Zyprexa Causes Severe Diabetes and Lilly Lied to Hide it! trained sales staff to mislead doctors

[Guest guest]

Lilly Knew Zyprexa Causes Severe Diabetes and Lied to Hide it!

http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

In case you still are under the delusion that you can trust some drug companies to put patient health and safety ahead of profits, read this: Lilly under Scrutiny on Capitol Hill From the article: ===QUOTE====According to Mr Gottstein in a February 13, 2007, interview with the Anchorage Daily News, Lilly's hidden document showed the rate at which Zyprexa causes diabetes, massive weight gain and other metabolic problems and that Lilly trained sales staff to mislead doctors about the drug's association with diabetes and illegally promoted Zyprexa for off-label use with children and the elderly. [Emphasis mine]Families of deceased Zyprexa victims want criminal prosecutions. "Lilly executives should go to prison for knowingly being responsible for people's deaths, shattered families; ruined and grieving families," says Ellen Liversridge, whose 39-year-old son gained nearly 100 pounds while taking Zyprexa before he lapsed into a coma and died 4 days later of profound hyperglycemia in October 2002."Thanks to the FDA," she says, "there was no warning on the label of Zyprexa even though two other countries had made Lilly place warnings about diabetes, hyperglycemia, and death."For its part, the secret documents show that Lilly was not the least bit concerned that patients like Ellen's son were developing diabetes. The company's one and only worry was that sales would fall when the news about Zyprexa's link to diabetes became made public. A July 7, 2003, "Diabetes Update" memo discussed the company's strategy to counter the negative impact on doctor's prescribing habits when news of the FDA's decision to add a black box warning about the diabetes risk to the label of Zyprexa became public."We must embrace the fact that many physicians are curtailing their use of Zyprexa (particularly in the moderately-ill patient and in the maintenance phase)," the Update said, "solely on the basis of personal fear (of being sued)."To ward off the drop in Zyprexa prescriptions because doctors were afraid of being sued, the Update said Lilly should offer to indemnify doctors, in other words, cover any lawsuits filed against doctors as a result of prescribing Zyprexa. "Indemnification represents the most meaningful demonstration of confidence in Zyprexa--both with our customers and with our employees," the Update stated.This plan was apparently successful with doctors after the risks of Prozac became public when documents disclosed in litigation that were also kept hidden under a court order were revealed in a subsequent lawsuit. "Our experience with Prozac," the Lilly memo states, "confirms the impact and goodwill of such an initiative."===== END OF QUOTE======What a great drug for Lilly! It costs more than $300 a month AND it grows the market for Lilly's expensive insulins by creating many thousands of new, permanent, diabetics. Gotta love it. And if a bunch of people have to die to increase profits, well, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.Personally, I'd like to see the executives of these companies, the ones that knew that their drugs caused unnecessary deaths when prescribed off-label, and then put all their efforts into increasing off-label prescribing, hauled up on murder charges.This is murder. The victims are as dead as if drug company goons had opened fire on them with a Glock. And there are thousands of these victims, far more than died at VTech. So why do the people who do this get away with only a wrist slap? I'll finish with one last quote from the article linked above: ====QUOTE====In the case of Zyprexa, Lilly has so far agreed to pay about $1.2 billion to settle cases out of court with roughly 28,000 victims. But here again, $1.2 billion for claims spanning a 10-year period amounts to petty cash for a drug with sales of $4.36 billion in 2006, and a 10% increase to $1.108 billion reported in the first quarter of 2007, over the first quarter of 2006.===END OF QUOTE=====KILLING PEOPLE SURE IS PROFITABLE!!!!!!

 

Labels: Lilly Zyprexa diabetes murder

posted by Jenny at 5:46 AM 3 comments links to this post

Friday, April 27, 2007

 

Digestive Tract Miseries with Regular Metformin

 

 

It's not worth it. Even though I was seeing a bit better blood sugar control at meal times while taking the regular metformin three times a day, the digestive effects were too much for me and though they got slightly better with time, they didn't get better enough.So I'm back to using the ER (Extended Release) taking all 1500 mg at one time at 10:30 in the morning so that I get best coverage during Lunch and an early Dinner. If you're having problems with diarrhea, nausea, etc, on regular Metformin, be sure to talk to your doctor about switching the the ER form. They cost the same amount. The Metformin ER is also available at Wal-Mart as a $4 prescription.

