Bonkers: Sell Eli Lilly stock now

Coming in 2011: The end of Eli Lilly as we know it.
Urgent message to Lilly shareholders: Sell now.


"No country can afford not to have periodic showcase prosecutions of serious corporate abuses to foster deterrence.
          – John Braithwaite, Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Routledge, 1984)

To prepare for the drama that's about to unfold, here's a little history.

On Jan. 30, 2009, Eli Lilly and Company pleaded guilty to a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The Court sentenced Lilly to pay a criminal fine of $515 million and asset forfeiture of $100 million, the largest criminal fine imposed against an individual defendant in the history of the United States.

The Government believed this historic criminal fine reflected the seriousness of the offense and Eli Lilly's earlier violations of the FDCA. The Government believed the criminal fine would promote respect for the law, and that the sentence would deter Eli Lilly from further unlawful promotion of its pharmaceutical products. The Government believed a criminal fine of this magnitude would serve as general deterrence to others who might be tempted to go down the road of off-label marketing.

Under the Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) between Lilly and the U S. Department of Health and Human Services, the parties agreed that Eli Lilly would not be placed on probation. However, the agreement imposed a strict compliance program to ensure that Lilly's criminal conduct would not recur.

Eli Lilly is subject to exclusion from Federal Health Care programs, including but not limited to Medicaid, for a material breach of the CIA. A material breach includes failure by Lilly to report a reportable event and take corrective action. A reportable event means anything that involves a matter that a reasonable person would consider a probable violation of criminal, civil, or administrative laws applicable to any Federal Health Care program and/or applicable to any FDA requirements relating to the promotion of Lilly products.

The CIA applies to Eli Lilly employees and all contractors, subcontractors, agents and other persons who perform promotional and product services on behalf of Lilly.   Exclusion will have national effect and apply to all other Federal procurement and nonprocurement programs.

Shareholder lawsuits filed against the company for engaging in a long list of illegal activities were settled in March 2010, with Lilly agreeing to abide by strict new measures guaranteeing that matters affecting patient safety and benefit shall be of paramount importance. 

That's the background story, in a nutshell. Future WikiLeaks to follow.
For details regarding the precise nature of the substance that will soon be hitting the fan, watch this space"....
http://www.bonkersinstitute.org/goodbyelilly.html




We hope Lilly stockholders get the bath they need.


Thanks and a tip of the Mad Hatter's Hat to 
The Bonkers Institute - http://bonkerstinstitute.org

WikiLeaks cables: Pfizer used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout

"The world's biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis, according to a leaked US embassy cable.
Pfizer was sued by the Nigerian state and federal authorities, who claimed that children were harmed by a new antibiotic, Trovan, during the trial, which took place in the middle of a meningitis epidemic of unprecedented scale in Kano in the north of Nigeria in 1996.
Last year, the company came to a tentative settlement with the Kano state government which was to cost it $75m.
But the cable suggests that the US drug giant did not want to pay out to settle the two cases – one civil and one criminal – brought by the Nigerian federal government."

Link at The Guardian

Shades of John le Carre's The Constant Gardener...



You can help fight these crimes - at The Constant Gardener Trust

Medicating Children: A “Whistleblower’s” Lawsuit Raises a Novel Legal Question

From Robert Whitaker's Blog, MAD IN AMERICA, at Psychology Today

"In the past few years, a number of pharmaceutical companies have admitted to federal charges that they illegally
marketed psychiatric medications for non-approved uses, with the companies paying large sums to settle the cases.
Now, a legal complaint filed by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rightsin an Alaskan federal court is raising a
related question. When healthcare providers bill Medicaid for prescriptions of psychiatric drugs to children for non-
approved uses, are they committing Medicaid fraud?
The case, United States ex-rel Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, was unsealed earlier this year, and
legal papers were recently filed that have brought this novel question -- which obviously has profound implications
for the prescribing of psychiatric medications to poor children and adolescents -- into sharp focus.
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) , which is headed by Alaskan attorney James Gottstein, filed its
whistleblower complaint in April 2009. Known as a qui tam lawsuit, PsychRights sued on behalf of the federal
government under the False Claims Act, which allows private individuals to pursue legal complaints against
individuals or companies that are allegedly defrauding the government. In December, the federal government
declined to join PsychRights in the case.
PsychRights named Alaskan state officials, hospitals, mental health agencies, psychiatrists, and pharmacies as
defendants. In its complaint, PsychRights argues that the federal government has agreed to provide Medicaid
reimbursement only for those outpatient drugs that are prescribed for an FDA-approved use or for a use supported
by a medical compendium (such as the DRUGDEX Information System.) PsychRights maintains that the defendants
defrauded the federal government when they billed Medicaid (or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program)
for outpatient drugs that didn't meet this standard.
As part of its complaint, PsychRights identified 16 commonly prescribed psychiatric medications that have no
"medically accepted indication" for youth under 18 years old, and it also identified the limited number of "medically
accepted indications" that exist for 32 other psychiatric drugs. PsychRights compiled this list of "approved" uses by
methodically going through the drug compendiums, and it serves as the evidential heart of the complaint, for it
reveals that psychiatric medications are regularly prescribed to poor children for non-approved uses. PsychRights is asking the federal court to stop this practice (which it argues is harmful), and to pay hefty financial penalties for the fraudulent claims made to date."

Riveting! Thank you, Robert Whitaker.

Read the rest at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/

Some of our previous posts on Robert Whitaker's views and anti-psych meds articles -

http://www.thestreetspirit.org.
This site is owned by The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice and peace.

