Court Allows Eli Lilly To Bury Zyprexa Documents

[Guest guest]

Court Allows Eli Lilly To Bury Zyprexa Documents

by Pringle

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_061221_court_allows_e

li_lil.htm

Alaskan attorney, Jim Gottstein, says that after being served with a

mandatory injunction, he has returned the internal Eli Lilly

documents that he obtained in litigation and provided to the New York

Times to the court.

Information from the documents related to Lilly's antipsychotic drug,

Zypexa, was highlighted two days in a row in front-page articles in

the Times

The documents reveal the illegal marketing schemes used by Lilly to

make Zyprexa its best-seller, which the company has managed to keep

hidden for years by entering into out of court settlements in civil

lawsuits which included confidentiality clauses and by getting judges

to place the documents under protective orders to shield them from

public view.

For instance, the documents under seal here are from a case where

Lilly entered into an out-of-court settlement in June 2005, and

agreed to pay $690 million to cover claims by about 8000 Zyprexa

victims. But in order to get paid, the plaintiffs were required to

sign a confidentiality clause and basically keep their mouths shut

about Zyprexa from then on.

Its really comical the way Lilly keeps acting all indignant over the

disclosure of these documents as if they contain brand new charges,

when the company has been under federal and state investigations

related to its off-label marketing of Zyprexa for several years

already. The company is also facing Medicaid fraud charges in

lawsuits all over the county.

In 1996, Zyprexa was approved for the treatment of adults with

schizophrenia, and a few years later, it was approved for short-term

treatment of adults with manic episodes associated with bipolar

disorder.

Yet despite these extremely limited approved uses, Zyprexa went on to

become the top selling antipsychotic worldwide with an estimated 20

million people having used the drug and Lilly's best-selling product,

with $4.2 billion in sales in 2005, which translates into 30% of its

total revenues.

The documents provided to Times, span a decade and clearly show that

the company promoted off-label the sale of Zyprexa for uses not

approved by the FDA as being safe and effective. They also reveal

that Lilly knew about Zyprexa's link to drastic weight gain and

diabetes for years but failed to inform prescribing doctors and

consumers.

In fact according to the Times, Lilly knowingly distributed false

information to doctors about the risks as late as 2001. On December

21, 2006, the Times reported that the information provided to doctors

about the blood-sugar risks of Zyprexa did not match data circulated

inside the company after a review of Lilly's clinical trials.

The Times quotes a Lilly report from November, 1999, that shows that

after examining 70 clinical trials, Lilly found that 16% of patients

taking Zyprexa for a year had gained over 66 pounds. But instead of

making these findings public, the company used data from a smaller

group of trials that showed roughly 30% of Zypexa patients gained 22

pounds.

Mr Gottstein is not involved in the case in which the judge issued a

protective order In re: Zyprexa Products Liability litigation, MDL

No. 1596, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York

(MDL 1596), " in any manner whatsoever, " he says.

He is the leader of, " The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

(PsychRights), a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of

people facing forced psychiatric drugging against their will.

Currently, Mr Gottstein represents an Alaskan patient and says the

injunction will prevent him from using the Lilly documents to show

that the side effects of Zyprexa are well-established by the

company's own clinical trials and therefore, his client should not be

forced to take such drugs against his will.

In Myers v Alaska Psychiatric Institute, 138 P.3d 238 (Alaska 2006),

a case argued by Mr Gottstein last summer, the Alaska Supreme Court

ruled that Alaska's forced drugging procedures were unconstitutional

because they did not require the court to find such drugging to be in

the person's best interests, and that there were no less restrictive

alternatives.

In order to present the evidence in the case he is handling now, Mr

Gottstein is looking to the Alaskan courts to issue a ruling that

says his client's right to avoid forced drugging outweighs Lilly's

right to keep the information about risks hidden.

He says the documents are highly relevant to a court inquiry, now

required in Alaska, before a court can make an informed decision

about whether to order forced drugging for his client.

In a December 17, 2006, letter to the court in the New York case, Mr

Gottstein stated: " In large part, this state of affairs has been

created by the lies told by the manufacturers of psychiatric drugs. "

" My impression is, " he wrote, " that Eli Lilly's lies about Zyprexa

form the basis of the plaintiffs' claims in MDL 1596, but that is not

PsychRights' focus. "

" PsychRights' focus, " he explained, " is helping people avoid being

forcibly drugged pursuant to court orders, where the courts have

been, in my view, duped by Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical company

prevarications. "

" In my view, " Mr Gottstein concluded, " the proper disposition of the

question would be in favor of my client's right to inform the court

of the extreme harm caused by Zyprexa, which Eli Lilly has

successfully hidden for so long, while making its billions off the

pill. "

A court hearing was held in Brooklyn, New York, on a December 18,

2006, on a motion by Lilly, asking the court to order Mr Gottstein to

the return the documents to the court, and to bar him from

disseminating them any further.

According to the transcript, Lilly also asked the court to require Mr

Gottstein to " preserve all emails and all correspondence of any kind,

whether it's voice mail, written letters, emails, so that we can

pursue a contempt proceeding against both he and Dr Egilman. "

Even though the Lilly documents prove that the company knew that

Zyprexa was causing diabetes, and kept pushing the drug anyways,

potentially harming millions more patients, the judges gave Mr

Gottstein hell and threatened to find him in contempt for doing

nothing more than warning the public about the side effects of

Zyprexa after Lilly concealed the information for a decade.

There is not one single word in the transcripts about Lilly knowingly

injuring and killing people with Zyprexa or illegally pushing the

drug to unwitting victims for off-label use.

