With drug companies around the world set to make millions selling vaccines to stop swine flu, it's worth looking at how they are pushing drugs.
Bloomberg reports that drug giant Eli Lilly pushed drugs for dementia, specifically zyprexa, on to elderly patients even though it knew the stuff didn't work. The evidence has come out in internal company documents uncovered in a lawsuit. Eli Lilly started doing this four years after it sent study results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showing Zyprexa didn't alleviate dementia symptoms in older patients.
Just as alarmingly, the report points out that Eli Lilly was in the business was in the business of ghost writing for doctors, getting them to tout the drug and put their names on medical journals. Bloomberg reports: "Lilly employees compiled a guide to hiring scientists to write favorable articles, complained to journal editors when publication was delayed and submitted rejected articles to other outlets, according to the documents."
At the same time, the company is in trouble for discriminating against African American employees. The Wall Street Journal reports that the NAACP and nine plaintiffs have launched a lawsuit alleging the drug company treated them as second class citizens in the area of pay and promotion.
Talk about an ethics bypass. Eli Lilly is a company now worth watching.
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