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/mad.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/madinterview.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/leonards.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/zyprexa.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20071119112008/http://www.namiscc.org/newsletters/February02/JohnNashDrugFreeRecovery.htm

http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/12/us-kids-represent-psychiatric-goldmine.html

http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2008/05/royal-recovery-from-schizophrenia.html

CBC: Pfizer ordered to pay $142M in damages

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/25/gabapentin-ubc.html

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been ordered to pay $142 million US in damages for fraudulently marketing gabapentin, an anti-seizure drug marketed under the name Neurontin.

Pharmalot: FDA May Prosecute More Pharmaceutical Execs

By Ed Silverman // March 4th, 2010 //
The FDA plans to increase misdemeanor prosecutions of industry execs as it looks to refocus its Office of Criminal Investigations (see this letter to the Senate Finance committee). The move comes in response to a new report from the General Accountability Office that the OCI suffers from lax oversight, despite increased in funding and staffing over the past decade. In fact, the FDA hasn’t reviewed most OCI offices in more than three years. The OCI investigates counterfeit drugs and other bad stuff, as well as misconduct by FDA employees.
The GAO concluded the FDA “has relied largely on the OCI director to determine which aspects of OCI’s operations and investigations are made known to FDA’s top management.” The GAO found assessments of six OCI field offices aren’t being done on a timely basis. Of 24 total office assessments that should have been completed by August 2009, only 7, or about 30 percent, were completed and one office hadn’t been assessed in over 10 years.

Continues at Link
Thanks, Ed!

Ah, but... who is watching the watchers?

Drug-Induced Dementia: The Perfect Crime

"Under the influence of declining birth rates, expanding longevity, and changing population structures around the world, the global prevalence of senile dementia is expected to increase more than four-fold within the next forty years. Within the United States alone, the number of affected individuals over the age of 65 is expected to rise exponentially from 8 million cases (2% of the entire population in the year 2000), to 18 million retirees (roughly 4.5% of the national census in the year 2040). Although they are striking, these statistics quite likely underestimate the scope of the coming epidemic, as they fail to consider the impact of under-diagnosis, early-onset disease, and the potential for a changing incidence of illness in the context of increasingly toxic environments.

In the face of this imminent crisis, concerned observers have called for policies and practices which aim to prevent, limit, or reverse dementia. Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime is a timely resource which reveals why and how medical treatments themselves – specifically, psychopharmaceuticals – are a substantial cause of brain degeneration and premature death.

A first-of-its-kind resource for patients and clinicians, the book integrates research findings from epidemiology (observational studies of patients in the “real world”), basic biology (animal experiments), and clinical science (neuroimaging and autopsy studies) in order to demonstrate the dementing and deadly effects of psychiatric drugs.

Highlighted by more than 100 neuroimages, slides of tissue specimens, and illustrations, the book uniquely describes:

Ø the societal roots of the problem
(target organ toxicity, regulatory incompetence, and performativity)

Ø the subtypes and essential causes of dementia

Ø the patterns, prevalence, and causes of dementia associated with antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, mood stabilizers, and stimulants

and

Ø the actions and reforms which patients, providers, and policy makers might immediately pursue, in an effort to mitigate the causes and consequences of this iatrogenic tragedy."

Link

NYT: Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System

Image of Pinocchio turning into a Donkey Boy after falling under bad influences. He is imprisoned and made into a slave. - Image adapted from Walt Disney.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Link

Study after study after study after study has proved that nutrition is the key to mental health. Good nutrition helps the brain form and function correctly and can assist young persons in avoiding impulsive decisions that lead to unhappy outcomes. Why don't we act on that information and help these people?
Food and vitamins are inexpensive; drugs and incarceration are not.


Image: Modern "Panopticon"- style prison

Prisons are big business.

“Incarceration, Inc.,” by Sasha Abramsky, The Nation, July 19, 2004, 16 p.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/19156
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040719/abramsky
Prisons thrive on cheap labor and the hunger of job-starved towns.

“The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?” by Vicky Pelaez, El Diario-La Prensa, New York, October 13, 2005, 7 p.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289
http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/us-prison-industry-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/
http://cannabisnews.com/news/21/thread21654.shtml
The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up.

"They killed my patient. Then they tried to hide it."

From an Open Salon blog.

Charles Manson's Biochemistry

Image: Charles Manson at 74. Charles Manson may be twice a prisoner - of the California correctional system and of his own biochemistry. He has a condition known as Pyroluria which can result in odd or violent behavior, and which is easily corrected with inexpensive nutritional elements such as B6 and zinc. There seems to be a familial connection, discussed here.
Read about what is wrong with Manson's biochemistry - and that of many others - and how to correct it, in Dr. Walsh's presentation here - pdf. More on Pyroluria here.
Another page discussing a pyroluria protocol is here.
If all children were given an opportunity to be screened for nutritional type and appropriate accommodations made, crime rates would probably plummet. Let's do it!

Generation Rx - the Film

"They're depriving children of their souls..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7900bL60Xbc

www.GenerationRXFilm.com
"GENERATION RX examines a culture of medicine and corruption, documenting how more and more children have been drugged with psychiatric medications earlier, and more often, than ever before.
The film uncovers a pattern of collusion between drug manufacturers and their regulatory watchdogs at the FDA - of evidence hidden from the general public, despite the risks being well-known long before antidepressant drugs were approved for the marketplace.
Ultimately, Generation RX may help parents decide whether the perceived benefits of these medications outweigh the serious risks to children."

Video Lecture: Dr. Alexander Schauss on Criminality and Nutrition