Instead, Judge Cogan, granted Lilly's motion, and told Mr

Gottstein's attorney that his client, " deliberately aided and abetted

Dr Egilman in getting these documents released from the restriction

that they were under, under the protective order. He knew what he was

doing, and he did it deliberately. "

Judge Cogan went on to tell the attorney, " your client should be on

notice that of this moment, he is under a mandatory injunction to

return those documents ... to take them down from any websites that

he may have posted them on, and to take any reasonable effort to

recover them from any sites or persons to which he has delivered

them. "

On December 18, 2006, at an earlier telephone conference in Brooklyn,

Judge Roane Mann also did not utter one word about Lilly's illegal

conduct, but instead admonished Mr Gottstein for not playing fair

with poor Eli Lilly in making the information about Zyprexa public,

stating:

" I personally am not in a position to order you to return the

documents. I can't make you return them but I can make you wish you

had because I think this is highly improper not only to have obtained

the documents on short notice without Lilly being advised of the

amendment but then to disseminate them publicly before it could be

litigated. It certainly smacks as bad faith. "

These judges apparently believe that an expert, such as Dr

Egilman, who is hired to review documents in a case and subsequently

learns that people are being seriously injured and killed, should be

forced to keep that knowledge a secret if a judge issues a protective

order.

There is something very wrong with this picture. It begs the question

of how can an ethical doctor not speak if he knows that patients are

being harmed

The reason always cited for the need to keep documents under seal is

the claim that the information contains trade secrets. However, just

as Lilly has done here, drug companies have for too long been abusing

the process by using protective orders to hide illegal conduct by

concealing documents that show the company is illegally promoting the

off-label use of a drug or that a drug can cause serious injuries or

that a drug does not work.

In a case like this, if a court truly does not have a choice and is

required to seal documents even when they show blatant illegal

conduct on the part of a drug company, then Congress had better get

busy and pass a law to stop the use the US court system to protect

what could very easily be described as corporate murder.

In response to an earlier article on this issue, reader Larry Bone

wrote and asked this author, " Is the corruption on this so widespread

that no one would dare prosecute? "

" It is criminal behavior, " he points out, " on a huge scale that is

being virtually totally ignored by the authorities responsible for

the public safety. "

" I just feel, " Mr Bone wrote, " that there has to be an attorney or

someone in a judicial or ethical capacity who would have the guts,

and persistence to prosecute Lilly. "

" It seems incredibly ridiculous, " he states, " let alone obscene, that

such blatant wrongdoing seemingly continues to be ignored by the

legal authorities with jurisdiction over these sorts of cases. "

" If these companies believe they have done nothing wrong, " he

says, " then let them prove their innocence in court. "

Ellen Liversridge also wants a criminal investigation of Lilly. She

lost her 30-year-old son, Rob, to the adverse effects of the

drug. " He gained almost 100 pounds while taking Zyprexa, " Ellen says.

" Rob lapsed into a coma, " she recalls, " and died of profound

hyperglycemia four days later on October 5, 2002. "

" I believe that the people who did this should have a criminal

trial, " Ellen says. " Enron executives went to prison for wiping out

people's life savings, " she points out.

" Lilly executives should go to prison, " she says, " for knowingly

being responsible for people's deaths, shattered families; ruined and

grieving families. "

Ellen has nothing but praise for the New York Times and its

source. " I am grateful to Jim Gottstein for making available this

awful truth and hope it results in justice being done. "

" If there can ever be justice for a crime as heinous as this, " she

adds.

Haszard, of Bangor Maine, feels the same way. In 1996, he was

prescribed Zyprexa off-label to supposedly treat Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder, and he remained on the drug for 4 years.

Although he paid $250 a month for the drug, Mr Haszard says the drug

did not relieve his symptoms of PTSD at all and in early 2000, he was

diagnosed with diabetes.

He was shocked to hear the diagnosis, he said, because there was no

history of diabetes in his family. Just as thousands of other Zyprexa

victims, Mr Haszard did not make the connection between his diabetes

and the drug until he saw a commercial for a law firm in December

2005.

Zyprexa causes diabetes, he says, and public health programs are left

to pick up the tab for the medial expenses. According to Mr

Haszard, " there are now 7 states going after Lilly for fraud and

restitution, " related to the promotion of Zyprexa for off-label use

and the concealment of its risks.

Dr Stefan Kruszewski, MD, a Harvard trained, certified psychiatrist

in adult, adolescent, and geriatric psychiatry, from burg,

Pennsylvania, also finds Lilly's conduct appalling.

" Neither health professionals nor consumers, " he states, " can

accurately provide information about the risk and benefits of a drug

like Zyprexa - or any drug for any condition - without a

comprehensive awareness of the risks and benefits. "

" If the clinical research data regarding effectiveness, efficacy or

safety is sequestered or misrepresented from observation studies,

randomized drug trials or meta-analyses, " he says, " then it is not

possible for any provider to give any patient what he or she needs to

make an informed consent. "

" At that point, " Dr Kruszewski says, " individuals receive drugs that

may or may not help them, but always at their own peril. "

" Zyprexa causes both a severe metabolic syndrome consisting of

obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular problems, " Dr Kruszewski

advises, " at the same time that it continues to cause neurological

side-effects like the older antipsychotics. "

" Zyprexa and its antipsychotics cousins, " he explains, " were marketed

to be safer and easier to tolerate because the pharmaceutical

companies said that the newer drugs caused fewer neurological

injuries, like restlessness or 'akathesia,' and tardive dyskinesia. "

Those assertions are false he says, and " what we have now is a drug

whose massive revenues and promotion are based upon faulty

disclosures by Eli Lilly. "

Information for injured parties can be found at Lawyers and

Settlements.com http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/

Pringle

evelyn-pringle@...

