Apo to blog "Your Pharmacist may hate you"
Sent to you by Harry via Google Reader:
You'll also cut me some slack I'm sure, because if you're a regular visitor to my little blog garden,
you saw this coming over a year ago. To the January 31st edition of
The New York Times:Eli Lilly and federal prosecutors are discussing a settlement of a civil and criminal investigation into the company’s marketing of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa that could result in Lilly’s paying more than $1 billion to federal and state governments.
If a deal is reached, the fine would be the largest ever paid by a drug company for breaking the federal laws that govern how drug makers can promote their medicines.
To recap, although really, you should be keeping up with what I write and know all this already:
1) Zyprexa is approved by the FDA only to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
2) Lilly decided they could sell more Zyprexa if they could get doctors to use it for age-related dementia, as the confused old person market will always be one of the most profitable on earth.
3) It is illegal to promote a prescription medicine for a use not approved by the FDA.
4) After Lilly told doctors it would be a good idea to use Zyprexa for confused old people, it turned out that confused old people who were given Zyprexa were more likely to die. That was the whole idea behind making behavior like this illegal. So something like this wouldn't happen.
5) Lilly will probably soon fork over a billion dollars. No one will go to jail. Because while corporations are given the rights of people,
including the right of free speech, they have no bodies to imprison.
Don't cry for Lilly though, as I have a feeling they might come out of this OK:
While Zyprexa prescriptions are falling, its dollar volume of sales is rising because Lilly has raised Zyprexa’s price about 40 percent since 2003.
Let's be clear about what we just read. Lilly has the power to jack up the price of Zyprexa to the point where fewer prescriptions written still means more money for them. Yet that wasn't enough. Their greed still led them to conduct themselves in a way that led to a little face time with federal prosecutors.
Here's my favorite part:
Lilly also said that it had always followed state and federal laws when promoting Zyprexa.
"Hello officer?"
"Yes?"
"Here's $500"
"Why are you giving me this?"
"Because I have always followed state and federal laws when driving in traffic, that's why"
"I see, well have a fine day you law-abiding young fellow. You have done nothing to make you look guilty in the least"
Of course if you read carefully, Lilly doesn't say it followed
ALL state and federal laws. I guess what they mean is that they followed most of the state and federal laws. Or maybe just some of them. Damn they must have some good lawyers.
Lawyers whom I hope have better things to do than read this blog.
Things you can do from here:
