Vioxx Risks Were Ignored by Merck
December 8, 2009
NaturalNews
by S.L. Baker
Pharmaceutical manufacturers would never knowingly withhold, gloss over or otherwise ignore evidence that any of their drugs could be killing people, right? Wrong. Take the case of Big Pharma giant Merck — the company kept a dangerous drug, Vioxx, on the market for years as tens of thousands died from taking the pain pill.
In a new study that should be a wake-up call to anyone who blindly trusts their health to the prescription drug industry, investigators concluded that Merck & Co. Inc., should have identified the deadly cardiovascular risks associated with taking Vioxx four years before the company finally pulled the drug from the market. In fact, Merck apparently stopped selling Vioxx only after the body count linked to the drugs kept piling up and the associated lawsuits became too numerous to ignore.
Merck introduced the drug in May of 1999 and Vioxx quickly became a commercial success, with sales climbing to $2 billion annually. However, it turns out Vioxx raised the risk of cardiovascular problems in users, most notably heart attacks and deaths, soon after a person started taking it. And even going off the drug didn’t help much — the risk of dropping dead from a heart attack stayed high for a year or more.
So how many deaths did Vioxx (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug known generically as rofecoxib) cause while still on the market? No one knows for sure but Dr. David Graham, a whistleblower who tried to alert the medical community to the dangers of the drug while Merck was still pushing it as a great pain-reliever, testified before the US Senate in 2002 and revealed data indicating 88,000 to 139,000 Americans experienced heart attacks as a side effect from the drug, and 30 to 40% of these died. So preventable deaths caused by Vioxx likely ranged from 27,000 to 55,000.
The evidence points to clear dangers of Vioxx
For the just released study, Joseph Ross, MD, MHS, assistant professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine and of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, led a team of six investigators who analyzed 30 randomized, placebo-controlled trials of Vioxx that were made available through lawsuits filed against Merck. The researchers published their findings in the November 23 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In all, the trials involving Vioxx enrolled 20,152 individuals and lasted from four weeks to four years. Research subjects who were given Vioxx took doses ranging from 12.5 milligrams to 50 milligrams. The Mount Sinai scientists analyzed the pooled data from these studies and found that safety concerns arose almost four years before Merck finally took the drug off the market.
