Ah, yes, Vioxx, what a tale!! Here is a tale of corporate skullduggery well done by the Washington Post. There will be more post detailing this sordid saga.
Maker of Vioxx Is Accused of Deception
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 16, 2008; A01
Two teams of researchers with access to thousands of documents gathered for lawsuits over the painkiller Vioxx allege that Merck waged a campaign of deception to promote its drug, moving slowly to warn of possible hazards while at the same time dressing up in-house studies as the work of independent academic researchers.
The reports in today's Journal of the American Medical Association in effect accuse one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical makers of various forms of scientific fraud.
One study alleges that Merck gave the Food and Drug Administration an incomplete accounting of deaths in a clinical trial of Vioxx in people with mild dementia. Federal regulators eventually received the data, which added to growing evidence that Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Simultaneously, Merck was using what the JAMA authors call "guest authorship and ghostwriting" to make it appear that research done by its employees or contractors was the work of scientists at medical schools and universities. That presumably gave the findings more credibility when they were published, in medical journals, boosting Vioxx's profile in the crowded painkiller market.
Vioxx, whose generic name is rofecoxib, went on the market in 1999. It became a "blockbuster," with $2.3 billion in sales in 2003, but Merck voluntarily withdrew it in September 2004 after several studies showed that it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/15/AR2008041502086_pf.html
http://snipurl.com/2z3h6
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1 comment:
My name is Tina Harris and i would like to show you my personal experience with Vioxx.
I am 40 years old. Have been on Vioxx for 6 months now. I had quit taking Vioxx long before the recall because it was the only new med introduced into my regimen at the time the symptoms started. I was told that if I continued to take it, I would be let go from my job because of inability to perform simple tasks.
I have experienced some of these side effects -
vertigo, diarrhea, abdominal pain, respiratory problems and memory loss. I still have memory loss and have gaps in my thinking process where I can't even think of common words I am trying to say, even to this day.
I hope this information will be useful to others,
Tina Harris
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