[Guest guest]

Court Allows Eli Lilly To Bury Zyprexa Documents

by Pringle

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_061221_court_allows_e

li_lil.htm

Alaskan attorney, Jim Gottstein, says that after being served with a

mandatory injunction, he has returned the internal Eli Lilly

documents that he obtained in litigation and provided to the New York

Times to the court.

Information from the documents related to Lilly's antipsychotic drug,

Zypexa, was highlighted two days in a row in front-page articles in

the Times

The documents reveal the illegal marketing schemes used by Lilly to

make Zyprexa its best-seller, which the company has managed to keep

hidden for years by entering into out of court settlements in civil

lawsuits which included confidentiality clauses and by getting judges

to place the documents under protective orders to shield them from

public view.

For instance, the documents under seal here are from a case where

Lilly entered into an out-of-court settlement in June 2005, and

agreed to pay $690 million to cover claims by about 8000 Zyprexa

victims. But in order to get paid, the plaintiffs were required to

sign a confidentiality clause and basically keep their mouths shut

about Zyprexa from then on.

Its really comical the way Lilly keeps acting all indignant over the

disclosure of these documents as if they contain brand new charges,

when the company has been under federal and state investigations

related to its off-label marketing of Zyprexa for several years

already. The company is also facing Medicaid fraud charges in

lawsuits all over the county.

In 1996, Zyprexa was approved for the treatment of adults with

schizophrenia, and a few years later, it was approved for short-term

treatment of adults with manic episodes associated with bipolar

disorder.

Yet despite these extremely limited approved uses, Zyprexa went on to

become the top selling antipsychotic worldwide with an estimated 20

million people having used the drug and Lilly's best-selling product,

with $4.2 billion in sales in 2005, which translates into 30% of its

total revenues.

The documents provided to Times, span a decade and clearly show that

the company promoted off-label the sale of Zyprexa for uses not

approved by the FDA as being safe and effective. They also reveal

that Lilly knew about Zyprexa's link to drastic weight gain and

diabetes for years but failed to inform prescribing doctors and

consumers.

In fact according to the Times, Lilly knowingly distributed false

information to doctors about the risks as late as 2001. On December

21, 2006, the Times reported that the information provided to doctors

about the blood-sugar risks of Zyprexa did not match data circulated

inside the company after a review of Lilly's clinical trials.

The Times quotes a Lilly report from November, 1999, that shows that

after examining 70 clinical trials, Lilly found that 16% of patients

taking Zyprexa for a year had gained over 66 pounds. But instead of

making these findings public, the company used data from a smaller

group of trials that showed roughly 30% of Zypexa patients gained 22

pounds.

Mr Gottstein is not involved in the case in which the judge issued a

protective order In re: Zyprexa Products Liability litigation, MDL

No. 1596, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York

(MDL 1596), " in any manner whatsoever, " he says.

He is the leader of, " The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

(PsychRights), a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of

people facing forced psychiatric drugging against their will.

Currently, Mr Gottstein represents an Alaskan patient and says the

injunction will prevent him from using the Lilly documents to show

that the side effects of Zyprexa are well-established by the

company's own clinical trials and therefore, his client should not be

forced to take such drugs against his will.

In Myers v Alaska Psychiatric Institute, 138 P.3d 238 (Alaska 2006),

a case argued by Mr Gottstein last summer, the Alaska Supreme Court

ruled that Alaska's forced drugging procedures were unconstitutional

because they did not require the court to find such drugging to be in

the person's best interests, and that there were no less restrictive

alternatives.

In order to present the evidence in the case he is handling now, Mr

Gottstein is looking to the Alaskan courts to issue a ruling that

says his client's right to avoid forced drugging outweighs Lilly's

right to keep the information about risks hidden.

He says the documents are highly relevant to a court inquiry, now

required in Alaska, before a court can make an informed decision

about whether to order forced drugging for his client.

In a December 17, 2006, letter to the court in the New York case, Mr

Gottstein stated: " In large part, this state of affairs has been

created by the lies told by the manufacturers of psychiatric drugs. "

" My impression is, " he wrote, " that Eli Lilly's lies about Zyprexa

form the basis of the plaintiffs' claims in MDL 1596, but that is not

PsychRights' focus. "

" PsychRights' focus, " he explained, " is helping people avoid being

forcibly drugged pursuant to court orders, where the courts have

been, in my view, duped by Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical company

prevarications. "

" In my view, " Mr Gottstein concluded, " the proper disposition of the

question would be in favor of my client's right to inform the court

of the extreme harm caused by Zyprexa, which Eli Lilly has

successfully hidden for so long, while making its billions off the

pill. "

A court hearing was held in Brooklyn, New York, on a December 18,

2006, on a motion by Lilly, asking the court to order Mr Gottstein to

the return the documents to the court, and to bar him from

disseminating them any further.

According to the transcript, Lilly also asked the court to require Mr

Gottstein to " preserve all emails and all correspondence of any kind,

whether it's voice mail, written letters, emails, so that we can

pursue a contempt proceeding against both he and Dr Egilman. "

Even though the Lilly documents prove that the company knew that

Zyprexa was causing diabetes, and kept pushing the drug anyways,

potentially harming millions more patients, the judges gave Mr

Gottstein hell and threatened to find him in contempt for doing

nothing more than warning the public about the side effects of

Zyprexa after Lilly concealed the information for a decade.

There is not one single word in the transcripts about Lilly knowingly

injuring and killing people with Zyprexa or illegally pushing the

drug to unwitting victims for off-label use.

