Lilly dropped the program in states daring to require doctors to seek permission to prescribe Zyprexa which at $300 a month is the single biggest drug cost for state Medicaid budgets according to the Times.
Hansen also received FOIA documents from the state of Michigan showing the number of psychiatric drugs prescribed to children under 6 and the number of Medicaid patients on 5 or more psychiatric drugs but they did not name the drugs.
How does pharma vault a drug only indicated for the one percent of the population with schizophrenia and four percent with bipolar disorder to be the biggest line item in the Medicaid budget? As in your tax dollars? Just good off-label marketing--promoting a drug for a non-FDA approved use which is illegal in the US.
And speaking of non-approved uses, how can Britain's National Health Service produce a brochure for kids taking Zyprexa when kids are not supposed to take Zyprexa? "ZYPREXA is not for patients who are under 18 years," says the prescribing information. "Keep out of the reach and sight of children."
Are the healthy, active kids shown in the cartoons "befores" since 30 percent of Zyprexa patients gain 22 pounds or more, 16 percent, 66 pounds or more and some gain over 100 pounds according to Lilly's own published data? Zyprexa "may make you feel like eating more food," says the NHS brochure in what might be considered classic British understatement. "If this happens, try not to eat more than usual and talk to an adult or your doctor about this." Any questions?
And how about Zyprexa's notorious soporific effect or zombie factor? "It is a good [sic] to take olanzapine at bedtime, as it can make some people feel sleepy," says the brochure.
Hansen's war on pharma disease mongering comes from first hand experience. He was misdiagnosed with "bipolar disorder" and denied release in a Michigan hospital after a reaction to the death of his father and a suicide of a friend on the same day. "The psychiatrist refused to treat me without drugs," says Hansen and "I was held in the hospital involuntarily for the next 39 days, totaling a bill of $23,000."
Take one look at the Bonkers Institute's gallery of vintage psychiatric drug advertising, the Nearly Genuine and Truly Marvelous Mental Medicine Show--one of the best on the web--and you see the roots of today's pediatric bipolar/depression/ADD/ADHD "epidemic" decades ago. Thorazine syrup was given for vomiting in kids, antidepressants for bedwetting and Ritalin for "mischief" and "juvenile pranks." Like the NHS brochures, kids are shown happy and playing with soccer balls.
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