BioSocieties - Shadow science: Zyprexa, Eli Lilly and the globalization of pharmaceutical damage control

Kalman Applbaum^a

^aDepartment of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, PO 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA

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Abstract

In 2002, following reports of adverse side effects experienced by Japanese patients taking the antipsychotic medication, Zyprexa, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare required Eli Lilly & Co. to place a new warning label on its drug and to send out a ‘doctors letter’. The company feared that this would threaten its sales of Zyprexa not just in Japan, but globally. US court documents from suits against Lilly in 2006 show how Lilly focused their scientific and sales attention not on the reported side effects of their drug, but on how prescribing physicians perceived the side effect profile of the drug. The company actively pursued a strategy of creating a shadow science to drown out noncompany-sponsored (and competitors’) research reports on the side effects of the drug. I draw on ethnographic research in Japan to describe how Lilly dealt with the threat to the brand equity of Zyprexa there, and how they sought to keep their global marketing program for the drug on course. I conclude with a discussion of the encounter between the global marketing aspiration of the firm and the contingencies associated with the Japanese environment in particular.

Keywords:

pharmaceuticals; marketing; Japan; antipsychotics; globalization; regulation

via palgrave-journals.com

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