Firm Pushed Drug It Knew Didn't Work

(June 15) -- 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, Bloomberg News reported.
The Bloomberg story is based on company documents that were unsealed in insurer lawsuits against the company over Zyprexa. Lilly began 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 later disclosed that seven studies showed Zyprexa actually raised the risk of death among elderly people with dementia, Bloomberg said.
When contacted by the news agency, a Lilly spokesman criticized the plaintiffs in the case for releasing "one-sided, cherry-picked documents," but declined to discuss the findings of the studies.

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, Bloomberg reported. The practice is called "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. in 2008, bringing in $14.6 billion. 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.