Merck Co Inc

Big Pharma got bigger on Monday with Merck Co.'s announcement that it would acquire rival Schering-Plough Corp. in a cash-and-stock transaction worth $41.1 billion. And the deal is being made easier by U.S. taxpayers. Faced with tough competition from generics, fewer potential blockbuster drugs in development and the prospect of a government overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, drug makers are consolidating. In January, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer Inc.

More than 3,000 former users of Merck & Co.'s withdrawn Vioxx pain drug have signed up to take part in a $4.85-billion settlement deal that a federal judge said Friday was in the best interests of both sides. Lawyers for Merck and plaintiffs who claim to have been harmed by Vioxx were in U.S. District Court to give a status report on the settlement to Judge Eldon Fallon, who had presided over all federal Vioxx trials and is overseeing the settlement process.

Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. suspended television ads Tuesday for the cholesterol pills Vytorin and Zetia after a study questioned the benefit of the medicines. The Vytorin commercials were among the most widely aired drug ads, featuring people dressed as food items to show the pill lowers cholesterol from food as well as from genetics. The ads were voluntarily and temporarily halted, Schering-Plough spokesman Lee Davies said.

U.S. regulators said Friday that they would review whether to take action over Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp.'s popular cholesterol drug Vytorin after a study showed it was no better than a generic in preventing the buildup of fatty plaque in blood vessels. The Food and Drug Administration said it had not received a final report on the study, called Enhance. The agency's review of Vytorin will take about six months after final results are received, the FDA said.

Fred Hassan rode to the rescue of a foundering Schering-Plough Corp. in 2003, and by 2006, with a remarkable turnaround declared complete, the company was back on a growth trajectory. But the highly regarded chief executive unexpectedly finds himself at the center of a firestorm involving the cholesterol drug that fueled the company's reversal of fortune. The furor over Vytorin threatens the reputation of the drug industry's golden boy and, some say, his job. Schering-Plough and Merck & Co.

At least three generic versions of the popular osteoporosis treatment Fosamax are headed for pharmacy shelves with the expiration of the drug's main patent Wednesday, bringing patients hefty savings. Two of the biggest makers of generic drugs, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc., said Wednesday they would immediately begin selling generic Fosamax, which is made by Merck & Co.

In one of the biggest U.S. healthcare fraud settlements ever, Merck & Co. will pay $671 million to settle claims it overcharged the government for four popular drugs and bribed doctors to prescribe its drugs, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Two new reports involving the painkiller Vioxx raise fresh concerns about how drug companies influence the interpretation and publication of medical research. The reports claim that Merck & Co. frequently paid academic scientists to take credit for research articles prepared by company-hired medical writers, a practice called ghostwriting.

Merck & Co. was granted a mistrial Thursday when a Los Angeles jury couldn't reach a verdict after six days of deliberations in a case over the heart attacks of two men who used the company's Vioxx painkiller. California Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney sent the jury of seven women and five men home after they deadlocked. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said the case would probably be retried in April. Merck, which faces 27,000 Vioxx suits, has won eight of 12 cases tried so far.

Merck & Co. is helping bankroll efforts to pass state laws requiring girls as young as 11 or 12 to receive the drug maker's new vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus. Some conservatives and parents' rights groups say such a requirement would encourage premarital sex and interfere with the way they raise their children, and they say Merck's push for such laws is underhanded. But the company said its lobbying efforts had been aboveboard.