Instead, Judge Cogan, granted Lilly's motion, and told Mr

Gottstein's attorney that his client, " deliberately aided and abetted

Dr Egilman in getting these documents released from the restriction

that they were under, under the protective order. He knew what he was

doing, and he did it deliberately. "

Judge Cogan went on to tell the attorney, " your client should be on

notice that of this moment, he is under a mandatory injunction to

return those documents ... to take them down from any websites that

he may have posted them on, and to take any reasonable effort to

recover them from any sites or persons to which he has delivered

them. "

On December 18, 2006, at an earlier telephone conference in Brooklyn,

Judge Roane Mann also did not utter one word about Lilly's illegal

conduct, but instead admonished Mr Gottstein for not playing fair

with poor Eli Lilly in making the information about Zyprexa public,

stating:

" I personally am not in a position to order you to return the

documents. I can't make you return them but I can make you wish you

had because I think this is highly improper not only to have obtained

the documents on short notice without Lilly being advised of the

amendment but then to disseminate them publicly before it could be

litigated. It certainly smacks as bad faith. "

These judges apparently believe that an expert, such as Dr

Egilman, who is hired to review documents in a case and subsequently

learns that people are being seriously injured and killed, should be

forced to keep that knowledge a secret if a judge issues a protective

order.

There is something very wrong with this picture. It begs the question

of how can an ethical doctor not speak if he knows that patients are

being harmed

The reason always cited for the need to keep documents under seal is

the claim that the information contains trade secrets. However, just

as Lilly has done here, drug companies have for too long been abusing

the process by using protective orders to hide illegal conduct by

concealing documents that show the company is illegally promoting the

off-label use of a drug or that a drug can cause serious injuries or

that a drug does not work.

In a case like this, if a court truly does not have a choice and is

required to seal documents even when they show blatant illegal

conduct on the part of a drug company, then Congress had better get

busy and pass a law to stop the use the US court system to protect

what could very easily be described as corporate murder.

In response to an earlier article on this issue, reader Larry Bone

wrote and asked this author, " Is the corruption on this so widespread

that no one would dare prosecute? "

" It is criminal behavior, " he points out, " on a huge scale that is

being virtually totally ignored by the authorities responsible for

the public safety. "

" I just feel, " Mr Bone wrote, " that there has to be an attorney or

someone in a judicial or ethical capacity who would have the guts,

and persistence to prosecute Lilly. "

" It seems incredibly ridiculous, " he states, " let alone obscene, that

such blatant wrongdoing seemingly continues to be ignored by the

legal authorities with jurisdiction over these sorts of cases. "

" If these companies believe they have done nothing wrong, " he

says, " then let them prove their innocence in court. "

Ellen Liversridge also wants a criminal investigation of Lilly. She

lost her 30-year-old son, Rob, to the adverse effects of the

drug. " He gained almost 100 pounds while taking Zyprexa, " Ellen says.

" Rob lapsed into a coma, " she recalls, " and died of profound

hyperglycemia four days later on October 5, 2002. "

" I believe that the people who did this should have a criminal

trial, " Ellen says. " Enron executives went to prison for wiping out

people's life savings, " she points out.

" Lilly executives should go to prison, " she says, " for knowingly

being responsible for people's deaths, shattered families; ruined and

grieving families. "

Ellen has nothing but praise for the New York Times and its

source. " I am grateful to Jim Gottstein for making available this

awful truth and hope it results in justice being done. "

" If there can ever be justice for a crime as heinous as this, " she

adds.

Haszard, of Bangor Maine, feels the same way. In 1996, he was

prescribed Zyprexa off-label to supposedly treat Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder, and he remained on the drug for 4 years.

Although he paid $250 a month for the drug, Mr Haszard says the drug

did not relieve his symptoms of PTSD at all and in early 2000, he was

diagnosed with diabetes.

He was shocked to hear the diagnosis, he said, because there was no

history of diabetes in his family. Just as thousands of other Zyprexa

victims, Mr Haszard did not make the connection between his diabetes

and the drug until he saw a commercial for a law firm in December

2005.

Zyprexa causes diabetes, he says, and public health programs are left

to pick up the tab for the medial expenses. According to Mr

Haszard, " there are now 7 states going after Lilly for fraud and

restitution, " related to the promotion of Zyprexa for off-label use

and the concealment of its risks.

Dr Stefan Kruszewski, MD, a Harvard trained, certified psychiatrist

in adult, adolescent, and geriatric psychiatry, from burg,

Pennsylvania, also finds Lilly's conduct appalling.

" Neither health professionals nor consumers, " he states, " can

accurately provide information about the risk and benefits of a drug

like Zyprexa - or any drug for any condition - without a

comprehensive awareness of the risks and benefits. "

" If the clinical research data regarding effectiveness, efficacy or

safety is sequestered or misrepresented from observation studies,

randomized drug trials or meta-analyses, " he says, " then it is not

possible for any provider to give any patient what he or she needs to

make an informed consent. "

" At that point, " Dr Kruszewski says, " individuals receive drugs that

may or may not help them, but always at their own peril. "

" Zyprexa causes both a severe metabolic syndrome consisting of

obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular problems, " Dr Kruszewski

advises, " at the same time that it continues to cause neurological

side-effects like the older antipsychotics. "

" Zyprexa and its antipsychotics cousins, " he explains, " were marketed

to be safer and easier to tolerate because the pharmaceutical

companies said that the newer drugs caused fewer neurological

injuries, like restlessness or 'akathesia,' and tardive dyskinesia. "

Those assertions are false he says, and " what we have now is a drug

whose massive revenues and promotion are based upon faulty

disclosures by Eli Lilly. "

Information for injured parties can be found at Lawyers and

Settlements.com http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/

Pringle

evelyn-pringle@...

