Zyprexa Document Leaker Heads To Court
13 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 14th, 2010 // 8:32 am
Just when you thought the Zyprexa off-label saga was history… Jim Gottstein, an attorney who was one of three people named as conspirators in the infamous Zyprexa document scandal three years ago, will begin oral arguments on Feb. 2 in his fight against an injunction leveled against him by a federal judge in New York.
For those who don’t recall, Gottstein, who runs The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, a non-profit against forced drugging, was accused along with two others by US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein of violating a court order by scheming to leak and publish sealed Zyprexa documents. The Zyprexa documents, which detailed hidden side-effect data and improper marketing, were published by The New York Times (Gottstein provides documents and related background here), setting off a feverish debate over the public’s right to know about concealed side effect data.
Last year, however, Lilly agreed to plead guilty and pay $1.415 billion, which included a $515 million fine for a misdemeanor criminal charge, for off-label promotion of Zyprexa (see here), which was only dwarfed by Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement. And the others? Weinstein called the Times reporter ‘reprehensible,’ but didn’t mete out any punishment. David Egilman, who was an expert witness for plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Lilly, earlier settled for $100,000 (background).
As for Gottstein, he maintains innocence. “Ever since Judge Weinstein ruled against me on February 13, 2007, Lilly has threatened me with civil and criminal contempt sanctions and going after my license to practice law,” Gottstein writes to supporters. “I believe I did nothing wrong - that when Lilly failed to object after being given a reasonable opportunity to do so and then Dr. Egilman sent the Zyprexa Papers to me, they had lost their secrecy protection. I hope the Second Circuit will agree.”
Ellsberg
Any link to where Gottstein “writes to supporters”?
Ed Silverman
Dear Daniel Ellsberg,
Not that I’m aware of, no. It arrived in an email I received.
ed
Condor
Ed — and Daniel:
This is a video-style Blogspot blog, linked off of the lawyer’s genreal legal defense fund 501(c)(3) web-site — it seems to be full of updates about issues related to law and pysch, more broadly, but also covers quite a few updates on the Zyprexa Papers cases.
Namaste
Evelyn Pringle
Lilly is despicable. Gottstein and Egilman are heroes.
We have a sick court system that allows a drug company to hide documents for 10 years that show a drug is killing people the whole time and the company knew it.
Egilman is a doctor. What was he supposed to do when he knew Lilly was getting ready to settle more Zyprexa cases with agreements to keep the documents hidden longer - let more people die?
And what does he get for his good deed? He has to pay the thugs $100,000.
Years ago, the judge in this case sounded like a caring guy, but not anymore.
kimbriel
Jim has a cause - Psych Rights - on facebook. He posted his writings there.
Justice in MI
Evelyn has done heroic reporting on this. Vive Evelyn!
Daniel haszard
Eli Lilly has made $40 billion on $10 a pill Zyprexa and it was way oversold and caused diabetes and in some cases sudden death.
Zyprexa was pushed by Lilly Drug Reps.
They called it the “Five at Five” (5 mg at 5 pm to keep nursing home patients subdued and sleepy) and “VIVA ZYPREXA” (Zyprexa for everybody) campaigns to off label market Eli Lilly Zyprexa as a fix for unapproved usage.
I am a living example of Zyprexa gone/done wrong was given it 1996-2000 off-label for PTSD got sudden high blood sugar A1C 14.7 in January 2000.The stuff was worthless for my condition PTSD and cost me thousands in co-pays gave me diabetes.
–
Daniel Haszard http://www.zyprexa-victims.com
Evelyn Pringle
Thanks Justice. It was definitely an interesting topic to cover and I would like people to know that I had a lot of sources providing good info that I could never have gotten on my own, who I could not publicly credit but sure deserved it.
Danny boy above is the poster boy for Lilly’s bad behavior. He has done wonders as far as warning people about Zyprexa.
Allen Jones
Purely and simply, Jim Gottstein is a hero.
