Doctor and AstraZeneca Collude to Sell Seroquel Without Regard to Patient Harm

by Heidi Stevenson

21 November 2009

Chanille Hayes says Dr. Reinstein told her taking Seroquel would help her lose weight. Instead, she went from 140 to 300 pounds in two years, and developed diabetes.

In a shocking demonstration of you-grease-my-palm and I'll-grease-yours, AstraZeneca knowingly paid a for-profit researcher, Dr. Michael Reinstein, nearly half a million dollars because he could bring them profits of half a billion dollars. When AstraZeneca got nervous, primarily because he was known to have produced bad research, the company capitulated to Reinstein's cowboy ways.

Seroquel is an exceptionally dangerous drugs with effects that include weight gain as one of the most frequent, akathisia diabetes, suicide, tachyarrythmia, tardive dyskinesia, and a host of others equally as severe, not to mention early death. A Seroquel flyer featuring Dr. Reinstein was produced in 1999 in which Reinstein claims that prescribing the drug helped one patient lose weight and no longer require insulin shots for diabetes. In 2001, he told 5,000 doctors that Seroquel could be used for weight loss.

Yet, Reinstein claims that he would never recommend that patients take Seroquel to lose weight.

From 1997-2007, Reinstein ordered Seroquel for about 1,000 Chicago-area Medicaid patients per year, costing taxpayers $7.6 million. The AstraZeneca-Reinstein association soured, and they parted ways in 2008. AstraZeneca was not concerned about his behavior until they had questioned his claims that he'd seen no adverse effects from Seroquel, results that were too pie-in-the-sky even for the company benefitting from the claim. In response, Reinstein wrote a letter in 2001 to AstraZeneca's CEO claiming that he and the four doctors with whom he worked were "the largest prescribers of Seroquel in the world", complaining that travel expenses weren't paid in advance, and calling for "new leadership" in marketing Seroquel. AstraZeneca caved, and the pharmaceutical's relationship with Reinstein continued through 2007.

Claims and counterclaims between Reinstein and AstraZeneca are being made in a federal court case, in which AstraZeneca is accused of paying Dr. Reinstein to overprescribe Seroquel.

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