[Guest guest]

Court Allows Eli Lilly To Bury Zyprexa Documents

by Pringle

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_061221_court_allows_e

li_lil.htm

Alaskan attorney, Jim Gottstein, says that after being served with a

mandatory injunction, he has returned the internal Eli Lilly

documents that he obtained in litigation and provided to the New York

Times to the court.

Information from the documents related to Lilly's antipsychotic drug,

Zypexa, was highlighted two days in a row in front-page articles in

the Times

The documents reveal the illegal marketing schemes used by Lilly to

make Zyprexa its best-seller, which the company has managed to keep

hidden for years by entering into out of court settlements in civil

lawsuits which included confidentiality clauses and by getting judges

to place the documents under protective orders to shield them from

public view.

For instance, the documents under seal here are from a case where

Lilly entered into an out-of-court settlement in June 2005, and

agreed to pay $690 million to cover claims by about 8000 Zyprexa

victims. But in order to get paid, the plaintiffs were required to

sign a confidentiality clause and basically keep their mouths shut

about Zyprexa from then on.

Its really comical the way Lilly keeps acting all indignant over the

disclosure of these documents as if they contain brand new charges,

when the company has been under federal and state investigations

related to its off-label marketing of Zyprexa for several years

already. The company is also facing Medicaid fraud charges in

lawsuits all over the county.

In 1996, Zyprexa was approved for the treatment of adults with

schizophrenia, and a few years later, it was approved for short-term

treatment of adults with manic episodes associated with bipolar

disorder.

Yet despite these extremely limited approved uses, Zyprexa went on to

become the top selling antipsychotic worldwide with an estimated 20

million people having used the drug and Lilly's best-selling product,

with $4.2 billion in sales in 2005, which translates into 30% of its

total revenues.

The documents provided to Times, span a decade and clearly show that

the company promoted off-label the sale of Zyprexa for uses not

approved by the FDA as being safe and effective. They also reveal

that Lilly knew about Zyprexa's link to drastic weight gain and

diabetes for years but failed to inform prescribing doctors and

consumers.

In fact according to the Times, Lilly knowingly distributed false

information to doctors about the risks as late as 2001. On December

21, 2006, the Times reported that the information provided to doctors

about the blood-sugar risks of Zyprexa did not match data circulated

inside the company after a review of Lilly's clinical trials.

The Times quotes a Lilly report from November, 1999, that shows that

after examining 70 clinical trials, Lilly found that 16% of patients

taking Zyprexa for a year had gained over 66 pounds. But instead of

making these findings public, the company used data from a smaller

group of trials that showed roughly 30% of Zypexa patients gained 22

pounds.

Mr Gottstein is not involved in the case in which the judge issued a

protective order In re: Zyprexa Products Liability litigation, MDL

No. 1596, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York

(MDL 1596), " in any manner whatsoever, " he says.

He is the leader of, " The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

(PsychRights), a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of

people facing forced psychiatric drugging against their will.

Currently, Mr Gottstein represents an Alaskan patient and says the

injunction will prevent him from using the Lilly documents to show

that the side effects of Zyprexa are well-established by the

company's own clinical trials and therefore, his client should not be

forced to take such drugs against his will.

In Myers v Alaska Psychiatric Institute, 138 P.3d 238 (Alaska 2006),

a case argued by Mr Gottstein last summer, the Alaska Supreme Court

ruled that Alaska's forced drugging procedures were unconstitutional

because they did not require the court to find such drugging to be in

the person's best interests, and that there were no less restrictive

alternatives.

In order to present the evidence in the case he is handling now, Mr

Gottstein is looking to the Alaskan courts to issue a ruling that

says his client's right to avoid forced drugging outweighs Lilly's

right to keep the information about risks hidden.

He says the documents are highly relevant to a court inquiry, now

required in Alaska, before a court can make an informed decision

about whether to order forced drugging for his client.

In a December 17, 2006, letter to the court in the New York case, Mr

Gottstein stated: " In large part, this state of affairs has been

created by the lies told by the manufacturers of psychiatric drugs. "

" My impression is, " he wrote, " that Eli Lilly's lies about Zyprexa

form the basis of the plaintiffs' claims in MDL 1596, but that is not

PsychRights' focus. "

" PsychRights' focus, " he explained, " is helping people avoid being

forcibly drugged pursuant to court orders, where the courts have

been, in my view, duped by Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical company

prevarications. "

" In my view, " Mr Gottstein concluded, " the proper disposition of the

question would be in favor of my client's right to inform the court

of the extreme harm caused by Zyprexa, which Eli Lilly has

successfully hidden for so long, while making its billions off the

pill. "

A court hearing was held in Brooklyn, New York, on a December 18,

2006, on a motion by Lilly, asking the court to order Mr Gottstein to

the return the documents to the court, and to bar him from

disseminating them any further.

According to the transcript, Lilly also asked the court to require Mr

Gottstein to " preserve all emails and all correspondence of any kind,

whether it's voice mail, written letters, emails, so that we can

pursue a contempt proceeding against both he and Dr Egilman. "

Even though the Lilly documents prove that the company knew that

Zyprexa was causing diabetes, and kept pushing the drug anyways,

potentially harming millions more patients, the judges gave Mr

Gottstein hell and threatened to find him in contempt for doing

nothing more than warning the public about the side effects of

Zyprexa after Lilly concealed the information for a decade.

There is not one single word in the transcripts about Lilly knowingly

injuring and killing people with Zyprexa or illegally pushing the

drug to unwitting victims for off-label use.

