California Attorney, Ted Chabasinski, is calling for the criminal prosecution of Eli Lilly executives for hiding the adverse effects of Zyprexa, based in part on articles last month in the New York Times which quote internal company documents that revealed that Lilly knew about the adverse effects for a decade but kept the information hidden.
Mr Chabasinski, appeared by teleconference in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, on January 3, 2007, before Judge Jack Weinstein, on behalf of MindFreedom, a non-profit human rights organization, in response to a motion by Lilly basically filed to keep the incriminating information hidden, to defend the public's right to know the contents of the secret Lilly documents concerning Zyprexa.
Mr Chabasinski told the judge that the documents are evidence of Lilly executives' "criminal behavior" and "willingness to kill people for profit."
The court granted MindFreedom's request for more time to respond to Lilly's motion, and another hearing is set for January 16, 2007. Meanwhile Judge Weinstein said that he was taking "no position" about those people who were not named but who already have copies of the Lilly files on Zyprexa.
Prior to the hearing, in a letter to the judge, Mr Chabasinski pointed out that while the underlying case in which the documents were under seal is civil, the documents reveal criminal behavior on the part of Lilly's executives. "They have chosen a course of action," he told the judge, "lying about and hiding the real effects of Zyprexa, that they knew would lead to the injury and death of literally thousands of people."
"If this isn't criminal," he stated, "I don't know what is."
The company documents also show that Lilly engaged in a massive illegal off-label marking campaign to get primary care physicians to prescribe Zyprexa for uses never approved by the FDA to increase profits.
The whole saga began when Dr David Egilman, MD, MPH, revealed the documents to Alaskan attorney, Jim Gottstein. Dr Egilman reviewed the documents and learned of Lilly's illegal conduct a few years ago when he served as an expert in a lawsuit. However, the case was settled out of court, and Dr Egilman was effectively muzzled when the judge granted Lilly's request to keep the documents secret with a court order.
To settle the lawsuit, Lilly agreed to pay close to $700 million to roughly 8,000 Zyprexa victims or their family members, with the provision that each person would sign a confidentiality agreement not to discuss Zyprexa or the terms of the settlement agreement in return for the money.
Being Lilly obviously planned to keep the information about Zyprexa a secret, as a physician, Dr Egilman likely found himself between a rock and a hard place. If he did not find a way to warn the public, at best he would be guilty of negligence, and at worst considered complicit in Lilly's elaborate scheme to use the court system to keep the information hidden so as not to effect the booming sales of its top selling drug bringing in over $4 billion a year.
Mr Gottstein obtained the documents for use in another lawsuit, and after seeing that Lilly knew 10 years ago that Zyprexa caused drastic weight gain and diabetes and realizing the extent of the off-label marketing of the drug, he turned the documents over to the New York Times, obviously in hope that the Times would warn the public and medical professionals who were prescribing Zyprexa for every ailment known to mankind, without knowledge of the serious health risks associated with the drug.
Since the New York Times' articles were published, Lilly's legal team has been working day and night right through the holiday season trying to use the court system to muzzle the messengers and get the incriminating information back under seal.
In reviewing all the legal paperwork including letters, injunctions, and motions flying around on the internet, its worth noting that not once do Lilly attorneys, or the judges handling the case, refer to the underlying illegal conduct disclosed in the documents that Lilly is working so hard to keep hidden.
The drug maker has been able to obtain injunctions ordering Mr Gottstein to return the documents and requiring him to provide the names of all persons and organizations that he provided them to or discussed them with. The injunctions bar further disclosure and specifically name individuals and organizations who are believed to have copies of the documents.
Mr Chabasinski is representing author, Judi Chamberlin, and MindFreedom International, who are both named in a December 29, 2006, temporary injunction. "As everyone is aware at this point," Mr Chabasinski says, "there are thousands of copies of the documents in question circulating on the Internet and in the hands of innumerable people."
He says Lilly knows full well that any attempt to recover the documents is a "futile gesture" and there is no way to keep them secret. "While the injunction purports to be an attempt to recover the documents," Mr Chabasinski wrote in the letter to the judge, "it is clear that its real purpose is to intimidate Lilly's critics, and the court should refuse to cooperate with this."
You are doing a great job putting the REAL important stuff out there for everyone. I am so thrilled when I read your articles!!! Keep writing and don't stop. Write for those of us who have been so tortured by these drugs that we have extreme difficulty reading and writing.
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Heather Patenaude (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Thursday, January 4, 2007 at 7:56:19 PM
