Vioxx Drug

Merck & Co. isn't liable for the heart attack of a Kentucky man who took its Vioxx drug, a U.S. jury decided Tuesday in the first trial involving the use of the painkiller after the company issued a stronger warning label. Robert Garry Smith, 56, a manager at a chemical plant, began taking Vioxx in 2002, after the medication's label was changed to reflect a study showing that the drug raised the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The significant cardiovascular risks linked to Vioxx could have been identified nearly four years before the anti-inflammatory medication was taken off the market, a new study has concluded, but consumers and physicians didn't have access to such information at the time. "We need comprehensive, transparent, independent access to clinical-trial data in order to do a much better job of making this information available to the public," said the study's lead author, Dr. Joseph S. Ross, an assistant professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

More than 3,000 former users of Merck & Co.'s withdrawn Vioxx pain drug have signed up to take part in a $4.85-billion settlement deal that a federal judge said Friday was in the best interests of both sides.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.

More than 3,000 former users of Merck & Co.'s withdrawn Vioxx pain drug have signed up to take part in a $4.85-billion settlement deal that a federal judge said Friday was in the best interests of both sides.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.'s surprise decision Thursday to yank its Vioxx arthritis drug off the market socked investors across the country, who for decades considered its shares to be among the safest on Wall Street. The company lost almost $27 billion in market value -- more than the entire value of Ford Motor Co. -- after Merck disclosed that its blockbuster arthritis drug doubles the risk of a heart attack among patients taking it for 18 months or longer.

Carol Ernst says Merck & Co. knew its pain reliever Vioxx was potentially deadly when it sold the drug to her husband, and today she is expected to become the first in a long line of plaintiffs to take the giant pharmaceutical company to trial. Robert Ernst, an exercise fanatic who took Vioxx daily for chronic hand pain, died suddenly in his sleep four years ago. He was 59.

A report on Vioxx risks previously blocked by the Food and Drug Administration was published online Monday after the agency withdrew its opposition. The study found that as many as 140,000 cases of heart disease in the United States and as many as 56,000 deaths were caused by the painkiller during the five years that it was on the market. The study's findings were announced in August at a medical meeting in France and in a Nov. 18 Senate hearing by its lead author, Dr. David J.

Merck & Co. showed a "careless disregard" for users of the painkiller Vioxx, a lawyer for a construction manager suing the company told jurors Tuesday in the first California trial over the drug. Merck knew Vioxx would cause "massive, terrible side effects and they didn't tell anybody," attorney Thomas Girardi said in opening statements in Los Angeles County Superior Court. He said his client, Stewart Grossberg, 71, survived a heart attack after taking more than 200 Vioxx pills over two years.

The Canadian government said Thursday that Merck & Co. would have to reapply to market its arthritis drug Vioxx again, but it saw no reason not to approve the application. Speaking after an advisory panel recommended allowing Vioxx back on the market, Marc Berthiaume, the director of the federal health department's marketed pharmaceuticals division, said any application would be judged on its own merits.

Four years ago, as evidence mounted that Merck's blockbuster painkiller Vioxx could cause heart attacks, the company ordered its sales force not to discuss the emerging data with doctors, but instead to paint a reassuring picture of minimal risks, according to documents released Thursday at a congressional hearing. The documents open a window into the supercharged world of drug company marketing -- where gestures as small as a handshake were scripted to boost sales.

The $4.85-billion settlement offered last week by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. to patients stricken by heart attacks and strokes after taking the company's painkiller Vioxx could mean the end to one of the most unpleasant and costliest chapters in the pharmaceutical industry's history. But could it unravel? About 47,000 plaintiffs have until March 1 to decide whether to take immediate payouts estimated to range from $50,000 to $1.5 million.

Merck & Co.'s decision to pay $4.85 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims from patients who took the popular painkiller Vioxx may stiffen the resolve of other companies facing litigation over pharmaceutical products or other consumer goods. The settlement, announced Friday, may also vindicate the drug maker's initial strategy of aggressively fighting virtually every injury claim, legal experts said.

Merck & Co., after setting aside nothing to resolve liability over its Vioxx painkiller, may pay about $5 billion to settle claims that it hid the health risks of its withdrawn drug, three lawyers with direct knowledge of the accord said. Merck, the third-largest U.S. drug maker, pulled Vioxx off the market in 2004 after a study showed it raised the risk of heart attacks in some patients.

New York city and state sued Merck & Co. on Monday, accusing the drug maker of defrauding Medicaid and other government insurance programs by hiding the risks of heart problems associated with its pain medication Vioxx. The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, said the state's Medicaid and Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage programs had paid more than $100 million for Vioxx prescriptions since the drug went on the market in 1999.

In a major legal victory for Merck & Co. in its massive Vioxx litigation, New Jersey's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a potential class-action lawsuit that could have cost the drug maker as much as $18 billion. New Jersey's highest court, reversing two lower-court decisions, ruled that a nationwide class-action suit was not appropriate.

The increased heart risk from Vioxx, Merck & Co.'s withdrawn arthritis medicine, begins much earlier than after 18 months of use, according to a study contradicting assertions by the drug maker and its scientists. The 2,434-patient study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was halted early when the medicine was pulled from the market in September 2004. Although the median duration of treatment was only 7.

An elderly man who sued Merck & Co. had a long history of heart disease before he took the painkiller Vioxx that he claims caused his heart attack, a lawyer argued Tuesday in closing arguments of a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company. Merck attorney Tarek Ismail told jurors that they should reject the claim that Vioxx caused Stewart Grossberg's heart attack or accelerated his heart disease.

Jurors in the Vioxx trial heard testimony Monday from a pathologist who said the death of a man taking the drug was more than likely caused by a heart attack -- damaging Merck & Co.'s defense in the first Vioxx liability case to reach trial. The videotaped testimony from Dr.

A federal judge ruled that Merck & Co. must defend lawsuits over its Vioxx painkiller, rejecting an argument that U.S. regulations preclude patients from claiming they weren't warned about the drug's risks. U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon in New Orleans denied Merck's request to dismiss two cases on the grounds that the Vioxx warning label was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Merck & Co.'s Vioxx painkiller helped cause an Idaho mail carrier's heart attack, a New Jersey jury found, ordering the drug maker to pay him and his wife $47.5 million in a retrial of a case the man originally lost. Jurors in Atlantic City imposed actual damages of $20 million and punitive damages of $27.5 million after ruling that Vioxx was partly to blame for Frederick Humeston's 2001 heart attack.