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Bloomberg News

Eli Lilly Pushed Drug It Knew Didn't Work and Raised Risk of Death

Phamaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. urged doctors to prescribe its drug Zyprexa for elderly patients with dementia, even though the company had evidence the drug didn't work in such cases and that seven studies showed Zyprexa actually raised the risk of death among elderly people with dementia, Bloomberg News reported.

The Bloomberg story is based on company documents that were unsealed in insurer lawsuits against the company over Zyprexa. Lilly began illegally promoting the drug for use in elderly patients with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in 1999, even though it had been approved only as a treatment for schizophrenia.

The company also tried to get doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to elderly people struggling with moodiness and insomnia.

Lilly pleaded guilty in January to a charge of illegally marketing Zyprexa for unapproved uses, admitting illegal promotions from September 1999 through March 2001.

The documents show that Lilly also wrote medical journal studies about the drug and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice known as "ghostwriting."

In a separate story, Bloomberg said that Lilly got help marketing Zyprexa from CVS Caremark Corp. -- even though CVS was under contract to bargain with Lilly over drug prices on behalf of health insurers. CVS Caremark is a subsidiary of CVS, the nation's largest pharmacy chain. Beginning in 2003, CVS began marketing Zyprexa to doctors who treat the mentally ill, according to Lilly documents. CVS offered to send 120,000 letters to doctors urging them to prescribe Zyprexa, charging Lilly $5 per letter.

It's unclear whether Lilly accepted the offer, Bloomberg said. It noted that a rival pharmacy company, Express Scripts Inc., also sent out letters touting Zyprexa. CVS and Express Scripts are not defendants in the lawsuit.

Zyprexa was Lilly's best-selling drug in the U.S., bringing in $4.7 billion in 2008 and accounting for almost a quarter of the company’s revenue.

The documents were released as part of a $6.8 billion lawsuit over Lilly's marketing of Zyprexa. Twelve states are also suing Lilly over the same matter.

Eli Lilly Has Already Paid $1.415 Billion For Zyprexa Fraud

Earlier this year, Eli Lilly earned a dubious distinction in its $1.415 billion settlement with the Justice Department over off-label marketing of Zyprexa: It’s the largest amount paid by a single defendant in DOJ history.

The total breaks down to $615 million for a criminal charge over off-label marketing of the antipsychotic medicine, and $800 million for civil claims over government insurance paying for the drug for off-label uses.

In the case, it was revealed that Lilly promoted Zyprexa’s side effects as beneficial to some patients. For instance, DOJ said Lilly used a “5 at 5″ slogan to promote the drug’s side effect of sedation to nursing-home doctors: 5 milligrams of the drug at 5 p.m would help patients sleep. Catchy.

The feds also said there was a “Viva Zyprexa” campaign way back in 2000 to make the drug an “everyday agent in primary care” despite the fact primary care docs don’t typically treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which the drug is approved. (That’s years before Pfizer went live with its “Viva Viagra” direct-to-consumer campaign)

Lilly also told docs that the drug’s weight-gain side effect was good for patients who were having trouble maintaining their weight, according to the DOJ.

This is the fraud and deception used to market the top selling drug of the nation's number one drug company. Incidently, Lilly's crimes are coming to light at a time when it spent $3.4 million lobbying Congress in the first quarter of this year, alone.

As chiropractors have been reporting for over 100 years, all drugs carry risk and side effects that are often worse than the symptoms they are prescribed to treat.

Conversely, chiropractic care is known to help relieve the symptoms of many different illnesses and conditions by removing their cause – nerve interference that hinders your body’s ability to heal itself. Once nerve interference, created by spinal misalignment, is removed, your body has the ability to heal itself!