(from Furious Seasons) This is maddening: court documents released today show details of so-called call notes made by Lilly sales reps of visits and golf games with doctors in South Carolina, where the company was working hard to get doctors to switch patients to Zyprexa, even for unapproved uses. There were basically payoffs going on, the State of South Carolina alleges in a lawsuit against Lilly, and some of that involved reps making bets with doctors during golf games. One doc agreed that for each time a sales rep made par during one outing that he'd start a new patient on Zyprexa, according to Bloomberg.
And then there was this:
"Lawyers for the state pointed to a sales note from Sullivan in which he tells another salesman to tie a doctor’s Zyprexa prescriptions to participation in a speakers’ program."The company paid doctors and psychiatrists to address physician gatherings about the benefits of the antipsychotic. 'If his numbers go up, maybe he can talk,' Sullivan said in the August 2001 note."
The state's case against Lilly could go to trial later this month. Lilly told Bloomberg that the notes were taken out of context. Yeah, right.
At this point a question has got to be asked: why the hell are the doctors who keep taking payoffs from pharma companies--a la last week's Pfizer settlement--not named publicly? Why are they still practicing medicine? Why are they facing no discipline of any kind?
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