of anyone who didn't illegally obtain the documents to publish...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 14, 2007 12:01 AM
From Reuters: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co.'s antipsychotic medication Zyprexa carries risks that call for closer safety monitoring by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, an FDA whistleblower told Congress on Tuesday. FDA scientist Dr. David Graham said...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 13, 2007 11:44 AM
This morning US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein ruled in favor of Eli Lilly's arguments for keeping the leaked Zyprexa documents under seal. His ruling affects those named in the recent injunction, namely MindFreedom, AHRP, various websites and a few...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 13, 2007 09:55 AM
On October 11, 2002, Giedra Campbell emailed a group of Eli Lilly officials to "hammer out" clinical summary issues around at least one study on the use of Zyprexa in maintenance of bipolar disorder, according to a copy of the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 13, 2007 12:01 AM
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
I should've done this on Friday, but I was all wrapped-up in The Zyprexa Chronicles and blew off posting something about all the other fine work floating around the mental health blogging world. Until now. CL Psych, as usual, had...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2007 12:01 AM
On July 7, 2003, Alan Breier, the Zyprexa Product Team and other Eli Lilly officials issued a "Diabetes Update" memo to the company's policy committee, according to Lilly documents I have reviewed. Breier, a psychiatrist by training, was named Lilly's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 9, 2007 01:00 PM
Another 100 Zyprexa documents are now posted on the Zyprexa Documents portal page. More to come. In the meantime, my back and eyes are shot....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 7, 2007 05:32 PM
Since mid-December, Zyprexa has been in the news, thanks to some documents that were made available to various journalists, most prominently to Alex Berenson, a reporter at the New York Times. The documents remain newsworthy and, therefore, this blog is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 7, 2007 01:03 AM
As I noted last week, US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein issued an "invitation and order" calling on New York Times reporter Alex Berenson to appear in court and explain how he obtained various Eli Lilly documents that were under...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 7, 2007 01:00 AM
On Monday, US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein issued an "invitation and order" calling on New York Times reporter Alex Berenson to appear in court and explain how he obtained various Eli Lilly documents that were under a court seal....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 2, 2007 12:05 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
I know there's been a lot of noise again about Zyprexa what with five states investigating Eli Lilly and an article in the Times of London, based upon the leaked Zyprexa documents, which alleges that Eli Lilly was concerned about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 24, 2007 12:07 AM
From the Alliance for Human Research Protection's blog, Vera Sharav offers her account of Wednesday's court hearing on the Zyprexa documents. Her account of the proceedings is interesting, especially since no reporters of any kind were present (talk about a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 19, 2007 12:01 AM
MindFreedom's David Oaks, named by Eli Lilly in court documents for allegedly spreading the leaked Zyprexa documents around the Internet, has an interesting account of yesterday's court hearing on the matter....
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 18, 2007 11:01 AM
Knock on wood, I think my ISP is back for good and I am at work on some longer posts for tomorrow. In the meantime, please take a look at CL Psych's roundup of commentary on federal court proceedings concerning...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 17, 2007 11:31 AM
Today's New York Times has a nice account of the legal whirlwind and legal issues around the Netroots' attempt to circumvent the court seal on Eli Lilly's Zyprexa documents and make them accessible to interested parties via all manner of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 15, 2007 12:03 AM
Eli Lilly just launched a new website, www.zyprexafacts.com, apparently to counteract recent coverage of the company's star drug in the New York Times. I have skimmed the site, but have little to say about it yet. CL Psych, who was...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 12, 2007 01:00 AM
My cold hasn't exactly lifted, but the flu piece of it seems to have departed. I spent a long evening on the couch watching episodes from the third season of The Wire, an excellent HBO series. All of which has...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 10, 2007 09:41 AM
Eli Lilly yesterday announced that it would settle 14 lawsuits against it over its drug Zyprexa. Total tab: $500 million. That brings to $1.2 billion the amount that Lilly has shelled out of the last 18 months to settle lawsuits...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 5, 2007 12:03 AM
The New York Times is back with another article on the use of Zyprexa and its consequences for patients. In this case, the article is about a mother in Georgia who believes her son died from heart disease as a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 4, 2007 12:56 AM
Last week, I noted that there were various claims on the Internet about the availability on the Net of documents from the court case involving Zyprexa. Over the weekend, lawyers for Eli Lilly got a court order naming several individuals,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 2, 2007 12:03 AM
Just because it's obligatory and vaguely amusing, here are some of the posts that generated the most hits on my blog this year. Thanks to all of you for reading and for your support. Happy New Year. Love American Style:...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 31, 2006 03:34 PM
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
Well, well, well. An internist in New York steps up to the plate and writes openly about how an Eli Lilly sales rep tried to coax him into prescribing Zyprexa: "Sitting across from my desk on the small blue couch,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2006 12:03 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
In an editorial yesterday, the New York Times called for Congressional hearings on the many allegations surrounding Zyprexa, among other things. As is CL Psych, I am dubious of what a Congressional hearing would achieve, aside from allowing Congresswo/men to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 20, 2006 10:40 AM
Prevention has always been the goal of the psychcopharmacological revolution. Preventing relapses of mania, psychosis and depression, be they full-blown on sub-syndromal, is claimed as the chief good of the revolution and is certainly part and parcel of pharma advertising....
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 20, 2006 12:01 AM
I was poking around Google Scholar and PubMed as is my wont, and ran into something interesting. Mauricio Tohen, an MD and DPh, is listed as author on numerous research papers investigating Zyprexa. Tohen is a major thought leader in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 19, 2006 10:40 AM
Eli Lilly issued a statement in response to today's article in the New York Times, which detailed how the company engaged in off-label marketing of Zyprexa. Read it for yourself. The article itself is here. One interesting point: Lilly says...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 18, 2006 10:44 AM
As I suspected in my first posts (which I wrote Sunday afternoon), there would be more revelations forthcoming about Eli Lilly's behavior around Zyprexa. Here's one revelation from a second New York Times article: "Eli Lilly encouraged primary care physicians...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 18, 2006 12:54 AM
On Saturday, Eli Lilly issued a statement responding to the New York Times article calling into question whether the company has been completely forthright about side-effects of Zyprexa: "Said Steven Paul, M.D., Lilly's executive vice president of science and technology,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 18, 2006 12:03 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