Merck Up To Its Old Tricks - Even 'Down Under'

Vioxx, the painkiller taken off the market in late 2004, by its manufacturer Merck has become poster-child of greedy drug companies reaping the rewards (the drug reached $2.5 billion in sales in 2003) by keeping its dangerous drug on the market despite knowing of an increased risk of injury or death.

Lawsuits played a key role unearthing documents showing what lengths Merck went to cover up mounting evidence that patients taking Vioxx were experiencing a high number of heart attacks and strokes.

One incredible document was called “Dodge Ball Vioxx” and the company used it to train drug reps to dodge questions doctors might ask about the safety of the drug.  In 2007, Merck settled with nearly 50,000 Vioxx victims for $4.85 billion, although many cases are still continuing.

One place where Merck continues to defend itself is Australia (even though the ability of patients to recover compensation there is minimal), and incredibly, more information continues to come out of the court case there.  Specifically, during the Australian trial, it was reveled that the company gave its sales reps “cheatsheets” that offered line-by-line instructions on how to deal with doctors tough questions about the safety of Vioxx (made more difficult by the research that proved Vioxx increased a patient’s risk of cardiovascular events).

Additionally through this case we have learned that the company also paid for a publication, which closely resembled a peer-reviewed medical journal.  In the Merck-sponsored “journal” were articles that referred positively to many of Merck’s drugs, including Vioxx, but there was no indication that the drug company had funded the publication.  The publisher, Elesevier, one of the largest medical publishers in the world said “it had failed to meet its own ‘high standards for disclosure’ when it produced a magazine that pretended to be an independent scientific journal but was actually a marketing front for Merck's anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx.”

With Vioxx, it seems the story never ends.

Comments

[Old Hand]

Pop Folk,

I think "old tricks" says it. I don't see much in this report that we haven't seen before, but perhaps repackaged a bit for Australian docs. Am I missing something?