Justinian: Your two examples, Vioxx and Zyprexa remain unsettled scientific controversies. The court is not competent to resolve unsettled scientific controversies by wind bag rhetoric and fairy tale spinning. Only additional validated data can resolve a scientific controversy. Any attempt to make these product makers pay is quackery, fraud and robbery at the point of a gun.

For example, in the case of Zyprexa, no study has discounted any excess diabetes risk by the elevated risk of diabetes seen in mental patients in the 1920's. Once that correction is achieved, one must correct for the mass, world wide epidemic of diabetes, including in millions of Chinese off Zyprexa.

If someone is taken off Zyprexa out of fear of litigation, and commits suicide due to the return of mental symptoms, I would support a cross claim against the AG, the Zyprexa plaintiffs, the judges, all the bogus, thievin' lawyers, as individuals. The promulgation of fraud is outside their official duty, and should not carry any immunity. I would cross claim the lying diabetes plaintiffs themselves. I would cross claim against the estate of that 16 year old girl who died after going into a diabetic coma two weeks after starting Zyprexa. I want that money back. I would demand the return of every penny of the settlement Lilly has set aside.

In the case of Vioxx, the research subjects were taken off aspirin. Aspirin is known to prevent heart attacks. The tiny increase in heart events, on vioxx, and no deaths, in the studies is attributable to being off aspirin. Once statistical corrections from 11th grade statistics are applied, the difference in the proportions loses statistical significance. The lower than doubling of the small rate fails to meet the preponderance of the evidence burden of proof, and all Vioxx plaintiff verdicts are lawless.

The courts are enforcing quackery at the point of a gun, and must pay to the last shirt of the last uniform of the fire department of the government entity. I would like to see a government entity bankrupted for its quackery and thievery. To deter. Let the citizens of the judicial hellholes put out fires using buckets, when their fire engines have been sold to Mexico, to satisfy the verdict.

Beyond the incompetence of the court to settle a scientific controversy, is the Supremacy Clause. In 1865, 600,000 people died to establish its validity. I have no problem with the Federal government clasping the AG's in chains and putting them on trial for insurrection. Shoot them if found guilty.

I don't appreciate your one sided presentations. They take away from your credibility and reputation for integrity. Trial magazine has never permitted objective, non-partisan coverage of the law. If you keep publishing there, you seal your credibility fate.

Eli Lilly makes billions on diabetes treatment and also gets $4.2 billion a year in sales of their biggest cash cow Zyprexa which has been scandalized as *causing* diabetes as a major side effect.

Not fair!

Zyprexa off label promotion scandal is all over the news now.
Lilly drug reps are alleged to have called their marketing ploy,"Viva zyprexa".

Eli Lilly zyprexa cost me over $250.00 a month supply out of my own pocket X 4 years and has up to ten times the risk (over non users) of causing diabetes and severe weight gain.

Zyprexa which is only FDA approved for schizophrenia (.5-1% of pop) and some bipolar (2% pop) and then an even smaller percentage of theses two groups.
So how does Zyprexa get to be the 7th largest drug sale in the world?
Eli Lilly is in deep trouble for using their drug reps to 'encourage' doctors to write zyprexa for non-FDA approved 'off label' uses.

The drug causes increased diabetes risk,and medicare picks up all the expensive fallout.There are now 7 states (and counting) going after Lilly for fraud and restitution.


In 2004, the American Diabetes Association found that Zyprexa was more likely to cause diabetes than many other antipsychotic drugs.

A big hurdle with the Zyprexa issue is Lilly's credibility over their continuous PR on how they are going to pay out $1.2 billion in damages.As long as they keep up this rhetoric and don't actually pay the issue won't go away.

They need to think about 'putting their money where their mouth is'.

Daniel Haszard Bangor Maine www.zyprexa-victims.com

Supremacy: You may be right that the courts aren't qualified to determine whether Vioxx is safe. But obviously Merck and the FDA aren't, either.

Also, I suspect you know you're committing a post hoc fallacy when you suggest suing if a person commits suicide after being taken off Zyprexa.

