LILLY: Condenada a pagar... por ZYPRESA

The Complaints allege that Lilly established a LTC sales force created for a singular purpose - to promote Zyprexa exclusively off-label by extolling the drug's efficacy for a litany of non-indicated uses to control through sedation elderly nursing home residents exhibiting symptoms of agitation, anxiety, insomnia. Lilly staffed the LTC sales force with 180 "specialty" sales representatives, chosen for their special skill sets that translated into heightened aptitude for selling. Lilly's aggressive LTC sales approach succeeded. According to the Woodward and Vicente complaints, the off-label Zyprexa revenues generated per LTC sales representative far exceeded the revenues generated per representative in any other Zyprexa sales division.


According to the Sheller Complaint, some of the tactics used by Eli Lilly to push Zyprexa sales beyond the drug's approved use were:

-- During off-label lectures and audio conferences for physicians
Lilly sales people posed as persons in the audience who were
interested in Zyprexa's expanded use and asked "planted
questions;"

-- While knowing the significant risk for weight gain posed by
Zyprexa, Lilly minimized the connection between Zyprexa and
weight gain in a widely disseminated videotape called "The Myth
of Diabetes" which used "allegedly scientific studies of
questionable integrity as well as the haphazard reporting of
adverse events;"

-- Providing evidence that, in the summer of 2003, Lilly
management ordered the destruction of sales literature with
misleading information, "core sales aids, flip charts and
acetates;" and

-- Promoting the sublingual version of Zyprexa, called "Zydis," by
claiming that it did not have the same weight-gain effects as
Zyprexa.