Article 10345 of alt.religion.scientology: Path: newsfeed.pitt.edu!godot.cc.duq.edu!news.duke.edu!convex!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gumby!yale!yale!ccsua.ctstateu.edu!wenger_bre From: wenger_bre@ccsua.ctstateu.edu Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: UK Article: "Consider the Lilly" Date: 24 May 94 17:33:16 EST Organization: Info Sys, Central Conn State Univ Lines: 171 Message-ID: <1994May24.173316.1@ccsua.ctstateu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ccsua.ctstateu.edu A friend of mine in the UK just forwarded this to me; thought it would be of interest. - Brian --------------------------< "Consider the Lilly" >---------------------------- (This article appeared in the UK magazine, "New Statesman and Society," 27th November 1992). Consider the Lilly by Alexander Cockburn Eli Lilly and Company, one of America's biggest drug companies, maker of the anti-depressant Prozac (and, earlier, heroin medicine and LSD), gazes mournfully at the departing Bush-Quayle administration, offering us a vivid paradigm of the intersections between government, the press and a powerful corporation. After he left the CiA and before he began to run for the 1980 Republican nomination, Bush worked for Lilly. Later, he dropped the directorship from his resume and failed to disclose his holding of Lilly stock. As vice-president, he continued to lobby on behalf of Lilly, whose first Washington office was set up by Dan Quayle's uncle in 1959. Lilly's headquarters is in Indianapolis, and synergy with Indiana-based Lilly clan was inevitable. The fusion between 'public service' and toil for Lilly has been most egregiously symbolised in the person of Mitch Daniels, who shuttled between the Reagan and Bush White House and Lilly, as vice-president for corporate affairs overseeing government lobbying. In November 1991, Daniels co-chaired a fundraiser that collected US$600,000 for Bush-Quayle, including US$12,500 from Lilly executives. After the 1988 victory, Bush gave Quayle the Council on Competitiveness, charged with taking calls from corporate chieftains and jumping to their commands. Ultimately, the council asked Lilly to review the the government's plan to revamp the Food and Drug Administration's approval procedures. Lilly which had already won exemptions from the Clean Air Act, received its finest gift in the FDA's expedited approval of new drugs. This, in effect, would lengthen the time that a drug company can maintain product exclusivity (17 years from granting of the patent), hence reap more profits, before competitors can bring a generic version on to the market. Lilly is heavily committed to biotech products, with a strategy of buying rights to other companies' drugs, offering R&D capital and marketing clout. Crucial here, as always, is the speed of FDA approval. Bush and Quayle singled out biotech products as needing quicker certification by the FDA. Bush's rabid enthusiasm for biogenetic patenting (most famously evinced in his refusal to sign the Biodiversity treaty in Rio since it was insufficiently attentive to the US corporate agenda) reflects the Lilly agenda. In line with this push toward exclusivity, Bush's FDA began a campaign to ban sales of more than 400 over-the-counter medicines and ingredients, ranging from camomile flowers, iodine and isopropyl alcohol, through a slew of holistic nostrums to aspirin and codeine. Thus, in accord with the essential function of corporate government - the privatisation of more or less everything - every pill, every medicine would either be sold under a brand name or issued by prescription. Finally, the FDA began ceding the testing and approval process to outside scientists. As Ralph Nader's Public Citizens' Congress Watch put it: "Not only do outside reviewers lack the training necessary to conduct thorough safety reviews, but...most non-governmental scientists receive funding from the same drug companies seeking approval for the new products." Here we come to Prozac, a product of immense importance in propping up Lilly's bottom line - placed on the market in 1987, and by 1990 worth US$760 million in sales. In May 1990, Lilly began warning doctors that problems associated with Prozac included 'suicidal ideation' (a muffled way of of saying 'wanting to kill oneself'). Then on 17 July, Rhoda Hala of Long Island sued Lilly for US$150 million, charging that Prozac had impelled her to self-destructive acts. Among the most formidable opponents of Prozac has been the Church of Scientology, whose affiliate, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, was assiduous in collecting evidence of its impact. The Scientologists have long been hostile to 'psychiatric drugs' like Prozac. By the end of July, the Citizens' Commission was urging Congress to take Prozac out of circulation. Between June