James Gottstein

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James B. "Jim" Gottstein, JD, is an Alaska based lawyer who specializes in business matters and public land law, and is well known as an attorney advocate for people diagnosed with serious mental illness. Gottstein has sought to check the massive growth in psychiatric drugging, particularly of children.

Gottstein is also trying to make alternatives to psychiatric drugs available in Alaska, through organizations he has founded or helped lead, including Soteria-Alaska and CHOICES, Inc.

In 2002, Gottstein co-founded the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights), and currently serves as its president. He is also a member of the board of directors of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP).

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[edit] Education and early career

Gottstein grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and graduated in 1971 from West Anchorage High School. In 1974, he earned his bachelor of science degree, with honors in finance, from the University of Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon. Gottstein completed his legal studies in 1978, at Harvard Law School. After graduating from Harvard, from 1978 to 1980, Gottstein returned to Alaska, where he launched his legal career at the law firm of Robert M. Goldberg & Associates.

[edit] Career

Since 1985, Gottstein has practiced law independently, conducting business as the Law Offices of James B. Gottstein. Between 1986 and 1997, Gottstein represented Alaskans with mental disorders in the Mental Health Trust Land Litigation, which resulted in a settlement valued at approximately $1 billion. State agencies in Alaska had misappropriated funds generated by a one million acre land trust, granted specifically for generating funds to operate the state's mental health program.

From 1998 to 2004, he was a member of the Alaska Mental Health Board (AMHB), where he served as committee chair for the program evaluation and budget committees.

In June, 2006, in a case that Gottstein argued before the Alaska Supreme Court, Myers v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute, the court ruled that Alaska's forced drugging procedures were unconstitutional.

[edit] PsychRights and consumer advocacy

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, aka PsychRights, is a non-profit organization founded by Gottstein to organize a serious, coordinated legal effort against forced psychiatric medication. Its mission is to bring fairness and reason into the administration of legal aspects of the mental health system, particularly unwarranted court ordered psychiatric drugging and electroshock.

In addition to co-founding PsychRights, Gottstein has co-founded several organizations, including:

  • The Alaska Mental Health Consumer Web (with Katsumi Kenaston), which provides peer-support and a drop in center for mental health consumers in Anchorage;
  • CHOICES, Inc. (Consumers Having Ownership in Creating Effective Services), which provides peer-run, alternative services, especially the right to choose not to take psychiatric drugs;
  • Mental Health Consumers of Alaska (with Andrea Schmook and Barbara Greene), for which he served as a board member for ten years;
  • Peer Properties, Inc., which is strictly an owner and operator of real estate, provides peer (mental health consumer) run housing for people diagnosed with serious mental illness who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, or living in bad situations; and
  • Soteria-Alaska, Inc., where he now serves as president, is dedicated to providing a non-coercive and mainly non-drug alternative to psychiatric hospitalization, under the principles established by the late Dr. Loren Mosher;

[edit] Eli Lilly Memos

In December, 2006, during the course of litigation, Gottstein obtained internal Eli Lilly documents showing that the pharmaceutical company was aware that psychiatrists were reporting the fact that numerous Zyprexa patients were developing high blood sugar or diabetes. The Eli Lilly Memos obtained by Gottstein, dated between 1995 and 2004, show that Lilly's aggressive 'off-label' marketing schemes, one called "Viva Zyprexa", resulted in far more injuries and deaths than would otherwise be expected -- if Zyprexa prescriptions had been allowed for approved indications only. Lilly denies that links between Zyprexa and diabetes have ever been proven.

Lilly's executives decided not to disclose the information, neither publicly nor privately to physcians, because they knew the disclosure would have a negative impact on Zyprexa sales -- which amounted to $4.2 billion in 2005, thirty percent of the company's total revenues. Although Zyprexa is only approved to treat adults with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, it has become Lilly's top selling drug as a result of the company's aggressive marketing campaign, largely aimed at inducing doctors to prescribe the drug for off-label conditions.

In a letter to Lilly's attorneys, Gottstein wrote, "it is formally requested that your client, Eli Lilly, issue what is sometimes referred to as a 'Dear doctor' letter to all health care providers in the United States advising them Zyprexa should not be prescribed to anyone who is not already taking it" (such drugs should not be withheld from current consumers because abrupt withdrawal can cause neuroleptic induced discontinuation syndrome). "It is now clear," the letter states, "that Zyprexa has no benefits over other neuroleptics, while causing far more cases of diabetes than do other drugs in its class...This represents a massive health disaster including at least thousands of past and inevitable future deaths."[1]

Lilly's illegal marketing scheme was discovered several years ago. However, the company was able to restrain public access to the incriminating documents through protective court orders, effectively silencing thousands of plaintiffs by requiring them to sign confidentiality agreements in order to obtain out of court settlements. When Gottstein realized the implications of Lilly's off-label marketing schemes, he took the information to the New York Times, which published several articles quoting the Eli Lilly Memos.

When the evidence began to appear in the Times, Lilly began pursing legal action against Gottstein and the doctor who gained access to the memos as an expert witness in another lawsuit against Lilly, which continues in its efforts to keep the evidence under court seal.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

  • PscychRights.org - 'Alaska Forced Medication Case (Faith Myers v. Alaska Psychiatric Hospital): Alaska Supreme Court Rules Alaska's Forced Drugging Regime Unconstitutional', James B. Gottstein (June 30, 2006)

[edit] Media coverage

  • Scoop.co.nz - 'Attorney Asks Eli Lilly Issue Warning on Zyprexa', Evelyn Pringle (January 15, 2007)
  • NYTimes.com - 'Drug Files Show Maker Promoted Unapproved Use', Alex Berenson, New York Times (December 18, 2006)
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