Will the Antipsychotic Coverup Continue?

At this point, there are a slew of lawsuits facing manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics, from individual suits ranging to suits brought by state governments. Allegations of fraudulent marketing, kickbacks, and hiding research results are among the claims made in such suits. For example, Arkansas recently filed a lawsuit. Read it here and read my take here.

The most important thing that could come from these suits in the long run is not the money that various drug companies may have to shell out in fines. No, the important piece is the information, the internal documents that I am nearly certain document numerous instances demonstrating bad science, covering up negative data, and detailing ludicrous marketing campaigns. Check out the documents on Zyprexa over at Furious Seasons and you'll get a taste for what I mean. I've written about them on a few occasions (1, 2, 3) as have others, with one monster post from Furious Seasons serving as an excellent example. If such documents from all companies who have engaged in such ethically dubious practices were to become public information, the PR hit would be enormous. Hell, the media may even wake up and run numerous stories on this issue. Imagine: 60 Minutes, Panorama, NPR, Frontline, Now, and other news programs hitting this one hard on multiple occasions. And the complicity of academic psychiatry makes the story yet more fascinating.

As I mentioned recently:

Without academics pimping these treatments well beyond what was scientifically justifiable, these medications would never have achieved such huge success, but now this rather dangerous group of medicines is used for virtually every psychiatric disorder under the sun. These uses include "bipolar disorder" in infants, ADHD, and dementia. Let's put the most vulnerable individuals on the riskiest treatments despite no clear evidence that they work particularly well. There is indeed some evidence for the efficacy of these medications in the short-term treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and in a small number of trials, even some long-term evidence of efficacy. But their indiscriminant use across the board for virtually every condition brings great shame upon psychiatry as a profession, on Big Pharma for its slick marketing strategies (1, 2), and most especially upon academic psychiatry for its morally bankrupt role as a group of salespeople who have misrepresented scientific findings to help promote drugs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

But such hopes may well be fleeting. The various offending companies may just decide to settle these cases, which nearly always means that they get to keep their dirty laundry private. Here is a sad possibility mentioned by Furious Seasons:

Risperdal goes off patent in about one month--except for some extra and short-lived pediatric indications--so I'm not sure that Janssen/J&J has a huge incentive to fight Arkansas and the other states that are suing it in order to protect what is soon to be a generic product. It's likely much cheaper for the companies to settle the case (liability insurance will cover much of the cost), write an agreement in which they admit no fault and manage to deep six any documents and other evidence of bad behavior, and move onto Invega.

Zyprexa goes off-patent in 2011 and Seroquel is off-patent the same year as well (not sure about patents on Seroquel XR), so one wonders how much incentive those companies have to fight the state suits, or whether they will just settle the cases and move onto whatever is next for them.

Maybe I am a bit too cynical, but it wouldn't shock me if that's how things played out. After all, Lilly has already settled about $1.3 billion in lawsuits over Zyprexa. Why stop now?

Unfortunately, his prognostication is likely correct. Of course, if some insider at AstraZeneca, Janssen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, or Lilly (or Pfizer --though it seems Geodon has not received much legal attention) decides to leak aforementioned documents, then we're on to something. Consider this an open call to the insiders at said companies. Email me or Peter Rost or Philip Dawdy or Ed Silverman or Jack Friday (Pharmagossip). We're all currently accepting insider documents regarding such matters...