I do have a question for you. If it was proven completely to YOUR satisfaction that Zyprexa is in fact defective and does in fact cause diabetes and other illnesses, what compensation would you give to the victims?

Daniel: Only half the prescriptions in the country are for FDA approved indications. If a doctor fails to prescribe off label, he is missing half the benefits to patients that his peers provide. He is quite deviant, and outside the standard of due care.

For example, the blood thinning effects of aspirin are considered a side effect in the headache patient. To the cardiologist, blood thinning is a useful, main use of aspirin.

Doctors are most driven by patient results. When you see sales figures, those can only come from patients' endorsing the medicine to the doctor by marked improvement. Not small improvement, big improvement.

To suggest otherwise is an untrue insult to the patient. It implies patients can be fooled into taking dangerous medicines without a big benefit.

I don't call myself a lawyer victim, as we all can, including 99% of lawyers not in the hierarchy of their cult. That would be whiny and annoying.

Justinian: Merck and the FDA were motivated by the fear of litigation. It blinded them to simple clinical confounding factors. The lawyers made them stupid from fear.

Once a black box warning is issued, liability moves to the clinician. That is the sole aim of these irresponsible black box warnings. The FDA gets its budget from drug companies, and pursues their interests above all others'. So the over-reaction of Merck is the fault of the lawyers, and simultaneously caused the lawyers to come after Merck. A serious error in judgment by the President of Merck.

In the case of Vioxx, the reaction was deemed so excessive that a review committee of the FDA, puppets of the drug industry, recommended its return to market. A brief discussion of the potential for increased risk, erased by the maintenance of low dose aspirin (by thirty percent, compared to a 4% chance increase of a heart event on Vioxx).

The Vioxx removal from the market may not be just an error in judgment. I would also like to know if the decision was a total phony and were willing to fight a few lawsuits for much greater profit. Merck was coming out with an improved product, and Vioxx was going generic. If that motivation can be proven, long prison sentences for those responsible. They disrupted the care of millions of Vioxx users, some responding to nothing else. How much does unrelieved pain increase heart attacks?

If a doctor gets sued, he should never suffer alone, and should cast a wide net in counter and cross claims. It comes from a need for company. I oppose lawsuits for suicide, as unjust. I was just trying to make a point about cross claims and interference with the contract between patient and doctor.

If someone were to be injured by a product, and being made whole is the aim? Medicaid. Period. The rest is lawyer stealing.

"When you see sales figures, those can only come from patients' endorsing the medicine to the doctor by marked improvement. Not small improvement, big improvement.

To suggest otherwise is an untrue insult to the patient. It implies patients can be fooled into taking dangerous medicines without a big benefit."

If Daniel won't, I will make such an insult: There are plenty of patients who take medicine and see little or no improvement in their condition. Many warning labels on medication even state that results will be gradual and may not be immediately recognizable, if at all.

Many patients, myself included, trust our doctors to recommend the best medicine for our illness(es). The sad reality is that I may not get the best medicine for me, but merely the medicine which comes from the pharmaceutical with the best spiffs for doctors. Too bad medicine has to be a for-profit enterprise.

Justinian: Reality is the opposite. Once people feel better, they stop their medication. This is true even of doctors who know a full 10 day course of their antibiotic will prevent internal organ damage from strep throat. They feel better after 5 days, they stop.

Half the time, patients stop even if they get worse, to an extreme. For example, 40% of transplant rejection stem from non-compliance with immunosuppressants, leading to horrendous or fatal consequences. People will repeatedly test the necessity of meds by stopping them, having horrible symptoms recur, and testing it again, once memory of the consequences has faded.

Generics also are inferior to brand names, with worsening of symptoms, or even drug withdrawal symptoms happening to patients who swear they have been taking them, including, my long suffering, sainted mother.

If you see no improvement from your meds, you must tell the doc. If he has run out of ideas, he should send you to a specialist. Luckily, you live in the US. The word, "specialist," would draw guffaws of laughter in the left wing paradises of Europe and Canada, that the left admires and wants to bring here.