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Eli Lilly & Co. sent a wave of letters to US health care providers in recent days demanding they stop promoting copycat weight-loss drugs as supply of the company’s brand-name medicines improves. The cease-and-desist letters went to telehealth companies, wellness centers and medical spas, a Lilly spokesperson said. Several brick-and-mortar clinics also received letters, according to interviews and records reviewed by Bloomberg News. (Swetlitz and Muller, 8/14)

On Tuesday, Eli Lilly unveiled a towering 346,000-square-foot laboratory in Boston’s Seaport District, a building that will house 500 of the company’s scientists — 300 of whom are still to be hired — who will focus on medicines that work by exploiting the basic mechanisms of human genetics. Another 200 people will be part of companies Lilly will incubate. It’s a sizeable and conspicuous bet. It’s also the latest attempt to deal with one of the biggest challenges in drug development: What should a company do when it wins big? (Herper, 8/14)

Beauty brand Avon Products Inc. should slow down its bankruptcy case so that people who allegedly got cancer from the company’s products have time to study any potential payout plan, a lawyer said in court Wednesday. Victims deserve a special committee to represent them in the Chapter 11 case, said Todd Phillips, a lawyer for people who claim Avon’s talc products are responsible for their health problems. (Church and Ma, 8/14)

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a new treatment for primary biliary cholangitis, an autoimmune liver disease mainly affecting women that causes decreased liver function, debilitating itching, and fatigue. The drug, called Livdelzi, will be sold by Gilead Sciences, following the $4.3 billion acquisition of CymaBay Therapeutics, its developer, earlier this year. (Feuerstein, 8/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: The FDA Calls Them ‘Recalls,’ Yet The Targeted Medical Devices Often Remain In Use

In 2016, medical device giant Abbott issued a recall for its MitraClip cardiac device — “a Class I recall, the most serious type,” the FDA said. “Use of this device may cause serious injuries or death,” an FDA notice about the recall said. But neither the manufacturer nor the FDA actually recalled the device or suspended its use. They allowed doctors to continue implanting the clips in leaky heart valves in what has become a common procedure. (Hilzenrath, 8/15)