Instead, Judge Cogan, granted Lilly's motion, and told Mr

Gottstein's attorney that his client, " deliberately aided and abetted

Dr Egilman in getting these documents released from the restriction

that they were under, under the protective order. He knew what he was

doing, and he did it deliberately. "

Judge Cogan went on to tell the attorney, " your client should be on

notice that of this moment, he is under a mandatory injunction to

return those documents ... to take them down from any websites that

he may have posted them on, and to take any reasonable effort to

recover them from any sites or persons to which he has delivered

them. "

On December 18, 2006, at an earlier telephone conference in Brooklyn,

Judge Roane Mann also did not utter one word about Lilly's illegal

conduct, but instead admonished Mr Gottstein for not playing fair

with poor Eli Lilly in making the information about Zyprexa public,

stating:

" I personally am not in a position to order you to return the

documents. I can't make you return them but I can make you wish you

had because I think this is highly improper not only to have obtained

the documents on short notice without Lilly being advised of the

amendment but then to disseminate them publicly before it could be

litigated. It certainly smacks as bad faith. "

These judges apparently believe that an expert, such as Dr

Egilman, who is hired to review documents in a case and subsequently

learns that people are being seriously injured and killed, should be

forced to keep that knowledge a secret if a judge issues a protective

order.

There is something very wrong with this picture. It begs the question

of how can an ethical doctor not speak if he knows that patients are

being harmed

The reason always cited for the need to keep documents under seal is

the claim that the information contains trade secrets. However, just

as Lilly has done here, drug companies have for too long been abusing

the process by using protective orders to hide illegal conduct by

concealing documents that show the company is illegally promoting the

off-label use of a drug or that a drug can cause serious injuries or

that a drug does not work.

In a case like this, if a court truly does not have a choice and is

required to seal documents even when they show blatant illegal

conduct on the part of a drug company, then Congress had better get

busy and pass a law to stop the use the US court system to protect

what could very easily be described as corporate murder.

In response to an earlier article on this issue, reader Larry Bone

wrote and asked this author, " Is the corruption on this so widespread

that no one would dare prosecute? "

" It is criminal behavior, " he points out, " on a huge scale that is

being virtually totally ignored by the authorities responsible for

the public safety. "

" I just feel, " Mr Bone wrote, " that there has to be an attorney or

someone in a judicial or ethical capacity who would have the guts,

and persistence to prosecute Lilly. "

" It seems incredibly ridiculous, " he states, " let alone obscene, that

such blatant wrongdoing seemingly continues to be ignored by the

legal authorities with jurisdiction over these sorts of cases. "

" If these companies believe they have done nothing wrong, " he

says, " then let them prove their innocence in court. "

Ellen Liversridge also wants a criminal investigation of Lilly. She

lost her 30-year-old son, Rob, to the adverse effects of the

drug. " He gained almost 100 pounds while taking Zyprexa, " Ellen says.

" Rob lapsed into a coma, " she recalls, " and died of profound

hyperglycemia four days later on October 5, 2002. "

" I believe that the people who did this should have a criminal

trial, " Ellen says. " Enron executives went to prison for wiping out

people's life savings, " she points out.

" Lilly executives should go to prison, " she says, " for knowingly

being responsible for people's deaths, shattered families; ruined and

grieving families. "

Ellen has nothing but praise for the New York Times and its

source. " I am grateful to Jim Gottstein for making available this

awful truth and hope it results in justice being done. "

" If there can ever be justice for a crime as heinous as this, " she

adds.

Haszard, of Bangor Maine, feels the same way. In 1996, he was

prescribed Zyprexa off-label to supposedly treat Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder, and he remained on the drug for 4 years.

Although he paid $250 a month for the drug, Mr Haszard says the drug

did not relieve his symptoms of PTSD at all and in early 2000, he was

diagnosed with diabetes.

He was shocked to hear the diagnosis, he said, because there was no

history of diabetes in his family. Just as thousands of other Zyprexa

victims, Mr Haszard did not make the connection between his diabetes

and the drug until he saw a commercial for a law firm in December

2005.

Zyprexa causes diabetes, he says, and public health programs are left

to pick up the tab for the medial expenses. According to Mr

Haszard, " there are now 7 states going after Lilly for fraud and

restitution, " related to the promotion of Zyprexa for off-label use

and the concealment of its risks.

Dr Stefan Kruszewski, MD, a Harvard trained, certified psychiatrist

in adult, adolescent, and geriatric psychiatry, from burg,

Pennsylvania, also finds Lilly's conduct appalling.

" Neither health professionals nor consumers, " he states, " can

accurately provide information about the risk and benefits of a drug

like Zyprexa - or any drug for any condition - without a

comprehensive awareness of the risks and benefits. "

" If the clinical research data regarding effectiveness, efficacy or

safety is sequestered or misrepresented from observation studies,

randomized drug trials or meta-analyses, " he says, " then it is not

possible for any provider to give any patient what he or she needs to

make an informed consent. "

" At that point, " Dr Kruszewski says, " individuals receive drugs that

may or may not help them, but always at their own peril. "

" Zyprexa causes both a severe metabolic syndrome consisting of

obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular problems, " Dr Kruszewski

advises, " at the same time that it continues to cause neurological

side-effects like the older antipsychotics. "

" Zyprexa and its antipsychotics cousins, " he explains, " were marketed

to be safer and easier to tolerate because the pharmaceutical

companies said that the newer drugs caused fewer neurological

injuries, like restlessness or 'akathesia,' and tardive dyskinesia. "

Those assertions are false he says, and " what we have now is a drug

whose massive revenues and promotion are based upon faulty

disclosures by Eli Lilly. "

Information for injured parties can be found at Lawyers and

Settlements.com http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/

Pringle

evelyn-pringle@...

