September 20, 2024
HIPAA, schmipaa — Lilly is at it again
Eli Lilly is trying to “convince” people who have used compounded versions of tirzepatide to share their confidential medical records with the company. It claims the letters it has sent to patients — these are people who are not necessarily even Lilly customers — are for the company to “monitor and evaluate safety of its medicines.”
That’s nonsense, of course. The real reason, as Bloomberg puts it, is so Lilly can “build a case against businesses selling the compounded drugs.” A Lilly spokesperson even said of compounders, “We’re going after this with our legal tools, we send letters to people and threaten them.”
APC CEO Scott Brunner responded to Lilly’s disingenuous request letters:
“I am gobsmacked that Lilly is seeking confidential patient medical records to build a case against the very therapies that are benefiting those patients at a time when Lilly’s own drugs are not available to them.
I would urge patients to ignore the letters — and practically anything else Lily says about compounded drugs. If Lilly spent more time fixing its supply chain, it might not have to worry anymore about compounded copies of GLP-1 drugs.”
