Others call them lies, Merck calls it an error
Vioxx victims are heaving a sigh of relief and attorneys fighting on their behalf have a better chance of getting justice now that Merck has admitted that it has no evidence for its argument that the drug causes no harm if taken for less than 18 months. It means that many more victims that have suffered after taking the painkiller can have their day in court. The New England Journal of Medicine has also published a correction implying that safety of Vioxx was always in doubt.
Independent experts including David Graham and Benedict Lucchesi have all along said that even occasional or intermittent even rare use of the arthritis drug could trigger a heart attack or stroke but the company steadfastly refused to acknowledge it hoping that somehow the facts will go away. In two press releases that are highly confusing to an average reader and do not explicitly states that the company lied all along, Merck merely says that it is correcting a description of a statistical method and does not admit that it made a deliberate attempt to massage the data. However, a careful review of the statement says that the company has absolutely no ground left to deny compensation to the family members of 60,000 or so Americans that have died after taking the drug.
Since the recall of the drug in September of 2004, Merck has engaged in a full-scale campaign to deny that Vioxx is a dangerous drug and may have killed tens of thousands of people in America alone. The company is already facing as many as 13,000 lawsuits and many more are being filed each day as the deadline looms. At this moment, two cases – Stewart Grossberg’s in California and Elaine Doherty in New Jersey – are being tried. Both of them were long-term users.
Related article:
Merck fudged data to make Vioxx look safe
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