Eli Lilly and Company Announces New Employee Policy

INDIANAPOLIS, May 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Eli Lilly and Company today announced an expansion of its employee policies to include protection of genetic information. This addition to Lilly's privacy and nondiscrimination policies ensures an employee's genetic information cannot be used to discriminate against them when making employment choices and benefits eligibility decisions.

This announcement, which formalizes Lilly's current practice, illustrates the company's continued commitment to its employees, but the decision was prompted, in part, by the ultimate impact on all patients.

Genetic-based research can be used to evolve science and better tailor healthcare

Blood and tissue samples, used to determine a person's genetic make-up, can reveal important clues about disease prognosis or predisposition to certain diseases and can even help identify how some diseases will respond to different therapies.

In this new scientific era it becomes extremely important that an individual's information is protected in a fashion that allows it to be used to support individual healthcare management without detrimentally impacting a person's employment options or access to insurance coverage.

"Some genetic tests can provide insights that individuals can use to make lifestyle changes - such as improving their diet, avoiding certain medicines or foods, and getting preventive medical care - that are likely to improve their health. However, if individuals believe this information will be used to discriminate against them, they may not be willing to share the information as a part of research and other healthcare programs," said Eiry Roberts, M.D., vice president of medical projects and program phase in Lilly Research Laboratories. "This fear could have grave consequences on future patient care and continued scientific discoveries."

Lilly is embarking on a future vision of healthcare with a tailored therapy strategy to provide patients with "the right medicine, at the right dose, at the right time" resulting in personalized, improved patient outcomes. A better understanding of genetics will contribute to this goal.

"Access to genetic information will be imperative in advancing science. In some cases, genetic research will help physicians identify which patients are more likely to experience desired outcomes in response to medicines, which patients will require a different dose of therapy, and importantly, which patients will not respond," said Roberts. "Therefore, the information will provide value to the patient, physician and payer."

Working to build public confidence

Today's announcement is the first of its kind in the healthcare field. To date, IBM is the only corporation to publicly acknowledge a similar policy.

"It is our hope that other pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers will join us by adopting similar policies," said Stan Crosley, Lilly's chief privacy officer and associate general counsel. "Ethical commitments by multiple employers would increase the public's trust by ensuring that their information would be securely held and protected and would not be used against them."

In 2002, Crosley helped co-found the International Pharmaceutical Privacy Consortium (IPPC), now comprised of fifteen of the world's largest multi- national pharmaceutical companies. The IPPC is committed to developing best- practice approaches to address privacy issues in medical research and marketing. This influential group of privacy experts, with Crosley as its chairman, has been following this important issue.

"Lilly is encouraging its healthcare colleagues to consider explicitly adopting similar policies - thus embracing an absolute commitment to responsible information stewardship and protection," he said.

In addition, Lilly has contacted Congress in support of current proposals to enact federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of genetic information.

Lilly, a leading innovation-driven corporation, is developing a growing portfolio of first-in-class and best-in-class pharmaceutical products by applying the latest research from its own worldwide laboratories and from collaborations with eminent scientific organizations. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind., Lilly provides answers - through medicines and information - for some of the world's most urgent medical needs. Additional information about Lilly is available at www.lilly.com.

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