Merck and the Vioxx saga

"The Vioxx saga continues. Nearly eight years after Merck withdrew the controversial painkiller over links to heart attacks and strokes, a new paper indicates the drugmaker hid evidence that Vioxx tripled the risk of cardiovascular death for more than three years before taking the pill off the market in 2004. During the same period, the paper in the American Heart Journal notes, Merck had regularly insisted such an increased did not exist."
Read article at pharmalot.com

Pfizer Research Scandal: FDA debars fraudster doctor, Scott Reuben

He was accused of faking research for a dozen years in published studies suggesting after-surgery benefits from Vioxx and Celebrex. Last year, he was sentenced to six months in jail plus three years supervised release after pleading guilty to fraud. The former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center received grants from various drugmakers but never performed the studies, fabricated patient data and submitted info to journals that was unwittingly published. Now, the FDA has permanently debarring [sic] him from providing services in any capacity to a person that has an approved or pending drug product application, according to the debarment order, which was published today in The Federal Register.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Personally, I favour avoiding painkillers. - I've had two major operations and I refused painkillers for both of them. Yes, it hurts a lot when you come round from the anaesthetic, but you know the pain will gradually get less severe and you can steel yourself to cope with it. But with painkillers - especially the 'strong' ones - there are always adverse side-effects. And, as in this case, you cannot be sure that you have been given the facts about drugs. Drug companies indulge in criminality, including bribing key opinion leaders such as Scott Reuben was, to recommend their drugs, falsifying drug trial data, corrupting medical journals, etc. Painkiller drugs in particular seem to be problematic. The most recently publicised settlement for criminality of a drug company of which I am aware is the Merck/Vioxx scandal reported on the BBC News website last Tuesday. (Vioxx was a prescription painkiller.) Sadly, although Merck have had to pay almost $1bn (£640m) in settlement, this will not deter them from their criminal practices. That huge sum is insignificant in comparison to the colossal profits they garner from the sales of their dangerous products. Criminals, in my opinion - criminals whose crimes destroy the lives and health and happiness of millions of innocent people the world over - should be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, and that should, of course, mean imprisonment for the people at the top of the company, the people who instigate, fund and perpetuate the criminality.

Conflicts of interest and the drug companies

Major philanthropic foundations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, regularly make the news with their donations and initiatives aimed at improving global health. But there is an aspect to their efforts that may be overlooked - such organizations can have links with drugmakers that could constitute a conflict of interest, according to an analysis published in PLoS Medicine.
Read article at pharmalot.com
The Dr Rath Health Foundation comments: The PLoS analysis adds significantly to the information about the Gates Foundation that was published by the Los Angeles Times in January 2007. In particular, the researchers found that several members of the Gates Foundation’s management committee, leadership teams, affiliates, and major funders are currently or were previously members of the boards or executive branches of major drugmakers, including Merck and Novartis. To examine the commercial network of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, click here and here. For further information about Bill Gates, click here.

US Department of Justice is probing corruption in the pharmaceutical industry

The US Department of Justice is scrutinising payments by leading pharmaceuticals companies for hospitality, consultants, licensing agreements and charitable donations in markets around the world as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe. GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, among others, have disclosed being contacted by the DoJ and Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the investigation. Merck, the US drugs group, announced that it had also been contacted and was co-operating with investigators.
Read article at yahoo.com

An investigation is long overdue, surely?

Merck To Pay $8M Damages re Fosamax bone deterioration

In replay of a courtroom battle that ended in a mistrial last year, a federal jury voted unanimously that Merck’s Fosamax osteoporosis drug was responsible for causing jawbone deterioration suffered by a Florida woman, who was awarded $8 million in compensatory damages (here is the lawsuit).
Read article at pharmalot.com

UK Government declines to help Vioxx victims in their legal fight with drug company, Merck.

Read this Timesonline report.

I have written many times about the problems with the painkiller, Vioxx. If you click on the Vioxx tag in the Labels list that is at the end of this post, you will find my previous posts about it.

A drug-free way to reduce chronic pain that many people have found helpful is to avoid or cut down on salt and salty food. If you suffer from pain and would prefer not to take drugs, you may like to give it a try.

Widespread Misrepresentation of Drug Research Findings by Drug Companies Tarnishes Pharmaceutical Industry

Stuart Laidlow of the Toronto Star writes that "From the creation of fake academic journals, to bogus stories submitted to real journals, to falsified results in some of academia's most respected publications – the pharmaceutical industry has been rocked by allegations that the world's biggest drug companies put public relations above public safety."

Some of the drug companies involved include Merck, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.