 

posted by Jenny at 6:58 AM 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, April 26, 2007

 

Byetta, Januvia and Insulin

 

 

Since I posted my blog entries on Januvia, and the associated page on my site, "What They Don't Tell You About Diabetes" I've received a lot of email from people who would prefer to take Januvia rather than Byetta and want to know my opinion about which is best.My suspicion is that if you have found that you respond strongly to a relatively low dose of a sulfonylurea drug such as Amaryl or glipizide (the sulfonylurea drug found in Glucovance) you may respond strongly to Byetta and possibly Januvia, though everything I'm hearing suggests that far fewer people respond to Januvia than Byetta. If you have no response to these drugs, it may indicate that you've gone past the point where stimulating your beta cells with any drug is going to produce insulin because you no longer have enough functioning beta cells left to respond to beta cell stimulation. Januvia, if its safety concerns are addressed, may turn out to be the drug of choice for people with prediabetes or forms of diabetes in which fasting blood sugar is still fairly well controlled and loss of post-meal blood sugar control is the main problem. However, what disturbs me is that I hear from far too many people who are walking around with dangerously high blood sugars who inquire about Januvia because they hope they can add another pill to their regimen in order to avoid going on insulin. This is a tragically misguided approach.Insulin always works. For everyone. These newer drugs work only for some people and many times they do not lower blood sugars anywhere near a healthy level. I am disturbed by the number of doctors who, based on postings on the Byetta blog, are putting patients on Byetta who have blood sugars well over 250 mg/dl after meals. This is a level known to cause blindness, kidney failure, amputation and heart attack death. Most of the time, after taking Byetta for several months, these patients still do not have blood sugars that are anywhere near the complication-avoiding level of under 140 mg/dl at 2 hours which is recommended by the endocrinologists who make up the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. In the old days, doctors defended not putting their patients on insulin saying the patients wouldn't take shots. Well, taking Byetta involves taking two shots a day and unlike insulin, Byetta shots can sting and often puff up into insect-like weals. Two shots a day of insulin, properly dosed could bring the blood sugar of these people down to a safe level. Byetta, which costs more than twice as much, does not. So if you are already on a lot of oral medication and are still going over 250 mg/dl after meals, you probably should start out with insulin, get your blood sugars down to a safer, more manageable level to save whatever functioning beta cells you still have left, and then see if Byetta or Januvia can improve matters for you. Neither of these drugs will help if your beta cells are dead, and the research we cite on our Organ Damage page makes it clear that prolonged exposure to blood sugars over 150 mg/dl kills beta cells dead. Only insulin, dosed properly, is 100% guaranteed to lower blood sugar.Even scarier are the patients who report they are on insulin but are still getting extremely high blood sugars especially after meals. Clearly they are on a "one size fits all" insulin regimen that does not take into account their carbohydrate intake or their personal level of insulin resistance. These regimens (many involving 70/30 insulin mixes) should be totally discredited by now, because they don't give good enough blood sugar control, but they are still used by many family doctors who were trained a decade ago or longer and are not well educated in how to use modern insulin. Some of these people,too, are on Basal insulin alone when they need meal-time insulin to control their dangerously high post-meal blood sugar spikes. If you are on insulin and still getting very high blood sugars, you need to do two things. One is to read "Jennifer's Advice to Newbies" and try out Jennifer's advice for a month. If that doesn't help, you must find a doctor who will work with you to find an insulin regimen that does control your blood sugar. When you've got your blood sugars under pretty good control, then you can start fooling around with new and experimental drugs. But the time to do that is when you aren't going into the over 200 mg/dl red zone after every meal!

 

Labels: Januvia Byetta insulin diabetes

posted by Jenny at 6:17 AM 0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

 

Pet Food Poisons and Your Vitamins

 

 

