When I visit my friend Ruth in her nursing home, I have to walk down a long corridor to get to her room. Along one wall of the long corridor sits a large aquarium. In front of the large aquarium, wheelchairs are lined up every day, eight or nine in a row facing the fish, their occupants slumped in semi-conscious stupor, rheumy eyes half-closed or glazed, with none of them paying any attention to the fish. It is distressing to me, this row of seniors. It reminds me that every one of them was once young and healthy.

They had families and careers and a social life.  And now here they are, lined up in front of an aquarium they do not see.

It also reminds me that this fate in front of the fish may well await me  – and you – one day, too, especially if drug companies like Eli Lilly or Johnson & Johnson have their way dispensing their anti-psychotic crowd control drugs to the frail elderly.

But these anti-psychotic drugs can raise the risk of death in dementia cases and are not approved to treat this, although that hasn’t stopped J&J from offering kickbacks in exchange for pushing its anti-psychotic, Risperdal.

According to a government news release, J&J paid kickbacks to a big nursing home pharmacy company, Omnicare, to get the company to prescribe more of its drugs, including Risperdal. And this is not the first time. Last year, Omnicare paid $98 million to settle allegations that it had solicited and received kickbacks from J&J in exchange for recommending Risperdal.  Some people just don’t get it.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in the news release:

“Kickbacks in the nursing home pharmacy context are particularly nefarious because they can result in excessive prescribing of strong drugs to patients who have little or no control over the medical care they are receiving. Pharmacists’ recommendations should not be a product of money that a drug company is paying to the pharmacy.”  Continue reading →