The Center for Public Integrity’s latest attack piece on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels levels a very unfair critique of the governor for his time spent at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly during the 1990s.
Disappointingly thin on its sourcing, the “review” – they’re not confident enough to even call it a report – attempts to connect Daniels to the lawsuits leveled against Eli Lilly during and after his tenure over the marketing of several drugs. It offers nothing in the way of new information, and seems primarily designed to glom on to attention to Daniels’ presidential prospects and media attention to push a story that is simply not a matter of personal responsibility for him.
In leveling such a shoddy political attack, CPI buries the fact that Daniels had no documented involvement with the marketing plans at issue. Quoting only class action attorneys and industry critics, CPI offers no paper trail, no memos, no additional background – and they do nothing to build beyond the very tenuous connection between Daniels and any wrongdoing on Lilly’s part as a corporate entity.
During the 1990s, Lilly was hit by a number of lawsuits for improper marketing of several drugs, most notably Zyprexa, and had legal fights over the patent for Prozac. This is part of the cost of doing business in the pharmaceutical realm: lawsuits are inevitable in navigating the sea of regulatory arrangements and bureaucratic red tape, and all one can do is avoid them as much as possible in trying to bring drugs to market.
The responsible parties within Lilly were clearly those with authority over the marketing of these drugs, who made several questionable decisions. Yet Daniels is not a marketing executive, nor was he hired to work as one of the then 25,000+ employees at Eli Lilly in any capacity where he was making decisions relevant to these lawsuits. In several corporate affairs roles during his time at Lilly, Daniels was tasked with everything from corporate affairs to corporate finance and investment banking.
I’ve been critical of Daniels in the past on numerous topics. But connecting him to Lilly’s marketing practices is just incorrect. Daniels’ role at Lilly was handling numbers and high-level policy. He was never involved in the marketing process for the drugs at issue, nor did he have oversight of U.S. marketing of any drugs.
Daniels has never been questioned, never called as a witness, never mentioned in any litigation, and never challenged in court regarding the troubles Eli Lilly endured. It is simply shoddy hack journalism to suggest otherwise.
Indeed, the only lawsuit the CPI authors point to which mentions Daniels by name was brought by the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology Inc. v. Mitch Daniels, a lawsuit brought against him when he told the USA Today editorial board that “The Church of Scientology is no church. It’s a commercial enterprise.”
They sued Daniels for it. And he won.
Benjamin Domenech ([email protected]) is a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Health Care News.