Jim’s courage in surfacing the Zyprexa documents confirms the respect and admiration I already felt for him and his tireless advocacy on behalf of people who are labeled mentally ill. Thanks to Jim, millions of Zyprexa users and their families were finally and fully able to learn the secrets of this dirty drug. And the deceit of a multi-billion dollar drug company was exposed to the world.
Godspeed Jim Gottstein.
Allen Jones
Jim’s website: http://psychrights.org/index.htm
FDAer
Without Jim Gottstein many more injuries would occur. It’s now clear to me and others that FDA management hides what they know about toxicities from the front line reviewers. In one case a psych reviewer told me her otherwise healthy grandmother died of cardiac arrest a few weeks after going into a nursing home and being placed on Zyprexa. Unfortuantely she had to learn after the fact from other reviewers of the increased cardiac mortality and they learned of this from the press and not from FDA management.
The only reason FDA has made any efforts at all regarding ‘metabolic disorders’ with antipsychotics is because of Jim Gottstein’s actions. Otherwise there’s intimidation of reviewers regarding safety issues thorugh staff meetings where we are effectively told that they don’t exist and we are not to pursue them. In one case Janet Woodcock organized the meeting herself and in another Steve Galson told us that the Drug Safety Management Board (S/P Vioxx) was only “in order to quiet our external critics” (Congress).
patrons99
FDAer: Thank you for your insider’s perspective. You provide considerable support for a dissident view I have held for quite some time…that there is a drug safety crisis in this country. The public is clueless as to the scope of the systemic “problems” within FDA, which you describe so well. It is appalling to hear that Drug Safety Management “intimidates” staff reviewers. Is the only purpose of the Drug Safety Management Board to “quiet external critics”? I thought FDA was supposed to serve the public (health) interest. I would suggest legislative reform wherein Drug Safety is broken out from FDA and made completely independent and autonomous of both Pharma and FDA, serving just the public. Anything less and the problem (drug safety crisis) will continue to fester, and may actually get much worse. There are quite a few FDA “approved” drugs in the marketplace which are actually dangerous, yet they remain in the marketplace, even after significant safety signals are noted. Does Drug Safety Management have a “threshold” body count before they take serious action? If so, I wonder what that number is? how did they arrive at it?
Salmon
‘The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors in Packingtown, and they took that to mean that they were protected from diseased meat; they did not understand that these hundred and sixty-three inspectors had been appointed at the request of the packers, and that they were paid by the United States government to certify that all the diseased meat was kept in the state. They had no authority beyond that; for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city and state the whole force in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the local political machine! And shortly afterward one of these, a physician, made the discovery that the carcasses of the steers which had been condemned as tubercular by the government inspectors, and which therefore contained ptomaines, which are deadly poisons, were left upon an open platform and carted away to be sold in the city; and so he insisted that these carcasses be treated with an injection of kerosene — and was ordered to resign the same week!’
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
1905
susan
I am sick and tired of Big Pharma maiming and killing people on their drugs. True, they have some drugs which have saved people- but Zyprexa= which has maimed and killed many, like Dan Hazard who I am happy to have corresponded with- this is wrong. A drug- any drug- when it goes to trial and has these kind of red flags, should be taken off the market then and there. Not be put on the market because of the almighty dollar. Jim Gottstein, Evelyn Pringle, and other whistle blowers are to be commended, not lynched by the media, and should be given laurels, and held up to our children and our children’s children, just as Upton Sinclair was to my parents generation and to me. They don’t use every part of the pig but the squeal anymore- thanks to “The Jungle”.
Big Pharma needs an overhaul. There are brilliant reporters and writers out there that are doing it, - Ms. Pringle, Bob Fiddaman, Philip Dawdy, Doug Bremner, and of course, Ed Silverman! - there are people out there doing the work- Jim Gottstein and Dan, Mind Freedom, Psych Rights, etc…. not to mention all the hundreds of bloggers, myself included….maybe it’s time to do to Big Pharma what Sinclair did to the meat packing industry.
Bless Jim Gottstein, and I hope the judge throws this whole thing out of court- and fines Lilly for wasting his time.