NY Times Continues it's attack on Lilly with dated information
Dec/18/06 17:21 | Pharma Business
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I guess the NY Times has a bone to pick with Lilly and the pharmaceutical industry. Again Lilly was featured in a front page story about Zyprexa. This time it reported on Lilly's attempts to promote Zyprexa with for off label use. I was not on the Zyprexa team at the time but what the Times failed to report is that the people who were responsible for this poor judgement are no no longer with Lilly. They were shown the door a long time ago and, now it seems, for good reason.


I really don't understand how a national newspaper as respected as the NY Times could be so one-sided in reporting a story. The information that they are reporting was again given to them by a attorney in Alaska who is no doubt trying to cash in by forcing Lilly into a settlement. Lilly already settled most of the lawsuits with a $700 million payment but there are still some lawyers who want their big payday from the pharmaceutical company based in Indiana. What these legal people don't understand is that Zyprexa may have helped millions of mentally ill people lead better lives. It may have eased the burden on society for some people that otherwise might have to be institutionalized. These so called legal people reach out to patients but it is they who will reap the majority of the rewards not patients.

If the reporting in the Times is accurate than in fact several people did use extremely bad judgement in the marketing of the product. A lot of the Zyprexa team people were shown the door and Lilly cleaned house in the brand team a while back. I don't know where theses marketers wound up but I can assure you being fired from a pharmaceutical company is not something you want on your resume.

There are always two sides to every story and instead of the Times sitting down with Lilly with the documents they had in their possession the Times chose to run this story on the front page. So much for balanced reporting. They did contact Lilly and asked them to "comment" but what's the use when you know the outcome is going to be negative. I have a relative who is on Zyprexa and he is doing very well and working full time because of this medication. That is a blessing to family members because the stress of caring for him has affected their well being as well. He has not gained weight and has not had issues with his A1C but you won't hear about that you'll only hear about the people who gained weight and may have become diabetic as a result.

The media reporting in this country has really gone down hill. They seek headlines rather than fact....they don't research stories and the news is more about sensationalism than facts. That's a shame because as a former Lilly employee I was always were told to put patients first and I observed this in the development of a lot of our marketing materials. Like one Director of Lilly taught me "always work like patients are looking over your shoulder". There are a lot of good people at Eli Lilly and they deserve a better more balanced story than the one running in the Times. It's a shame that one of the best newspapers in the world has had to stoop this type of journalism but then again it's about selling papers isn't it?
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