The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) recently issued a report
accusing Governor Mitch Daniels, who once was President of North
American operations for Eli Lilly, of illegally marketing medicines
that caused thousands of people to get sick and die.
It’s a riveting story but it’s not true. Instead, the
report, written by Joanne Kenen and Rochelle Sharpe, is full of
misstatements, inaccuracies, and outright falsehoods. If the Center
for Public Integrity had any integrity it would yank the piece,
apologize to Governor Daniels, and start asking who pushed to
release such a sleazy ad hominem assault.
Here’s the gist of the allegations:
In the decade that Daniels climbed the corporate ladder at
Eli Lilly, the company was illegally marketing its leading
osteoporosis drug, Evista, as well as its blockbuster
antipsychotic, Zyprexa, putting tens of thousands of patients in
harm’s way. Lilly pleaded guilty to two criminal misdemeanors, paid
more than $2.7 billion in fines and damages, settled more than
32,000 personal injury claims — and copped to one of the largest
state consumer protection cases involving a drug company in U.S.
history, a review by iWatch News shows.
Eli Lilly engaged in illegal activity. But here’s the gist
of its unlawful actions: Eli Lilly was accused of providing doctors
with medical information that Zyprexa could be used to treat
agitation in people diagnosed with dementia and sleep disorders in
people with schizophrenia. The government calls the distribution of
such material without FDA approval a “false claim.” A “false claim”
is not a false statement. Rather, it’s clinical data or published
studies that confirm the effectiveness of new uses for existing
medicines.
In other words, if Eli Lilly shared medical studies
demonstrating that using a drug prevents cancer, it would be
breaking the law.
In fact, that’s what Lilly was fined $36 million for in
2005. The government had gone after it for telling doctors that
Evista — originally approved to reduce bone loss — was also
effective in preventing cancer in postmenopausal women. In 2007 the
FDA approved Evista as a cancer preventive. During this time
Medicare and Medicaid were paying for the off-label use of both
Zyprexa and Evista.
Kenen and Sharpe also allege that under Daniels Lilly
downplayed Zyprexa’s side effects of significant weight gain and
increases in blood sugar that could cause diabetes. In fact, the
federal judge presiding over Zyprexa litigation noted “the original
1996 Zyprexa label listed the relevant adverse events; in 2003 the
FDA… required a hyperglycemia and diabetes warning; the American
Diabetes Association and other groups in 2003… issued a consensus
statement on antipsychotic and weight gain and diabetes… a Dear
Doctor Letter went out in March 2004. “
Further, since 1999 the company has published hundreds of
articles examining the association between Zyprexa, glucose levels,
and obesity and including research intended to help predict weight
gain. That’s in addition to scores of other papers written by
others.
Still Kenen and Sharpe want to link Daniels to thousands
of Zyprexa-caused injuries and deaths. To dramatize their case, the
authors introduce us to Ellen Liversidge, who states: “Eli Lilly
killed my only son.” Her son Rob, 39, died in 2002 after taking
Zyprexa. “I think they are terrible. They hid the side effects of
so many drugs.”
In fact, as Liversidge notes in another interview, her son
died because “the intensive care unit team did not have his
blood-sugar level checked for signs of hyperglycemia.”
Liversidge is a member and founder of two organizations
with ties to Ann Blake Tracy, an advisor to the Scientology-backed
Citizens Commission on Human Rights, and Dr. Peter Breggin, who
over the years has claimed that treating mental illness with
medicine is a form of abuse.
Breggin has been an “expert witness” in many of the
lawsuits against Zyprexa.
And Breggin is also a featured blogger on the
Huffington Post, whose founder, Arianna Huffington, is a
CPI board member.
Huffington and Breggin share a particular animus against
Eli Lilly and Daniels in particular.
Since 1998, Huffington has waged a war of words against
Eli Lilly for promoting Prozac and Zyprexa. She alleged in 2002
that Daniels was behind an effort to protect vaccine makers from
lawsuits from parents who claimed shots made by Lilly and others
caused their children’s autism because they contained thimerosal.
In 2005 she launched the Huffington Post and featured
several anti-vaccine and pseudoscience fearmongers as bloggers,
including Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, and of course, Peter
Breggin.
Did either Breggin or Huffington suggest or contribute to
CPI’s report? The link between CPI and Huffington’s campaign
against Mitch Daniels bears more scrutiny than the baseless claims
that the Indiana governor presided over an orgy of criminal
behavior.
