NSAID heart attack and stroke risk
I don’t know if anyone was ever under any doubt that Vioxx was not just a painkiller but a killer, but if it makes you feel any better, yet another study by Dr. Robert Bresalier, a professor of medicine at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, has found that arthritis patients who took the drug, their risk of heart attacks and strokes increase close to twofold and the risk lasted for about a year.
“The good news is that, after a year, the risk seemed to go back down toward normal,” Dr. Bresalier said.
What is even more important to know that the whole class of NSAID is equally dangerous and that includes banned drug Bextra and still available Celebrex. Then your typical over-the-counter painkillers like ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) and naproxen (Aleve) are quite dangerous as well.
Do glucosamine and chondroitin work?
There was some previous research that said that glucosamine and chondroitin may provide pain relief. I am now hearing something different.
Dr. Allen D. Sawitzke, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine, has concluded that glucosamine and chondroitin are no better than a placebo at preventing cartilage loss in knees of people with the form of arthritis caused by wear and tear.
Ouch! That is pretty devastating news for all those people who have been popping these supplements in hopes that they might work.
The only good news in the study is that glucosamine may help some people with osteoarthritis.
Merck called marketing as science
You know I started to think that now that the victims agreed to a settlement with Merck and Vioxx settlement payments have started arriving, I wouldn’t have to remind anyone that Merck was responsible for the death of 60,000 Americans and it got away with a small penalty.
That’s not the case. Merck is nothing a bunch of crooks running a so-called scam operations by calling their pills as drugs. In the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, it has been revealed that the Advantage trial was not to test the side effects of Vioxx but was instead market research to promote the use of the painkiller. These people make Victoria Knight-McDowell look like an angel — Airborne didn’t work but it didn’t kill nobody.
So what does it mean?
Well, if you have already accepted the settlement, you can only bitch about Merck & Company (MRK). But you can do other things, like, always asking your pharmacist about the manufacturer of a drug so that you can ask for a replacement since Merck drugs can no longer be trusted. Also, if you are in situation where you have to hire a Merck employee, you should stop yourself from doing so. You are likely to have someone with no ethics at all.