One of Big Pharma's Most Disastrous Drugs Destroyed This Man's Spine [View all]

[madokie]

Merck was aware of a popular drug's impact on bones but still pushed it on doctors and patients.

It has been a decade since Merck's "super-aspirin" Vioxx was withdrawn from the market after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Heavily advertised by celebrity athletes like Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner and used by approximately 20 million patients, estimates of the heart attacks caused by Vioxx range from 27,000 to up to 140,000. The Vioxx scandal made Merck the poster child for deceptive marketing because the cardiovascular risk data was deliberately withheld from the FDA, medical journals and the drug-taking public and their doctors, according to news reports. In 2010, Merck compensated 20,591 heart attack and 12,447 stroke plaintiffs out of a $4.85 billion settlement fund.

Now, in an improbable chain of events, Merck is returning to court against its will to face charges that Vioxx also caused devastating non-healing of spine/bone after surgical procedures, a charge supported by scientific studies. The suit is brought by Dennis Harrison, one of few plaintiffs remaining from the 70,000-case multidistrict litigation (MDL) that led to Merck's 2007 settlement. Unlike patients prescribed Vioxx for its FDA-approved uses of osteoarthritis, menstrual pain and acute pain, Harrison was prescribed Vioxx for the unapproved use of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In 2011, Merck also settled charges that it "misbranded" Vioxx by promoting it for RA, illegal marketing that made RA the fifth most common reason for Vioxx use.

Because RA was an unapproved Vioxx use and Merck is not shielded by FDA approval, the suit claims outright fraud. "It is no different than if Merck sold the drug on a street corner," Jim Duggan, who has been providing legal support to Harrison, told me in a phone interview. A summary judgment filed by Merck (a legal move that says the case is without merit and does not need to be tried) was denied in May and Merck must go to court in New York.

Harrison, 61, a former product planner and business strategist with ATT/Lucent Technologies, sustained permanent spinal damage from years of high doses of Vioxx, according to court filings, when his body failed to form bone after a 2001 spinal fusion operation. He spent months in a nursing home unable to walk, endured sepsis and other life-threatening conditions and is largely bedridden to this day. Nearly all of his doctors attended Merck-funded seminars to build confidence in Vioxx, claims Harrison, and were not told about its serious bone effects. "Merck knew and the doctors and public didn't," says Harrison.

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/one-big-pharmas-most-disastrous-drugs-destroyed-mans-spine