Deceitful Practices of Eli Lilly Revealed
A retired medical officer with the U.S. FDA has testified that drug manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. downplayed the health risks of its popular schizophrenia drug Zyprexa so that the company could increase profits.
John Gueriguian appeared in Anchorage Superior Court on behalf of the state of Alaska, which is suing Lilly over the Zyprexag. Alaska contends that it needs to recover costs to its Medicaid system for serious health problems caused by Zyprexa.
“Simply put, it’s putting profit over the concern of the consumer,” Gueriguian told the jury. Gueriguian was employed at the FDA for 20 years and is now a consultant. Lawyers working for the state hired him to analyze Lilly documents and e-mails.
Lilly attorney John Brenner told reporters the company turned over its data to the FDA, which approved the drug in 1996. “We didn’t hide anything,” Brenner said. “There’s an ongoing debate being played out in the medical community.”
Alaska is one of nine states suing Lilly over Zyprexa and is the first to go to trial and the company.
Zyprexa is sold in the United States and more than 80 other countries. Worldwide sales of the Zyprexa reached approximately $4.8 billion last year.
Internal e-mails revealed during the trial show that at least a few Lilly employees were aware of concerns over the drug leading to diabetes. One employee wrote that consultants were concerned over the company’s handling of the issue.
“I do believe they made a very strong point that unless we come clean on this, it could get much more serious than we might anticipate,” Thomas Brodie wrote in an Oct. 9, 2000, e-mail to others at Lilly.
The next day, another Lilly employee responded that the real concern seemed to be about weight gain, and that the consultants wanted the company to “aggressively face the issue” and work with doctors to help them manage patients’ weight.
Lilly spokeswoman Marni Lemons said on March 7, 2008, that the state’s lawyers are focusing on a few misleading or poorly worded documents out of millions of pages of records.