[Guest guest]

Court Allows Eli Lilly To Bury Zyprexa Documents

by Pringle

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_061221_court_allows_e

li_lil.htm

Alaskan attorney, Jim Gottstein, says that after being served with a

mandatory injunction, he has returned the internal Eli Lilly

documents that he obtained in litigation and provided to the New York

Times to the court.

Information from the documents related to Lilly's antipsychotic drug,

Zypexa, was highlighted two days in a row in front-page articles in

the Times

The documents reveal the illegal marketing schemes used by Lilly to

make Zyprexa its best-seller, which the company has managed to keep

hidden for years by entering into out of court settlements in civil

lawsuits which included confidentiality clauses and by getting judges

to place the documents under protective orders to shield them from

public view.

For instance, the documents under seal here are from a case where

Lilly entered into an out-of-court settlement in June 2005, and

agreed to pay $690 million to cover claims by about 8000 Zyprexa

victims. But in order to get paid, the plaintiffs were required to

sign a confidentiality clause and basically keep their mouths shut

about Zyprexa from then on.

Its really comical the way Lilly keeps acting all indignant over the

disclosure of these documents as if they contain brand new charges,

when the company has been under federal and state investigations

related to its off-label marketing of Zyprexa for several years

already. The company is also facing Medicaid fraud charges in

lawsuits all over the county.

In 1996, Zyprexa was approved for the treatment of adults with

schizophrenia, and a few years later, it was approved for short-term

treatment of adults with manic episodes associated with bipolar

disorder.

Yet despite these extremely limited approved uses, Zyprexa went on to

become the top selling antipsychotic worldwide with an estimated 20

million people having used the drug and Lilly's best-selling product,

with $4.2 billion in sales in 2005, which translates into 30% of its

total revenues.

The documents provided to Times, span a decade and clearly show that

the company promoted off-label the sale of Zyprexa for uses not

approved by the FDA as being safe and effective. They also reveal

that Lilly knew about Zyprexa's link to drastic weight gain and

diabetes for years but failed to inform prescribing doctors and

consumers.

In fact according to the Times, Lilly knowingly distributed false

information to doctors about the risks as late as 2001. On December

21, 2006, the Times reported that the information provided to doctors

about the blood-sugar risks of Zyprexa did not match data circulated

inside the company after a review of Lilly's clinical trials.

The Times quotes a Lilly report from November, 1999, that shows that

after examining 70 clinical trials, Lilly found that 16% of patients

taking Zyprexa for a year had gained over 66 pounds. But instead of

making these findings public, the company used data from a smaller

group of trials that showed roughly 30% of Zypexa patients gained 22

pounds.

Mr Gottstein is not involved in the case in which the judge issued a

protective order In re: Zyprexa Products Liability litigation, MDL

No. 1596, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York

(MDL 1596), " in any manner whatsoever, " he says.

He is the leader of, " The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

(PsychRights), a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of

people facing forced psychiatric drugging against their will.

Currently, Mr Gottstein represents an Alaskan patient and says the

injunction will prevent him from using the Lilly documents to show

that the side effects of Zyprexa are well-established by the

company's own clinical trials and therefore, his client should not be

forced to take such drugs against his will.

In Myers v Alaska Psychiatric Institute, 138 P.3d 238 (Alaska 2006),

a case argued by Mr Gottstein last summer, the Alaska Supreme Court

ruled that Alaska's forced drugging procedures were unconstitutional

because they did not require the court to find such drugging to be in

the person's best interests, and that there were no less restrictive

alternatives.

In order to present the evidence in the case he is handling now, Mr

Gottstein is looking to the Alaskan courts to issue a ruling that

says his client's right to avoid forced drugging outweighs Lilly's

right to keep the information about risks hidden.

He says the documents are highly relevant to a court inquiry, now

required in Alaska, before a court can make an informed decision

about whether to order forced drugging for his client.

In a December 17, 2006, letter to the court in the New York case, Mr

Gottstein stated: " In large part, this state of affairs has been

created by the lies told by the manufacturers of psychiatric drugs. "

" My impression is, " he wrote, " that Eli Lilly's lies about Zyprexa

form the basis of the plaintiffs' claims in MDL 1596, but that is not

PsychRights' focus. "

" PsychRights' focus, " he explained, " is helping people avoid being

forcibly drugged pursuant to court orders, where the courts have

been, in my view, duped by Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical company

prevarications. "

" In my view, " Mr Gottstein concluded, " the proper disposition of the

question would be in favor of my client's right to inform the court

of the extreme harm caused by Zyprexa, which Eli Lilly has

successfully hidden for so long, while making its billions off the

pill. "

A court hearing was held in Brooklyn, New York, on a December 18,

2006, on a motion by Lilly, asking the court to order Mr Gottstein to

the return the documents to the court, and to bar him from

disseminating them any further.

According to the transcript, Lilly also asked the court to require Mr

Gottstein to " preserve all emails and all correspondence of any kind,

whether it's voice mail, written letters, emails, so that we can

pursue a contempt proceeding against both he and Dr Egilman. "

Even though the Lilly documents prove that the company knew that

Zyprexa was causing diabetes, and kept pushing the drug anyways,

potentially harming millions more patients, the judges gave Mr

Gottstein hell and threatened to find him in contempt for doing

nothing more than warning the public about the side effects of

Zyprexa after Lilly concealed the information for a decade.

There is not one single word in the transcripts about Lilly knowingly

injuring and killing people with Zyprexa or illegally pushing the

drug to unwitting victims for off-label use.

