A String of Controversies

Skwawkbox writes:

Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting have gone to war on unemployed people they consider to be overweight – with a clear indication they intend widening it to the general population, with an implicit threat that they will be refused NHS treatment if they don’t take it – by forcing them to take a weight-loss drug that is known to have fatal side-effects and psychiatric impacts.

The new scheme will massively enrich drug manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co, which produces Tirzepatide, also marketed as ‘Mounjaro’, which will reportedly charge around £30 a dose initially given to 3,000 people weekly but eventually to millions. But US firm Lilly has a string of controversies, sharp practice and lawsuits in its wake that raise serious questions about Streeting’s decision to form a strategic partnership with the firm:

Zyprexa

Lilly faced thousands of lawsuits from people who claimed the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa gave them diabetes and massive weight gain: 16% of people taking it gained almost five stones in their first year of taking it – but Lilly had given doctors a far lower number. Lilly paid out $1.2 billion to claimants.

The firm was then sued by 32 US states for illegally marketing the drug for ‘off-label’ use, especially as a dementia treatment – and pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of illegal marketing. It received a total penalty of $1.415 billion, including an $800 million civil settlement, a fine of $515 million and asset forfeiture of $100 million. The firm’s chief executive had emailed colleagues saying:

we must seize the opportunity to expand our work with Zyprexa in this same child-adolescent population [for off-label use].

Evista

Evista is a drug used to treat or prevent osteoporosis, the weaking of bones in the elderly and in post-menopausal women. The company, which had trained sales representatives to sell the drug as a preventative for cancer and heart disease – and told them to withhold information that its effectiveness against breast cancer was unproven – agreed to plead guilty to illegally marketing the drug and paid a fine of $36m. The company had also published a video promoting Evista as:

truly…the best drug for the prevention of all these diseases. 

Trulicity

Lilly’s drug for the treatment of diabetes (and used off-brand as a weight-loss drug) is the subject of a major lawsuit in the US alleging that the drug causes cancers, blindness, neurodegenerative disease ALS, deep vein thromboses, pulmonary embolisms, serious gastrointestinal problems:

the drug, which mimics the GLP-1 hormone in the body that aids in insulin secretion, causes severe side effects, including gastroparesis and pancreatic cancer. Legal documents also suggest that the manufacturer of Trulicity, Eli Lilly, knew of these risks and failed to adequately warn healthcare providers or patients of the dangers.

Insulin pricing

Between 2012 and 2016, Lilly almost doubled the price of its insulin, prompting letters from members of Congress about the sudden and huge price increases.

Canada lawsuit

Lilly sued the Canadian government for US$500m in 2013, claiming it had violated the North American Free Trade Agreement by letting Canadian courts to invalidate patents for two of its drugs. The courts had found one patent invalid because the company’s drug study had lasted only seven weeks and involved only twenty-two patients. The other – for Zyprexa – was invalidated because the drug did not meet its promised usefulness. The company lost the case in 2017.

This is the firm that Streeting and his boss Keir Starmer trumpeted getting into bed with and whose drug – with its fatal side-effects – they plan to force on thousands and ultimately millions. Continuing its targeting of the vulnerable, the government has also announced that it will make people in hospital with mental health issues meet ‘work coaches’ – who have the power to impose punitive benefit sanctions on them – to ‘help’ them into work.

Labour has already announced policies that it knows will cost thousands of lives and has been exposed failing even to do assessments of the impacts of other policies. Both Starmer and Streeting have accepted large donations from private health companies and investors.