Posted on 04/25/2008 9:48:25 AM PDT by djf
Drug giant Merck has been caught red-handed in a scheme to deceive the FDA and the public over the integrity of its scientific studies, say top medical authorities. According to reports that were (amazingly!) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and detailed in the Washington Post, Merck waged a "campaign of deception" to disguise its in-house study authors as independent scientists working for universities. This scheme made the studies appear independent and unbiased, allowing them to carry more apparent credibility to FDA officials, doctors and other scientists.
This fraud was conducted to boost the apparent scientific credibility of the studies backing Vioxx, a drug that has caused well over 100,000 heart attacks and likely killed well over 50,000 Americans, according to Senate testimony by the FDA's own senior drug safety researcher Dr. David Graham. Vioxx earned Merck $2.3 billion in 2003 alone, and was one of the most lucrative drugs ever sold by any company. But since 2004, when some of the real dangers of the drug became known, a tremendous amount of evidence leading to fraud has surfaced.
It now appears quite clear that Merck deliberately lied about the dangers of the drug, misrepresented the results of scientific studies, deceived the FDA to win drug approval, knowingly covered up evidence of the drug's dangers, and now it seems Merck even conducted a deliberate campaign of deceptive ghostwriting designed to attach independent-sounding names to in-house studies that were essentially pro-Vioxx promotional pieces disguised as scientific reports.
(read more at the site)
Stuff like this goes on and they just keep tryin and tryin to convince us that we should need a prescription for plain old Vitamin C...
There is a reason the Journal of the AMA is not an “upper tier” publication.
Are you saying the mag is wrong and Merck did everything on the up-and-up?
Sounds to me like there is a fair amount of confirmation out there.
Stock hasn’t crashed today.....
Intentional deception does not bode well for there chances in a class action lawsuit
Don’t think I’ll be floating my resumé by Merck anytime soon....
Not surprising. Hope they all go to prison.
I haven’t read JAMA lately, but its focus used to be more on public health policy rather than bench research.
I don’t trust Big Pharma any further than I can throw’em.
I recommend taking a short position...soon.
Events like this and the recent one with ‘Dr.’ Jarvik getting dinged are basically the death throes of the cholesterol deception.
Somebody’s in deep Kimchee.
Big Money usually has that information leaked to them. I truly beleive that. So by the time small guys hear about it, the story is already baked into the pie. Since its not 15 bucks today....I am not sure....
HOWEVER, maybe people are waiting for confirmation.
After watching stocks getting manipulated and especially my own companies’ stock, which went from 16 buck to 8 bucks when market was still riding high and company had no bad news to report. After it was shorted, two weeks later we found out CEO is resigning/kicked out. The fact that for NO reason at the time, Big Money tanked stocked, you know their buddies on the Board leaked the information.
Those and many more stories like that have caused me to become cynical about Stock Market manipulation.
I am almost positive it is still being sold. My doctor gave me a prescription for it last year and I did not have it filled.
I used to do air pollution testing for my company but it was farmed out to consultants because the regulatory agencies trusted the results more.
http://www.drugs.com/vioxx.html
Vioxx was removed from the US market in 2004. Every site for Vioxx has huge ads for heart attack case action suits.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=88264
These drugs are the ones in deep trouble. The statins, like Lipitor, have been shown to have significant beneficial effects and were widely tested.
It is still on the shelf because it does what it claims to do, and for some patients it's benefits outweigh the risks.
If you removed every medication that has ever been responsible for a patient's death, there would be very few medications left.
The risks of using Vioxx are apparently greater than originally thought. That justifies stronger cautions and recommendations limiting it's use to where the benefits justify the risk.
If Merck really did fraudulently hide the true risks, then they should be held liable. However, Natural News doesn't seem like the most unbiased source on this particular topic, so I'd suggest a healthy level of skepticism about their objectivity.
Amen to that. I'm waiting to see if this appears elsewhere.
AMA and other medical orgs have had an unholy alliance with drug companies for decades.
This is why many docs push ineffective, dangerous and most importantly-expensive drugs on patients and resent the well informed.
Whatever Merck does it is mostly not science at all, maybe the basic chemistry is but they get done with that the first day. Expecting some scientific method to hold when they aren’t doing science is a disease.
The title of the article is : Merck Caught in Massive Scientific Fraud as In-House Authors were Disguised as Independent Scientists (opinion)
The word Opinion is in there for a reason as it was apparantly written by a kid with pimples who eats oatbrand
He believes Merck should be shut down a nd the peoplw there shot ....
In Short this article is trash Why did you post it?
see my # 22
Here’s the Washington Post article.
Guess that’s just opinion also.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/15/AR2008041502086.html
Are you really an amateur or do you just play one on TV?
Why dont you post that article....its not opinion like the one you posted and it includes the possibility that the accusations against Merck are just just that, accusations ...and that there is something called trial lawyers involved....Dont hold your breath waiting for the demise of Merck
Actually, your point is well taken. A nurse practitioner from a superb program told me the risk-benefit analysis she did did not seem to be in favor of this drug when older medications had longer track records without the possible complications. She has been proven to be correct in the long run. She wouldn’t prescribe these for her patients routinely and feels there is a very limited group for which they are appropriate.
I posted a message some onths ago about this company. And how an AIDS drug they were working on killed someone. And how they were more worried about the money they lost rather than the person that was killed.
I got flames for that post by some of the Company men conservatives on this site.
Guess my point has been proven. I am not suprised MERCK has done this. Not suprised at all.
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