Instead, Judge Cogan, granted Lilly's motion, and told Mr

Gottstein's attorney that his client, " deliberately aided and abetted

Dr Egilman in getting these documents released from the restriction

that they were under, under the protective order. He knew what he was

doing, and he did it deliberately. "

Judge Cogan went on to tell the attorney, " your client should be on

notice that of this moment, he is under a mandatory injunction to

return those documents ... to take them down from any websites that

he may have posted them on, and to take any reasonable effort to

recover them from any sites or persons to which he has delivered

them. "

On December 18, 2006, at an earlier telephone conference in Brooklyn,

Judge Roane Mann also did not utter one word about Lilly's illegal

conduct, but instead admonished Mr Gottstein for not playing fair

with poor Eli Lilly in making the information about Zyprexa public,

stating:

" I personally am not in a position to order you to return the

documents. I can't make you return them but I can make you wish you

had because I think this is highly improper not only to have obtained

the documents on short notice without Lilly being advised of the

amendment but then to disseminate them publicly before it could be

litigated. It certainly smacks as bad faith. "

These judges apparently believe that an expert, such as Dr

Egilman, who is hired to review documents in a case and subsequently

learns that people are being seriously injured and killed, should be

forced to keep that knowledge a secret if a judge issues a protective

order.

There is something very wrong with this picture. It begs the question

of how can an ethical doctor not speak if he knows that patients are

being harmed

The reason always cited for the need to keep documents under seal is

the claim that the information contains trade secrets. However, just

as Lilly has done here, drug companies have for too long been abusing

the process by using protective orders to hide illegal conduct by

concealing documents that show the company is illegally promoting the

off-label use of a drug or that a drug can cause serious injuries or

that a drug does not work.

In a case like this, if a court truly does not have a choice and is

required to seal documents even when they show blatant illegal

conduct on the part of a drug company, then Congress had better get

busy and pass a law to stop the use the US court system to protect

what could very easily be described as corporate murder.

In response to an earlier article on this issue, reader Larry Bone

wrote and asked this author, " Is the corruption on this so widespread

that no one would dare prosecute? "

" It is criminal behavior, " he points out, " on a huge scale that is

being virtually totally ignored by the authorities responsible for

the public safety. "

" I just feel, " Mr Bone wrote, " that there has to be an attorney or

someone in a judicial or ethical capacity who would have the guts,

and persistence to prosecute Lilly. "

" It seems incredibly ridiculous, " he states, " let alone obscene, that

such blatant wrongdoing seemingly continues to be ignored by the

legal authorities with jurisdiction over these sorts of cases. "

" If these companies believe they have done nothing wrong, " he

says, " then let them prove their innocence in court. "

Ellen Liversridge also wants a criminal investigation of Lilly. She

lost her 30-year-old son, Rob, to the adverse effects of the

drug. " He gained almost 100 pounds while taking Zyprexa, " Ellen says.

" Rob lapsed into a coma, " she recalls, " and died of profound

hyperglycemia four days later on October 5, 2002. "

" I believe that the people who did this should have a criminal

trial, " Ellen says. " Enron executives went to prison for wiping out

people's life savings, " she points out.

" Lilly executives should go to prison, " she says, " for knowingly

being responsible for people's deaths, shattered families; ruined and

grieving families. "

Ellen has nothing but praise for the New York Times and its

source. " I am grateful to Jim Gottstein for making available this

awful truth and hope it results in justice being done. "

" If there can ever be justice for a crime as heinous as this, " she

adds.

Haszard, of Bangor Maine, feels the same way. In 1996, he was

prescribed Zyprexa off-label to supposedly treat Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder, and he remained on the drug for 4 years.

Although he paid $250 a month for the drug, Mr Haszard says the drug

did not relieve his symptoms of PTSD at all and in early 2000, he was

diagnosed with diabetes.

He was shocked to hear the diagnosis, he said, because there was no

history of diabetes in his family. Just as thousands of other Zyprexa

victims, Mr Haszard did not make the connection between his diabetes

and the drug until he saw a commercial for a law firm in December

2005.

Zyprexa causes diabetes, he says, and public health programs are left

to pick up the tab for the medial expenses. According to Mr

Haszard, " there are now 7 states going after Lilly for fraud and

restitution, " related to the promotion of Zyprexa for off-label use

and the concealment of its risks.

Dr Stefan Kruszewski, MD, a Harvard trained, certified psychiatrist

in adult, adolescent, and geriatric psychiatry, from burg,

Pennsylvania, also finds Lilly's conduct appalling.

" Neither health professionals nor consumers, " he states, " can

accurately provide information about the risk and benefits of a drug

like Zyprexa - or any drug for any condition - without a

comprehensive awareness of the risks and benefits. "

" If the clinical research data regarding effectiveness, efficacy or

safety is sequestered or misrepresented from observation studies,

randomized drug trials or meta-analyses, " he says, " then it is not

possible for any provider to give any patient what he or she needs to

make an informed consent. "

" At that point, " Dr Kruszewski says, " individuals receive drugs that

may or may not help them, but always at their own peril. "

" Zyprexa causes both a severe metabolic syndrome consisting of

obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular problems, " Dr Kruszewski

advises, " at the same time that it continues to cause neurological

side-effects like the older antipsychotics. "

" Zyprexa and its antipsychotics cousins, " he explains, " were marketed

to be safer and easier to tolerate because the pharmaceutical

companies said that the newer drugs caused fewer neurological

injuries, like restlessness or 'akathesia,' and tardive dyskinesia. "

Those assertions are false he says, and " what we have now is a drug

whose massive revenues and promotion are based upon faulty

disclosures by Eli Lilly. "

Information for injured parties can be found at Lawyers and

Settlements.com http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/

Pringle

evelyn-pringle@...