“Netroots” makes end run: Eli Lilly seeks to keep documents about how they used fraud in marketing and pushing their powerful psychiatric drug Zyprexa, but grassroots Internet campaign resists.
Hopefully everyone has already seen that we have a news item on the MindFreedom web site about how the NY Times covered Eli Lilly’s attempted cover-up of hazards and fraud regarding their psychiatric drug Zyprexa… because courageous attorney Jim Gottstein from PsychRights released Eli Lilly secret documents.
The original NY Times stories are here.
Well, hopefully everyone has also seen that the Internet is resisting the cover-up. Anonymous individuals are using a variety of creative techniques on the Internet to make the suppressed documents available.
MindFreedom is posting updateson the story here.
We need to make it clear the Eli Lilly is still going after Jim Gottstein over this matter. For instance, Eli Lilly has a court order that Jim has to save all of his e-mails on this matter, and to desist from disseminating those documents — even though this dissemination has been in the public interest because of the NY Times story.
The bottom line is that Eli Lilly has done some very unethical things in terms of marketing and promoting and pushing this super-powerful psychiatric drug, one of the varieties of “neuroleptic” or “antipsychotic” drugs. MindFreedom is pro-choice on health care decisions, and many of our members choose to take prescribed psychiatric drugs, including Zyprexa. But Eli Lilly’s cover-up and fraud are just plain wrong.
It is especially outrageous that Eli Lilly is continuing to seek to cover-up these documents even after the NY Times has run these two stories and an editorial in a row!
Certainly, it is time for legislators, prosecutors and courts to increasingly turn to CRIMINALIZATION of the kind of behavior that Eli Lilly executives have been up to. After all, the mis-behavior of Eli Lilly is even worse the Enron. Enron ripped off rate payers, employees, etc. But the intentional, repeated and sustained fraud and cover-up by Eli Lilly means actual people have died… and this amounts to negligent homicide at best, murder at worst, and in any case is a criminal matter.
Civil penalties are important to catch the attention of these enormous corporations. But criminal penalties by the government are absolutely needed to nonviolently bring the behavior to end, and quickly. Yes, let the prisons and jails be as humane as possible… but let’s see some lengthy prison sentences soon for executives such as those responsible for this deadly fraud and cover-up at Eli Lilly.
Thank you to that combination of Internet users and grassroots — also known as the “Netroots” — who have successfully created an end-run around Eli Lilly’s attempted suppression of information about Zyprexa.
Updated Disclaimer by MindFreedom:
At the advice of MindFredom International’s attorney Ted Chabasinski, MindFreedom is complying with the Temporary Restraining Order signed 4 Jan. 2007 by Judge Weinstein of U.S. District Court. MFI has not and is not disseminating Eli Lilly documents regarding its psychiatric drug Zyprexa. MindFreedom has never posted these documents on its web site. By this news alert, MindFreedom is providing alink to a copy of the 1/4/07 TRO to any and all who may have these documents. MFI is not posting information to websites to facilitate dissemination or downloading of Eli Lilly documents about Zyprexa.