Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9270
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Perrone M.
Senator Probes Eli Lilly Drug Promotion
Associated Press 2007 Apr 5
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070405/eli_lilly_grassley_letter.html?.v=3
Full text:
Senator Requests Eli Lilly Documents Connected With Top-Selling Drug Zyprexa
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has requested documents from Eli Lilly in the wake of lawsuits alleging the company downplayed risks and wrongly promoted its top-selling drug Zyprexa.
In a letter released late Wednesday, the Iowa lawmaker asks Lilly to provide “e-mails, letters, reports” and other internal documents relating to Zyprexa, which is approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Grassley is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.
Indiana-based Lilly said Thursday it will cooperate with the request from the Iowa lawmaker.
In February, a federal district court judge barred several individuals from continuing to distribute company documents that served as the basis for a series of New York Times articles reporting that Lilly knowingly understated the risks of its drug and promoted it for illegal, unapproved uses. Lilly has denied the allegations and states the documents were illegally leaked.
Company spokesman Phil Belt said the documents requested by Grassley are a fraction of the 15 million pages affected by the court order.
“Our belief all along has been that the judicial system agrees to keep things confidential for a reason,” Belt said. “It’s our hope that these documents will be discussed and reviewed as part of the judicial process.”
Grassley’s letter comes a month after Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., made a similar request as part of the House Committee on Oversight’s investigation into the marketing of pharmaceuticals.
And last month Eli Lilly shareholders filed a lawsuit against the company claiming fraudulent promotion of Zyprexa led to a $30 billion decline in the company’s market value.
Sales of Zyprexa slipped from $4.4 billion in 2004 to $4.2 billion in 2005. Revenues from the drug returned to $4.4 billion last year. Lilly has already settled thousands of lawsuits over the drug and said 1,200 were still pending as of January this year.
Shares of Eli Lilly & Co. rose 36 cents Thursday to $55.52 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
