Here’s a Big Pharma-and-FDA-are-going-steady story for the record books: While a growing number of states are suing Eli Lilly for hiding the fact that their antipsychotic drug Zyprexa causes obesity and diabetes in adult schizophrenia patients, a senior FDA official has overruled an expert panel of medical reviewers and says the drug should be approved for pediatric use anyway. Parents - get ready to say no to your doctors about Zyprexa, because if you don’t, your kids are risking the need for drug detox later on, or even worse - obesity, diabetes and an early death.

A New York Times article last December disclosed that Eli Lilly covered up the very real health risks of Zyprexa for nearly a decade. Hundreds of Lilly memos, documents and e-mail messages among top company managers show the company knew Zyprexa increased the risks of obesity and diabetes, but instructed its sales force to fudge the facts. In 2006, Lilly paid $700 million to settle 8,000 lawsuits from people who said they had developed diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa, and thousands more law suits are pending.

Is this the drug you want your child to take? If he or she is already on it, please take them to a medical drug detox center before more damage is done.

Zyprexa, active ingredient olanzapine, is one of the new ‘atypical’ antipsychotics, and is Lilly’s best-selling schizophrenia medication. It made the company $4.4 billion richer last year, but Lilly needs the teen market because doctors, worried about diabetes, are writing fewer Zyprexa prescriptions among approved adult patients. That’s probably why Lilly has pursued the elderly market as well, covertly promoting its use for senile dementia - also never tested or approved. Its use has since become rampant in nursing homes, even though we’ve learned that it increases the risk of strokes and death in elderly patients. Most such victims would benefit from drug detox before any adverse effects take place.

Johnson & Johnson’s schizophrenia drug Risperdal, active ingredient risperidone, and another ‘atypical’ antipsychotic, has just received approval for pediatric use, although plenty of doctors have been prescribing it to children “off label" for some time. Naturally, Lilly wants in on that gravy train - but Risperdal, while it has other dangerous side effects, doesn’t cause diabetes or other major diseases - or so we hope. Like most Big Pharma drugs, only time will tell. The FDA specializes in fast-tracking drug approvals and letting us, the public at large, be the lab rats who find out the hard way that it was poisonous or addictive after all, leaving us to limp off to our lawyers and then on to drug detox and drug rehab centers to try to get healthy again. Or attend the funerals of our family members who took the drugs.

But obesity and diabetes aside, Zyprexa’s side effects are enough to make anyone start searching for a less dangerous solution that won’t require drug detox to get off. We’d need another whole page just to list them, and we don’t have that kind of space. Suffice it to say this: Mom, dad, sisters and brothers - just because Big Pharma has friends in high places at the FDA doesn’t mean these drugs are safe. Search for alternative medicine options, and try them. They are out there. And if your child or loved one is already taking an ‘atypical’ antipsychotic medication, there’s even more of a reason to do that search - and get him or her into a drug detox program as soon as you can.