Wednesday, February 18, 2009

It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Many are outraged that Eli Lilly gave nonprofits $3.9 million in grants last year for medical courses to "educate" doctors about the pain-and-fatigue ailment fibromyalgia--more than it spent for diabetes and Alzheimer's which people already know they have.

But finding new diseases to justify a drug's existence is the normal way pharma operates.

Especially Lilly who agreed to pay $1.42 billion for illegal marketing of its anti-psychotic Zyprexa last month--$615 million for criminally promoting it for dementia--another $62 million to 32 states for illegal pediatric marketing and agreed to resolve Medicaid fraud investigations into "rebates" at the same time. (And how was your year?)

And whose diabetes treatment Byetta is tanking since reports last summer of six deaths, at least two from pancreatitis.

But Lilly's fibromyalgia-fighting drug, Cymbalta (duloxetine)--its second best seller after Zyprexa--is anything but normal.

Starting with the death of 19-year-old Cymbalta test subject Traci Johnson in 2004--who hanged herself in the Lilly Clinic in Indianapolis and had no history of mental problems--it has been beset by reports of baffling, rapid, unprovoked, and out of character suicides and suicide attempts.

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