In case you need more things to worry about, take a look at this article from the Washington Post: It's Not Just Pet FoodHere's what stuck out to me, "Currently, most of the world's vitamins are manufactured in China. Unable to compete, the last U.S. plant making vitamin C closed a year ago. One of Europe's largest citric acid plants shut last winter, and only one vitamin C manufacturer operates in the West."The rest of the article explains that there is no oversight of the food ingredients and vitamins coming into this country from China at the level where you'd detect poisons like lead, pesticides, and other toxic chemicals. We know that these are a huge issue with Chinese products destined for human consumption because there's a long history of Chinese people being poisoned by the products of the same manufacturers who are now selling their products to the rest of the world.The Chinese have been pursuing what has turned out to be a very successful strategy whose goal--almost attained--has been to shut down competing factories all over the world by offering products at extremely low prices that factories elsewhere can't match. This is made possible by the Chinese government's manipulating the value of their country's currency so that the $.30 an hour they pay a worker has a buying power, in China many times that of $.30 in the U.S. or for that matter any other developed nation.When there are no more factories left, of course, the Chinese manufacturers will be able to raise their prices, because it will take decades for other countries to rebuild their manufacturing infrastructures. And you don't even want to think about the military implications of the fact that the U.S. has lost most of its machine shops, steel mills, hard goods factories, etc. and that most "American" manufacturers are getting their "American" products manufactured in cheap Chinese factories because our laws (thanks to Republican friends of big business) allow a company to slap a "Made in America" label on imported item as long as one or two steps in the manufacturing process are done in the U.S..But to get back to Diabetes. We all know what happened with the poisoned pet food. But that problem came to light because kidney failure in younger pets is not common, so when veterinarians started seeing a lot of kidney failure in younger pets, they raised the alarm. The problem is that doctors expect to see kidney failure in people with diabetes of all ages. People with diabetes take a lot of vitamins and supplements--far more than the usual patient--but because of this expectation, if there was a toxic chemical in their pills--which is very likely and which, has, in fact, already occurred with some supplements made in China--doctors would be very slow to pick up on it.It only took a handful of pet deaths to turn up toxic pet food. How many deaths of humans will it take until we notice the toxins caused by cheap Chinese-imported food and vitamin ingredients in human food? And how many of them are already occurring and being attributed to "diabetes" and "obesity"? I've stopped taking vitamin supplements My original motivation was the large research study that showed that ingesting chemical antioxidants seemed to increase, rather than decrease mortality. With the latest news in view, one has to ask whether this may have had something to do with undetected toxins in the antioxidants used in the study, which probably came from China, given that as the article above states, they have driven all other countries out of the vitamin business. I suggest you take a long hard look at the handfuls of supplements you're chugging, too, since they, too, probably come from China, and may have been processed with water laced with lead and industrial waste, to say nothing of doctored with ingredients not listed on the label, some of which are dangerous (but very cheap) prescription drugs. I am also cutting way back on processed foods that might contain the questionable imported food additives. I already avoid hydrolyzed vegetable protein (MSG/soy product) because of its known unhealthy effect on appetite, but I'm adding gluten, guar gum, and a few other ingredients which were cited in the article above to my list of things to avoid. I don't eat a lot of processed food as it is, but it looks like I'm going to be eating a whole lot less. Even so, it isn't possible to avoid everything dangerous. The irony with the pet food poisoning was that the supposedly "organic" pet foods turned out to be more toxic to pets than the cheap stuff I buy my kitty at Stop & Shop. That should be a warning to those of you who think that paying top dollar at Whole Foods protects you. A scan of the ingredients of most boxed and bottled "health food" products reveals that, besides the truckloads of sugar and starch that make them far from "healthy" for people with diabetes, they also contain lots of possibly imported ingredients like guar gum and gluten. As long as food manufacturers can buy an ingredient from China for one tenth of what it costs elsewhere, that isn't going to change.

 

Labels: pet poisoning vitamins

posted by Jenny at 5:36 AM 0 comments links to this post

Friday, April 20, 2007

 

More Thoughts on Januvia

 

 

I posted some more information about Januvia in a comment on my original post questioning some possible side effects. Here's the link. Scroll down to the bottom of the comments see the new information:Januvia Side Effects Post

 

Labels: Januvia side effects Merck sitagliptin diabetes

posted by Jenny at 3:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

Thursday, April 19, 2007

 

Best Timing for Regular Metformin

 

 

I've been fooling around with using regular metformin the past two weeks instead of the metformin ER I usually take. I've found that the trick to making it work is to time it properly. If I take it 2 hours before eating, I see the strongest blood sugar control after meals.If you take regular metformin WITH meals, it won't get active until long after your food hits the system, which means your blood sugars will be higher than they need to be.Once I got the timing straightened out, it seems to me that the identical dose of regular metformin gives me slightly better control than the ER version did.But itis very hard to remember to take 3 different pills 2 hours before meals. (I usually eat breakfast a couple hours after I wake up.) So it is a trade off. The ER is convenient. I can take it all at once. But the 3 regulars give me better control at 2 out of three meals.The regular is also tougher on the digestive tract. After 2 weeks of using it my body seems to have just about adapted, but the first week when I switched, even though I'd been taking 1500 mg of Metformin ER for years, it was Newbie City all over again, and it was a good idea to be near a bathroom at all times.

