Pharmalot has a very interesting post regarding how Lilly disseminates cash to various organizations. The largest recent recipient was Massachusetts General Hospital, which by sheer coincidence (?), is where Mauricio Tohen, the lead scientist on the Zyprexa team happens to hang his hat (See update below!). In the first quarter of this year, Lilly doled out over a half million dollars to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. This should come as no surprise, given that a few years ago, the head of NAMI was a Lilly executive "on loan" from Lilly. So it comes as no surprise that NAMI often finds itself issuing talking points that coincide nicely with Lilly's goals, such as lobbying against restricting Zyprexa usage. Much more over at Pharmalot and the Wall Street Journal (registration required).
UPDATE: I made an error. I thought that Dr. Tohen held an academic appointment at Mass General -- I was mistaken -- he holds no such appointment. I sincerely apologize for the mistake. Mea culpa. Rather than delete the offending text and leave the impression I am trying to cover my mistake, I will leave it above so that my error can be recognized publicly.
How graceful for Eli Lilly, just subpoenaed over the Zyprexa documents and facing a Democrat House and President, to put the documents into the public domain before the sub poenas start rolling in.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the fine people at NAMI even massaged the Lilly exec's message.