“One of the most evil pharma corporations in the world, Eli Lilly & Company. You may have heard of them. They’re evil. And I can say that because I was part of the evil.” – Dr. John Rengen Virapen who worked 35 years for Eli Lilly in many positions including as an executive.
Look at what they did with marketing and science behind the blockbuster drug, Prozac.
And the $1.4 billion fine they paid, including $515 million criminal fine, for their actions with Zyprexa.
Then we turn towards politics for one of the most blatantly conflicted passing of a law that benefited Big Pharma, and the congressmen they’d bought off.
Witness the crimes of Billy Tauzin, Dennis Hastert and more with the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003.
It’s literally like the Netflix show House of Cards (and another disgusting parallel there…)
Read the full issues and see the references by clicking the Transcript button below.
Medical Monopoly Musings #40
Evil Lilly
“One of the most evil pharma corporations in the world, Eli Lilly & Company. You may have heard of them. They’re evil. And I can say that because I was part of the evil.”
- Dr. John Rengen Virapen who worked 35 years for Eli Lilly in many positions including as an executive.
Should we believe a man who perpetrated such evil and later grew a conscious? Well, we don’t have to rely just on his words…
Lilly has come under fire for their blockbuster drug, Prozac (fluoxetine). Ironically, or devilishly, depending on how you look at it, a drug made for depression leads to increases in suicide. (Not to mention homicide as covered previously in #10.)
In Lilly’s internal records, suicides were changed to overdoses (despite prescribed doses leading to suicides) and suicidal ideation to depression to hide the side effects.
Lilly covered these up in seeking approval for the drug. Yet Virapen discussed how he bribed Swedish and German officials to approve the drug. In 1997 it was the fifth most prescribed drug, a blockbuster making over $1 billion per year!
Within the US, they worked hand in hand with FDA officials. Lilly was able to cover-up it’s tracks for some time including settling court cases in ways that their deeds didn’t become public knowledge. Still, eventually the FDA issued a black box warning on antidepressants stating these risks.
There’s someone close to me that as a teenager tried to take their own life while on Prozac. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful in doing so, but others weren’t so lucky.
Imagine you’re feeling down so your doctor prescribes you a medication. It then causes akathisia, which people describe as a feeling of wanting…needing…to jump out of their own skin leading some to try to accomplish that.
Peter C. Gøtzsche sums it up well. “Lilly’s internal papers disclose a long and successful battle against the idea that Prozac could induce violence or suicide, and they suggest that Lilly had an explicit strategy to blame the disease and not the drug, which some of Lilly’s own scientists had reservations about.”
That’s one case of Evil Lilly’s deeds.
The biggest case in which they got caught was in marketing another psychiatric drug Zyprexa for off label and unapproved uses. For this they were fined $1.4 billion, which included a $515 million criminal fine, the largest ever at that time in 2009.
This antipsychotic drug was given to elderly people for dementia, Alzheimer’s, sleep disorders and more. “Eli Lilly’s management created marketing materials promoting Zyprexa for off-label uses, trained its sales force to disregard the law and directed its sales personnel to promote Zyprexa for off-label uses…Eli Lilly expended significant resources to promote Zyprexa in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.”
They also promoted this to people of all ages, including children for anxiety, depression and other mood disorders.
This drug too led to deaths. Former Eli Lilly sales representative Robert Rudolph said, "You have to remember, with Zyprexa, people lost their lives."
No one went to jail. Zyprexa was another blockbuster, raking in at least $39 billion since 1996 so the $1.4 billion fine and their being forced to sign a corporate integrity agreement surely mended their ways, right?
This literally only scratches the surface of Evil Lilly’s practices. They’ve shown a pattern of going after the vulnerable, children and elderly, with drugs that increase death significantly. I don’t know about you, but that qualifies as evil in my book.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMh1UlpALS8
https://www.corp-research.org/eli-lilly
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2301661/
http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/AntiDepressants/BMJ-SecretReportSurfaces.pdf
https://ahrp.org/eli-lilly-prozac-documents-what-do-they-reveal/
https://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112130326/http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/UCM173233.pdf
GOTZSCHE, P. C. (2017). DEADLY MEDICINES AND ORGANISED CRIME: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare (pp. 202-206). CRC Press. https://amzn.to/368GIQG
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/eli-lilly-and-company-agrees-pay-1415-billion-resolve-allegations-label-promotion-zyprexa
https://www.alternet.org/2009/03/the_case_for_giving_eli_lilly_the_corporate_death_penalty/
*****
Medical Monopoly Musings #41
Meet the Man Responsible for Trillion Dollar Transfer from Public Coffers to Big Pharma (and Tens of Millions into His Own Pockets)
This makes me despise politicians more…and at the same time feel bad for the ones that are honest as this is what they have to deal with.
Billy Tauzin was a longtime Democrat in Congress representing Louisiana starting in 1980, nicknamed the “Cagey Cajun” for his methods. But he switched to Republican in 1994 as that party took power in the House. (Clearly, a man of principle!) His salary as congressman was $162,000.
He helped to craft and pass the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. One of the provisions of this bill was that the government was not able to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, nor import cheaper drugs from overseas. Taxpayers paid the full rate despite being the biggest customer by far.
“The pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote the bill,” said Republican Representative Walter Jones. More importantly, see how it was passed!
Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman cover this in their book Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy. “Early in the morning of Friday, November 21, 2003, just before the Thanksgiving break …[the] thousand-page bill finally landed on House members’ desks. To their astonishment, they were told they would have only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it.”
“The timing of the vote was in itself unusual. What came next, however, was something that had never happened before in the history of the country. Jones said it was the “ugliest night” he had ever witnessed in more than two decades as a member of Congress. Tauzin, Hastert and DeLay, who had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug companies during their political careers, knew it wouldn’t be easy to pass the legislation without a plan to pay for the costly new entitlement other than through permanent deficit spending. But they believed they had the support they needed when they called for a vote at 3:00 a.m. on Saturday.”
“Among the shenanigans, reportedly sanctioned by House leaders: freezing C-SPAN cameras and allowing lobbyists on the House floor as the vote was being taken.”
“Despite the arm twisting, the bill was still short of the 218 votes needed for passage after the standard 15-minute voting period. Rather than accept defeat, however, Hastert added two minutes to the voting clock. When that wasn’t enough, Hastert decided to keep the vote open indefinitely to give the pharmaceutical lobbyists more time to change minds.”
(This is an aside but shows more of the morality of these men. Dennis Hastert would go on to be convicted of molesting several underage boys!)
They threatened to fire Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Medicare system, and thus blocked information about how much this bill would cost taxpayers from reaching anyone in Congress. Had this information been available there is no way the bill would have passed.
This full court press led to eventually enough yes votes being counted. The billed passed at 5:53 am.
Tauzin’s reward? He retired from Congress and within the next few days became CEO of PhRMA with a $2 million per year salary. PhRMA is the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry trade group.
He wasn’t the only one. Fifteen lawmakers, staff and officials took healthcare industry jobs within a year of that bill being passed. Craig Holman of Public Citizen said, "The pharmaceutical industry got rich, Congress got rich, the executive branch that worked on the bill got rich. Everyone got rich on this except the American people.”
A New York Times article reports, “In 2007, the Democrats added a new provision to the House ethics code known as the “Tauzin rule,” which specifically bars a lawmaker from negotiating deals for future employment while still on the job.”
It’s always great to have an ethics rule named after you because of what you did!
In his new role, over the next few years Tauzin was able to kill legislation that would repeal the most egregious parts of that act. He had his hand in the Affordable Care Act making sure it benefited his paymasters.
Potter & Penniman write, “We can also thank Tauzin and many of his friends in Washington for increases in both our taxes and the national debt. In fact, by 2023, the US government’s debt will likely be more than a trillion dollars higher than it otherwise would be.”
Tauzin’s cut of the action grew. In 2010 PhRMA paid him $11.6 million.
What do you do with all that money? Wikipedia says that “Tauzin endorsed Jerome Schneider's book The Complete Guide to Offshore Money Havens, dubbing the book "A serious contender for the best book on offshore banking I've ever seen."” So he’s read multiple of them! Well, I guess we shouldn’t expect someone that would fleece the taxpayers to want to pay his own taxes either.
Welcome to how politics are played. The criminal medical cartel breaks the laws, they skirt the laws, but most of all they make the laws because they buy the lawmakers.
References:
https://billmoyers.com/story/the-man-who-made-you-pay-more-at-the-drugstore/
https://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/health-reform-in-limbo-top-drug-lobbyist-quits/?partner=rss&emc=rss
https://sunlightfoundation.com/2010/02/12/the-legacy-of-billy-tauzin-the-white-house-phrma-deal/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/us/dennis-hastert-released.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-29/tauzin-s-11-6-million-made-him-highest-paid-health-law-lobbyist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Tauzin
https://web.archive.org/web/20190825120042/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11714763/t/tauzin-aided-drug-firms-then-they-hired-him/#.XWJ4gmimOUk
http://www.ssqq.com/stories/cancerfight08.htm
Thanks Logan:
The “EvilLilly” expose / article really is appalling in its factual content and illustrates just how screwed the undereducated American public quite actually is with regard to the level of corruption involved in American industry and government. And, the Banana Republic that now defines the real American political/industrial complex is even more appalling.
I have been aware of this corruption for quite some time as I am an active investor managing several Family Trusts for many years. The corruption within the economic markets is equally as overt and corrupt as the pharmaceutical industry. The difference in how these various entities screw over Americans is unimportant, save for the lives messed over and lost, as the brazen carpet baggers juice Americans for profit at any cost while the regulators look askance. Furthermore, when charges are brought up and convictions dealt out these punitive convictions represent a mere fraction of the illicit gains realized as the companies charged pay what amounts to nothing when compared with what they took in while killing us.
As I recall, Lilly is not the only pimp operating to fleece Americans with not only harmful products but pocketing our legislators to push their evil agendas forward. Johnson & Johnson is another corporate pimp fleecing the public with ridiculous advertising and horrific products that are known carcinogens.
It really takes my breath away when I contemplate just how bad things actually are pursuant to, corruption within America. And, by the way, this corrupt approach to government and industry is not just rampant in America it is a global pandemic phenomenon.
Your efforts to bring a semblance of rational thought to the public at large is tremendously appreciated. Keep up the great work. I love your products too.
Sincerely,
Brian L. Gottejman, Ph.D.
The same tactics are used in industry after industry, medical and financial are two of the biggest but far from the only ones. While it is led by American companies in many ways, it certainly is global.
Thanks for sharing!