Tag Archives: Zyprexa

Boom in Suicides—Government Addresses Suicides Without Looking at Suicide-Linked Drugs

It would be laughable if it weren’t tragic. This week Surgeon General Regina Benjamin introduced a plan to stem the nation’s growing suicide rate without addressing the nation’s growing use of suicide-linked drugs.

Antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil, antipsychotics like Seroquel and Zyprexa and anti-seizure drugs like Lyrica and Neurontin are all linked to suicide in published reports and in FDA warnings. (Almost 5,000 newspaper reports link antidepressants to suicide, homicide and bizarre behavior.) Asthma drugs like Singulair, antismoking drugs like Chantix, acne drugs like Accutane and the still-in-use malaria drug Lariam, are also linked to suicide.

Time Magazine: Why Are So Many Foster Care Children Taking Antipsychotics?

All of the major manufacturers of these drugs have been fined by the Food and Drug Administration for illegal marketing practices — in part, for marketing the drugs for unapproved use in children — with some convicted of criminal charges.

Eli Lilly, which manufactures the atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa, paid out $1.42 billion in 2009 — $615 million of that to settle criminal charges. The charges against Lilly involved selling Zyprexa to doctors for use in children, despite the fact that it was not approved for this age group.

Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care

Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.

The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.

FDA Needs to Ban Antipsychotic Drug Use on Kids

While the FDA and its Pediatric advisory panel sit around pondering if one antipsychotic drug is more likely to cause diabetes in children than another while continuing their stall tactic of “let’s study it some more ” routine, we’d like to point out the simple solution: Considering that antipsychotic drugs are already documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause not only diabetes but obesity, psychosis, blood clots, heart problems, cardiac events, seizures, toxicity, confusion, coma and stroke (and that’s just in kids) as well as brain atrophy (meaning they actually shrink brains); considering there is no medical test to prove any child has a brain malfunction, chemical imbalance or any physical condition requiring the administration of these lethal drugs—and considering these drugs are literally killing kids that have nothing medically wrong with them in the first place— Do the job you are paid by U.S. taxpayers to do and BAN their use on children. Period.

Doctors rarely face consequences for drug kickbacks

Two years ago, drugmaker Eli Lilly pleaded guilty to illegally marketing its blockbuster antipsychotic Zyprexa for elderly patients. Lilly paid $1.4 billion in criminal penalties and settlements in four civil lawsuits. But a doctor named as a co-defendant in one suit – for allegedly taking kickbacks to prescribe the drug extensively at nursing homes – never was pursued.