Put not your trust in drug companies. They clearly care about their profits, rather than the health of the innocent people who get damaged by their products.

Australian Nurses were paid by drug firm to help find patients to be targeted to take anti-arthritis drug Vioxx

Australian marketing staff from pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co paid specialist nurses half-a-million dollars to "hunt" through patient records for potential candidates for their blockbuster anti-arthritis drug Vioxx. The Federal Court was told the company aimed to identify 100 patients of each targeted general practitioner who were not taking Vioxx and could be recommended to take up the drug for their condition. Known as the "bone and joint care program", the marketing initiative employed nurses to go through patients' records with permission of their general practitioner.
Read article in The Australian (Australia)

More about Merck and its drug, Vioxx

Merck had a cardiologist sign his name to a medical journal article Merck had written claiming there was no evidence of any heart risk attached to its drug Vioxx, court documents allegedly show.
Read article in the Brisbane Times (Australia)

Vioxx manufacturer Merck and Co drew up a hit list of doctors to discredit

Drug company, Merck, made a hit list of doctors who had to be "neutralised" or discredited because they criticised the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical company produced. Staff at US company Merck &Co emailed each other about the list of doctors - mainly researchers and academics - who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or about Merck. "We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff.
Read article in The Australian (Australia)

Senators investigate Merced groundwater pollution

The state's two U.S. senators want to know whether groundwater pollution in Merced caused by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. is connected to illnesses suffered by some local residents. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has sent a staff member to Merced to investigate. Sen. Barbara Boxer's office is making local inquiries. An attorney for Merck says a subsidiary of the company polluted the site with Chromium 6, the carcinogen Erin Brockovich campaigned against when it was found in Hinkley's drinking water.
Read article in the Modesto Bee (California/USA)

Further study findings about Vioxx adverse side-effects

Study: Vioxx risk lingered after use of painkiller
A doubled risk of heart attack, stroke and death persisted at least a year after people stopped taking withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, according to an analysis of long-term data from the study that led drugmaker Merck & Co. to stop selling the drug.
Read Associated Press news report at google.com

Merck Pays $58M To States Settle Vioxx Fraud

The drugmaker reached the deal with attorneys general from 29 states and the Washington DC to "fully resolve" investigations under state consumer protection laws related to marketing the notorious Vioxx painkiller. The agreement also calls for Merck to adhere to unspecified compliance measures that are supposed to supplement exisiting practices.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Britons are excluded from US Vioxx painkiller drug compensation

Britons excluded from US drug compensation

Extract from Guardian:

"Merck, the US pharmaceutical giant, is to continue battling with hundreds of British claimants over its failed arthritis painkiller, Vioxx, in spite of agreeing yesterday to a settlement with US residents.

Merck agreed a $4.85bn (£2.42 bn) settlement, one of the biggest in history, with US claimants who blamed the drug for heart attacks and other side-effects.

But the company said this would not apply to British lawsuits or others round the world suing for compensation."

Painkillers for arthritis have caused severe adverse side-effects for many people over the years. - If you want to lessen the pain of osteoarthritis without the use of prescribed drugs, try the completely safe way of avoiding eating salt/sodium and salty food. - See Sodium in foods and
Associated health conditions

Another arthritis painkiller - Prexige - made by Novartis - has caused fatalities

Doctors warned over arthritis drug after two die in Australia - Guardian

Extracts:

"Health campaigners last night urged doctors to be wary of prescribing an arthritis drug after concerns over its safety and an order to ban it in Australia following reports of liver damage. UK and European drug regulators are reviewing the safety data on the painkiller, Prexige, after eight cases of serious liver damage in Australia, including two fatalities.

There are concerns because Prexige is in the same class of drugs as Vioxx, the painkiller withdrawn worldwide in 2004 after being linked to heart attacks and strokes."

"In the UK approximately 5,400 patients have received one or more prescriptions for Prexige, made by the drugs company Novartis, in the last year.

Vioxx, which was manufactured by a separate drugs company, Merck, was used by 84 million patients worldwide, 400,000 of them in Britain. It was withdrawn after trials suggested it might nearly double the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The class of drugs which includes Prexige and Vioxx is known as Cox-2 selective inhibitors. They are a relatively new type of anti-inflammatory medicine which is thought to produce fewer gastro-intestinal side effects than older non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which include ibuprofen. Since the Vioxx crisis they have been under surveillance by medicines watchdogs."

Cutting down on salt and salty food is helpful for reducing the pain of osteoarthritis and has many other health benefits too. - See conditions that can be helped by eating less salt

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.