HEALTH, December 9 – Vioxx is quickly turning into the consumers worst nightmare. After being pulled off the market in September of 2004 for concerns about cardiovascular safety new details emerged today which could put Merck in a very bad light.
Witnesses testifying before the FDA earlier this year and testimonies in three lawsuits indicate that Merck was aware of the safety issues as early as 2000. The editors of the New England Journal of Medicine reported that in 2000 a study was submitted called VIGOR which was actually used to prove the safety of Vioxx. As it now seems the study neglected to report three heart attacks and other cardiovascular incidents among the trial patients. Allegedly Merck was responsible for deleting this information, not strange considering that they funded the study.
This news may be extremely bad for Merck, they were already losing big lawsuits but these details aren’t giving them a better chance at redeeming themselves.
An estimated 20 million people used Vioxx since its launch, at the peak of the product the sales grossed over $2 billion yearly making it the number one seller for Merck. It could very well be that this same drug will destroy everything that it has created, at least the Merck stocks plummeted when this news was made public.
