Early Vioxx warnings were ignored

Say this about Big Pharma: They’re reliable. You can always count on them to pick profit over safety.

A new study shows that Merck knew that their painkiller Vioxx was dangerous and deadly years before they pulled it off the market late in 2004. In fact, they were aware of it as early as 2000, according to the new analysis – and yet they kept right on selling it.

They knew it – but we didn’t.

That’s because they managed to play shell games with the data. They hid key safety facts – even entire studies – that showed the real risks facing the 20 million Americans who took Vioxx.

The new analysis, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at 30 studies. Six of them were never published, and six others were published only after the med was pulled.

And those studies tell the real story. Too bad it comes years too late for the tens of thousands of people killed by this horrible drug.

The researchers say the studies showed a trend toward increased risk in December 2000. Six months later, Merck should have had enough data from additional studies to show a statistically significant trend.

Merck claims their first hint of problems came in September 2004, and they pulled the drug immediately. But since the data was there for everyone in the company to see, they’re either completely incompetent – or they’re lying.

Vioxx has been linked to as many as 140,000 heart attacks in the United States, and up to 40 percent of them may have been fatal. And as this and other studies have shown, the biggest tragedy is not that they happened – but that they could have been prevented if someone – anyone – had acted sooner.

“If physicians and patients had had the facts, it would have taken an alchemist, not a marketing department, to turn this lemon into gold,” Dr. Lisa Schwartz wrote in the commentary that appeared with this study.

That marketing department spent $500 million to promote Vioxx in 2003. That’s a real hard sell for something you secretly know is hurting and even killing people.

Since then, the rules have changed – theoretically making it harder to hide data and keep negative studies a secret.

That’s the theory, anyway.

In reality, I’m still waiting for the next Vioxx – because the sad truth is, it’s probably out there right now.