and August, Lilly's stock dropped by 20 per cent, a US 5.8 billion decrease in overall value. Eight months later, the tables were turned. On 19 April 1991, The Wall Street Journal published a violent front-page attack on the Church of Scientology by Thomas Burton. It conflated the life of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, its theology and its onslaught on Prozac in paragraphs greeted with delight by Eli Lilly and the company's PR firm, Burson Marsteller (among its former clients, the Argentine junta). On 28 April came Time's cover story on the Church of Scientology by Richard Behar, a discursive onslaught depicting the church as a predator on the disturbed and the unknowing, devoid of virtue. The so-called expose was larded with errors, including a mis-statement of the church's income as US$503 million instead of US$4 million. Lilly bought 250,000 extra copies of this edition of Time and distributed them to doctors across the country. In May, Lilly offered doctors indemnity against lawsuits if they would continue to prescribe Prozac. Meanwhile, the Lilly White House was doing its bit. In its new policy of letting the fox into the barnyard, the FDA had mustered an advisory committee to study Prozac; five of its eight members had serious conflicts of interest, including substantial financial backing from Lilly. The 20 September hearing on Prozac was favourable to Lilly. The Church of Scientology did not get too much sympathy for the press assaults against it. The Church is reckoned to be a 'cult', and, in most journalism, cults - as opposed to 'religions' - are fair game. By contrast, Bush, Quayle and many officers of Eli Lilly and indeed of the Dow Jones Company, which publishes the [Wall Street] Journal, are adherents of the Christ cult, about which journalists are uniformly deferential. The Church of Scientology has made many cogent points about the campaign mounted by Lilly and its publicists to defend Prozac. There is the matter of tie-ins, translating into the many tentacles of the Lilly cult. Mitch Daniels worked for Lilly, Reagan and Bush. Richard Wood, who is Lilly's chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer, serves on the board of Dow Jones. We also have the two Nicholas brothers, one of whom - Nicholas J. - was, until this year, chief executive officer of Time warner, and the other - Peter M. - a senior executive at Eli Lilly, married to Ruth Virginia Lilly. Then there is the matter of the PR firms. In the wake of the Time attack, Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies forced the PR firm of Hill and Knowlton to drop its valuable Church of Scientology account, believing (erroneously) that Hill and Knowlton was responsible for the Church's effective anti-Prozac campaign. Hill and Knowlton is a subsidiary of the London-based WPP Group, run by Martin Sorrell. In their vigorous and amusing counter-attack on Time, run in paid space in USA Today, the Scientologists pointed out that WPP faced a financial abyss. Shortly after WPP acquired J. Walter Thompson, the latter lost the Burger King, Goodyear and Los Angeles Times accounts. Lilly is a JWT client. After months of menacing talk - detailed in the National Enquirer - about cancelling its account, Lilly received Sorrell in Indianapolis. He assured them that Hill and Knowlton would drop the Church of Scientology. There are other tie-ins. Behar's article in hand, Time went prize grubbing. Such prizes enhance corporate status and also help credibility when alibel suit is in the offing (the Church finally sued Time in the spring of this year). On 2 May 1992, Behar got a Conscience in Media Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. That same month, Behar picked up the US$10,000 Worth Bingham prize, given for 'public interest' journalism. Also in May, Behar received a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, worth US$1000. The chairman of the Gerald Loeb Foundation is J> Clayburn LaForce, who is a director of Eli Lilly. Behar himself has friendly ties with a Scientology foe, the Cult Awareness Network, a bunch of brainwashers and kidnappers whose conference thsi year had on its honorary committee none other than the Loeb Foundation chairman and Lilly dorector, J. Clayburn Laforce. I hope the Church of Scientology takes Time to the cleaners. Right now, Bush is probably shovelling Prozac down his throat along with the regular Halcion dosage. He'd better watch out for 'suicidal ideation'. --------------------------------< END >------------------------------------- ------------ Brian Wenger (wengerb@ccsua.ctstateu.edu) Scientologist since 1981 Asst. Dir. Info. Systems Central Connecticut State University New Britain, CT 06050 ------------------------------------- The opinions expressed above are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.