Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients
source: http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/011810Ridgeway.shtml
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by James Ridgeway
First published in his blog Unsilent Generation yesterday, 17 January 2010
There really should be a special place in hell for pharmaceutical manufacturers who make money by exploiting the weakest and most vulnerable of patients: old people with dementia. I wrote about one such case back in April of last year:
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly recently agreed to pay a record $1.4 billion dollars to settle charges that it illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa as a treatment for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in elderly patients. This despite the fact that the drug was not only unapproved for this “off-label” use, but had also been shown to cause obesity and diabetes.
Now, $1.4 billion might sound like a tough punishment, until you find out that Lilly’s total sales of Zyprexa have topped $37 billion. And at least some of those sales were thanks to doctors who, with guidance from Lilly drug reps, wrote thousands of prescriptions for patients with virtually no ability to defend themselves.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/011810Ridgeway.shtml
First published in his blog Unsilent Generation yesterday, 17 January 2010
There really should be a special place in hell for pharmaceutical manufacturers who make money by exploiting the weakest and most vulnerable of patients: old people with dementia. I wrote about one such case back in April of last year:
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly recently agreed to pay a record $1.4 billion dollars to settle charges that it illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa as a treatment for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in elderly patients. This despite the fact that the drug was not only unapproved for this “off-label” use, but had also been shown to cause obesity and diabetes.
Now, $1.4 billion might sound like a tough punishment, until you find out that Lilly’s total sales of Zyprexa have topped $37 billion. And at least some of those sales were thanks to doctors who, with guidance from Lilly drug reps, wrote thousands of prescriptions for patients with virtually no ability to defend themselves.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/011810Ridgeway.shtml
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- groups:
- Community, Speak Sooth
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- tags:
- Drugs, Pharmaceuticals, Elderly, drugging
