Working for Eli Lilly & Company

`Eli lilly, the discoverer of erythromycin, Darvon, ceclor , and Prozac, is a major pharmaceutical company that sold $6.8 billion of drugs all over the world in 1995 , giving it profits of $2.3 billion. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Minnesota, the company also provides food, housing and compensation to numerous homeless alcoholics who perform short-term work for the company. Before approving the sales of a newly discovered drug the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that the drug be put through three phases of tests after being tested on animals. In phase one the drug is taken by healthy human individuals to determine whether it has any dangerous side effects. In phase two the drug is given to a small number of sick patients to determine dosage levels .in phase three the drug is given to large number of sick patients by doctors and hospitals to determine its efficacy. Phase one testing is often the most difficult to carry out because most healthy individuals are reluctant to take a new and untested medication that is not intended to cure them of anything and that may have potentially crippling or deadly side effects. To secure test subject, companies advertise widely and offer them 250$ a day. Eli lily however does not advertise as widely and pays its volunteers only $85 a day plus a fresh room and board, the lowest on the industry. One of the reasons that lily rates are so low is because, as a long time nurse at the lilt clinic is reported to have indicated, ’’the majority of its subjects as homeless alcoholics’ recruited through word of mouth that is spread in soup kitchen, shelter, prisons all over the united states. Because they are alcoholics, they are fairly desperate for money. Because phase one test can run for several months, test subjects can make as much as $4500 an enormous sum to people who are otherwise unemploeble and surviving on handouts. Interviews with several home less man who have participated in lily’s drug test and who describe