Eli Lily ‘Ghostwrote’ Articles to Market Drug, Files Say
June 15, 2009 by admin
Filed under News Stories
June 11, 2009
Bloomberg
by Elizabeth Lopatto, Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk
Eli Lilly & Co. officials wrote medical journal studies about the antipsychotic Zyprexa and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice called “ghostwriting,” according to unsealed company files.
Lilly employees also 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 documents filed in drug-overpricing suits against the Indianapolis-based company, the largest manufacturer of psychiatric medicines.
Drugmakers’ use of ghostwriters has created “a huge body of medical literature that society can’t trust,” said Carl Elliott, a University of Minnesota bioethicist who has written about the practice.
Lilly sought to make Zyprexa “the number one selling psychotropic in history,” according to a 2000 plan distributed to its product team. The memo was among more than 10,000 pages of internal documents unsealed last month in lawsuits by insurers and pension funds seeking to recoup money spent on the drug. They allege Lilly exaggerated Zyprexa’s effectiveness.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t have a guidance document or regulations specific to ghostwriting, said Karen Riley, an FDA spokeswoman.
Lemons declined to answer specific questions about ghostwriting. There is no evidence in the unsealed documents that doctors were paid to sign off on the ghostwritten items.
“We believe these documents describe the marketing of a widely promoted and powerfully dangerous psychotropic medication,” said Thomas Sobol, lead attorney for the insurance plans. “Transparency is critically important.”
Lilly isn’t the only drugmaker to use ghostwriters to win favorable play in medical journals. Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc. also have faced claims they used ghostwriters as part of their marketing plans.
In May 2008, Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck agreed to pay $58 million to 29 states and to stop ghostwriting articles to resolve claims that its advertisements for the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx hid the drug’s health risks.
Pfizer paid $60 million to 33 states in October to settle claims it improperly marketed its Bextra and Celebrex pain relievers. New York-based Pfizer agreed to halt off-label marketing of the medicines and stop ghostwriting about them. It withdrew Bextra in April 2005. Celebrex is still on the market.
Antipsychotics have become the U.S.’s best-selling class of drugs, with 2008 sales of $14.6 billion, according to IMS Health, a health-care consulting firm.
The insurers suing Lilly contend it should pay as much as $6.8 billion in damages for downplaying Zyprexa’s health risks and marketing the drug for unapproved uses to increase profits.
The antipsychotic is Lilly’s top-selling drug, with $4.7 billion in sales last year, accounting for almost a quarter of the company’s revenue. Lilly officials said in 2002 they sought to boost Zyprexa sales to $6 billion within four years, according to a document unsealed in the insurers’ case.
Lilly agreed in January to pay $1.42 billion to the U.S. government and more than 30 states to settle off-label marketing allegations over Zyprexa. The agreement included a $615 million penalty for a federal criminal charge of illegally marketing the drug to elderly patients for off-label uses.
The company also faces suits from 12 states over its Zyprexa marketing practices. Cases brought by South Carolina and Connecticut officials are set for trial later this year.