 

Labels: metformin diabetes

posted by Jenny at 4:24 PM 2 comments links to this post

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

 

ADA Finally Recommends OGTT Testing -- 9 Years After They Told Doctors To Stop It

 

 

Today Diabetes in Control announced that the ADA has published a "Consensus Statement" recommending the use of the Glucose Tolerance Test in people at risk for impaired glucose tolerance!http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/results.php?storyarticle=4719The background to this story, discussed at length and documented at:http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/14046782.php is that in 1998 when the ADA's experts took another look at the diagnostic criteria that ensure that half of all people diagnosed with diabetes in the U.S. already have neuropathy and other complications at the time of diagnosis, they announced it wasn't cost effective to use the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test to diagnose people with Type 2 diabetes and told doctors to diagnose diabetes using only the Fasting Plasma Glucose test.Researchers quickly documented that this test missed diabetes in significant numbers of women and people of color. That is because they tend to develop diabetes in a pattern where the post-prandial blood sugar becomes extremely high long before the fasting blood sugar deteriorates. These high blood sugars cause glucose toxicity that kills beta cells and it also causes neuropathy--long before the ADA's fasting test will flag diabetes.Despite the evidence that the fasting test was inadequate the ADA refused to change its recommendation to use only the fasting test for diagnosis, despite heavy criticism and the refusal of WHO to go along with this recommendation.Now, finally, only nine years since the ADA's revamp of their diagnostic criteria which urged doctors to eliminate this test, they've changed their mind and are now telling doctors to use the oral glucose tolerance test for people at risk of diabetes.The reason for this--I can't call it "sudden"--change of mind, appears to be that the ADA's experts now have decided that people with Impaired Glucose Tolerance should start taking Metformin since there is a lot of evidence that this drug can slow the progression of to diabetes. This evidence, however, is quite old. It is discussed on our Oral Drugs page.There is, in fact, a lot more evidence that if people with Impaired Glucose Tolerance cut way back on their carbohydrate intake, they can normalize their blood sugar while they still have some beta cells left and many not need any drugs. But you won't hear that from the ADA, funded as it is by big junk food, food service and Big Pharma companies.As usual, Dr. Meyer B. Davidson is railing against this suggestion that people be given OGTTs before they have developed neuropathy and early kidney damage because this testing is expensive. (Neuropathy is a lot more expensive, especially when it progresses to impotence or amputation). Dr. Davidson, who was a part of the ADA's 1978 expert committee as well as the more recent ones, has always volubly opposed any suggestion that people with Type 2 diabetes get a timely diagnosis. He has published many opinion pieces in the medical press arguing against early diagnosis and he also opposes the use of meters by people with Type 2 diabetes to test their blood sugar at home. He has probably done more to keep people with diabetes from getting diagnosed and treated than anyone else alive. One can only hope that he will retire soon.My guess is that the other reason that the ADA battleship is starting to turn around on the issue of timely diagnosis is that people with IGT are a huge untapped market for the drug companies. They are a particularly juicy market for their new, and extremely expensive incretin drugs. So far, at least according to my endocrinologist, it is looking like the oral incretin drugs work much better in people with IGT than those with Type 2 diabetes. That is partly because by the time you are diagnosed using the ADA's fasting glucose test and their too-high diagnostic criteria so many of your beta cells are dead that you can drown your pancreas in GLP-1 and not much will happen. So early diagnosis means more profits for the drug companies.Given how dependent the ADA is on Big Pharma money, if their paymasters want an earlier diagnosis, they'll get it.This is good news for people with diabetes. I've been calling for it for 4 years online, and Europeans have been using the OGTT for the last decade. With the ADA's blessing insurers will be more likely to pay for the OGGT, too.The bad news is that once patients get diagnosed with abnormal blood sugars, the ADA will continue to tell them that all they need to get better is to eat sugary fruits, "healthy" grains and chug those $5.65 pills each day that will counter the carbs their "healthy" diet unleashes on the blood stream. That will keep their Big Pharma donors happy.If you are diagnosed with prediabetes or impaired glucose tolerance after a glucose tolerance test, before you start popping pills, be sure to visit Jennifer's Advice to Newbies--The Best Diabetes Page on the Web.

 

Labels: ADA diagnostic criteria diabetes

posted by Jenny at 2:41 PM 4 comments links to this post

 

 

 

About Me

 

 

Name: Jenny

I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1998 after years of problems probably caused by undetected high blood sugars. I ended up having to do a lot of research just to figure out how to stay healthy since doctors seemed to be pretty clueless. Years of participation on the newsgroups taught me that my experience is typical. I use this blog to comment on the passing parade of diabetes news and to share what I learn in the spirit of "My body, my science experiment." My main web site, What They Don't Tell You About Diabetes is where you'll find the data that backs up many of the statements you read here. If you really want to understand diabetes, stop by the site sometime when you've got time and check it out!

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Lilly Knew Zyprexa Causes Severe Diabetes and Lied...

Digestive Tract Miseries with Regular Metformin

Byetta, Januvia and Insulin

Pet Food Poisons and Your Vitamins

More Thoughts on Januvia

Best Timing for Regular Metformin

ADA Finally Recommends OGTT Testing -- 9 Years Aft...

Merck: We'll Continue to Profit from Killing Custo...

A Trial of Regular Metformin

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