How Eli Lilly Corrupts Cancer Research and Sells Cancer Causing Drugs

A $30,000 Foot‑in‑the‑Door

4 min readMay 6, 2025

A Headline Too Good to Question

On 8 January 2025 the American Thyroid Association (ATA) blasted out a press release trumpeting a “new study” that found “no evidence” GLP‑1 drugs (like Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro) raise thyroid‑cancer risk. In the first paragraph the release calls the findings “reassuring,” repeats them word‑for‑word on the ATA website, and invites readers to “click here” for the full paper in Thyroid, the society’s own journal. Crucial caveats — median follow‑up barely three years, no power to detect the very medullary tumors that triggered the original FDA warning — surface only deep in the text. (Source — https://www.thyroid.org/risk-thyroid-cancer-glp1-ra-users/)

The Money Pipeline Hiding in Plain Sight

Thyroid is published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., which sells advertising, article‑processing charges, and sponsored “news” directly to Eli Lilly. One such news post, released in March 2024, lauded tirzepatide’s (thus Mounjaro’s) “efficacy and safety” — and ran under Liebert’s masthead with Lilly’s talking‑point language intact.

(Source — https://home.liebertpub.com/news/efficacy-and-safety-of-tirzepatide-in-overweight-and-obese-individuals-with-type-1-diabetes/5137?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Meanwhile Lilly rents influence inside the ATA itself:

Corporate Leadership Council membership buys a seat on the society’s insider forum — Lilly Oncology’s logo sits beside AbbVie and Amgen on the ATA partner page. (Source- https://www.thyroid.org/professionals/partner-relations/)
Annual‑meeting sponsorships put Lilly on conference banners (Silver Sponsor, 2021) and the exhibit floor via its subsidiary Loxo Oncology. (Source- https://www.thyroid.org/90th-annual-meeting-ata/meeting-supporters/)

Put bluntly, the society that proclaims Mounjaro safe is financially entangled with Mounjaro’s maker at every major revenue point: dues, booths, ads, and reprints.

Spin, Rinse, Repeat — From Journal to “Patient Education”

Weeks after the press release, ATA’s Clinical Thyroidology for the Public recycled the same study in lay language. The summary spotlights weight‑loss benefits, reassures readers that GLP‑1s “protect the heart and kidneys,” and ends by urging patients to “feel more confident using GLP‑1s.” No mention that two co‑authors of the underlying paper have disclosed Lilly payments in other publications, or that the study’s short follow‑up cannot rule out slow‑growing tumors. (Source- https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/ct-for-patients/march-2025/vol-18-issue-3-p-3-4/)

The paper trail begins in 2007, when Eli Lilly quietly shipped a $30 000 “educational” grant to niche publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The money paid for a “Session on Depression,” but it also bought something less tangible: access. In the years that followed, Liebert’s journals began carrying waves of Lilly‑funded or Lilly‑copyrighted studies — including entire diabetes‑technology papers whose PDFs literally bear the legend “© Eli Lilly and Company; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.” Article‑processing charges and bulk reprint sales flowed back to the publisher, turning academic pages into branded real estate.

The Society That Loves Its Sponsors

Next stop: the American Thyroid Association (ATA).

Corporate Leadership Council. Lilly Oncology sits as a dues‑paying member of the ATA’s inner corporate forum, parked alongside other big‑pharma brands.
Annual‑meeting cash. The 2022 ATA conference thanked Eli Lilly and Company as a Silver Sponsor, a package that buys podium time, booth space, and attendee lists. Dig one layer deeper and you find Loxo Oncology — Lilly’s cancer subsidiary — renting floor space at the 2019 meeting.
House journals. The ATA’s flagship journal Thyroid is a Liebert title, meaning Lilly’s marketing dollars reach society members twice — first through the society’s own sponsorship program, then again when they open the journal.

The GLP‑1 Cancer Registry — Funded by Its Own Suspects

Remember the FDA‑mandated Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma (MTC) Registry, created to monitor whether GLP‑1 drugs like Lilly’s blockbuster tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) cause thyroid tumors? The registry’s own Funding Information section admits it is bankrolled by Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline — and Eli Lilly. In other words, the companies under investigation pay for the investigation.

When “Independent” Authors Aren’t

The ATA‑published GLP‑1 papers that feed public debate often carry co‑authors with Lilly ties:

Laszlo Hegedüs- Got Speaker fees from Eli Lilly

Jacob H. Andersen- Institutional research support that lists Eli Lilly among funders

The conflicts are usually disclosed in small print — but the same small print rarely reaches press releases or mainstream coverage.

Why It Matters

Those same GLP‑1 drugs are now exploding into the weight‑loss market, pitched as the next $100‑billion therapy class. Yet the entities that shape thyroid‑cancer guidance — the ATA, the publisher of the field’s top journal, and headline authors — are tied by money threads to a manufacturer whose product sits at the center of the safety debate. Patients, clinicians, and regulators reading “peer‑reviewed evidence” may be digesting literature spun through a web of paid partnerships.

The Cost of Silence

None of this is illegal. Industry money props up medical societies and specialist journals the world over. What’s different here is concentration and opacity: a single drug‑maker financially embedded simultaneously in the publisher, the society, the flagship journal, the disease registry designed to evaluate its own risk, and at least two marquee authors. The public, meanwhile, is told to trust the consensus.

Until disclosure forms are printed in a font as big as the headline — and societies refuse money from the companies whose drugs they adjudicate — the line between science and marketing will stay dangerously blurred.

Sources:

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Eli_Lilly%27s_Grants_and_Contributions_%28US%29

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7906863/