[gusopol3]

because it's not right to pay off doctors to prescribe drugs to populations that are highly likely to be damaged by them simply to make a profit.

there you go again. A totally ad hominem embellishment of even what Lilly was fined for. They were fined for a marketing practice , not any result of having used the medication in an off-label manner. "Paying off doctors" -- clearly your high sense of morality pays the ninth commandment no heed.

[bdeaner]

Eli Lilly was fined because, for years, Lilly has been influencing doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to treat disruptive children and tranquilize nursing home patients. The FDA has not approved the drug for children or the elderly and the side effects of the drug are significant: inducing heart failure and pneumonia in the elderly and increasing the risk of significant weight gain and diabetes in children.

Some of the tactics used by Eli Lilly to push Zyprexa sales beyond the drug's approved use were:

* During off-label lectures by physicians who were paid by Lilly (and had de facto agreed to promote the drug) and audio conferences for physicians Lilly sales people posed as persons in the audience who were interested in Zyprexa's expanded use and asked "planted questions;"

* While knowing the significant risk for weight gain posed by Zyprexa, Lilly minimized the connection between Zyprexa and weight gain in a widely disseminated videotape called "The Myth of Diabetes" which used "allegedly scientific studies of questionable integrity as well as the haphazard reporting of adverse events;"

* Providing evidence that, in the summer of 2003, Lilly management ordered the destruction of sales literature with misleading information, "core sales aids, flip charts and acetates;" and

* Promoting the sublingual version of Zyprexa, called "Zydis," by claiming that it did not have the same weight-gain effects as Zyprexa.