Baffling

I'm amazed with this recent news about a drug called Vioxx.

To recap the story, for anyone who has'nt heard...

Merck & Co. pulled the drug plug on its popular arthritis drug, when a study found that it doubles the risk of heart attack and strokes.

News of the drug's dangers came from a three-year study aimed at showing Vioxx could prevent the recurrence of polyps, which can turn cancerous, in the colon and rectum, according to an Associated Press report.

Merck stopped the study after discovering participants had double the risk of a heart attack and stroke compared to others taking dummy pills. The AP report said the heart risks and other cardiovascular complications appeared 18 months after patients started taking Vioxx, which also is prescribed for acute pain and disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome.

An estimated 84 million prescriptions for the drug have been written since it was introduced in 1999, and about 2 million people were taking it at the time of Merck's announcement, the AP reported.


Now here's the thing...
Doctors across the US have been aware of problems with this drug for some time now. In fact, a Dr. Yocum, said he was a member of the FDA panel that approved Vioxx and he expressed concerns early on about the drug's propensity, especially in higher doses, to cause fluid retention.

The Food and Drug Administration said there were early signs of potential problems with Vioxx. Because of a Merck study, warnings were put on the drug's label in 2001, and the FDA has been monitoring reported problems...

But they have done nothing about it!

Merck themselves, amazingly, pulled their own product! Now given the way these companies operate, there must be some serious shit going on with this drug for them to voluntarilly pull it. It goes back awhile. This drug was only approved five years ago but it has already developed quite a "rap sheet".



Even though worrisome evidence began to emerge shortly after the drug's approval five years ago, sales of Vioxx soared on the strength of one of the biggest direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns yet for a prescription medication. In the first six months of this year alone, Merck spent an estimated $45 million advertising the drug.

Yet in interviews, some doctors say they had started to cool to the drug because of its other known risks, including high blood pressure. Hess said he has seen patients in their 30s and 40s develop dangerously high blood pressure after taking Vioxx -- "high enough to take people to the emergency room."

For the same reason, Dr. Norman Chapel, a heart specialist in Edina, said he's steered patients away from Vioxx for more than a year. "(I) encourage patients to cut their dose if not to switch to another drug," he said.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a statement Thursday, noting that the risk of heart attack and stroke appeared to be "very small." But it said Merck "did the right thing" by halting Vioxx sales.

This was not the first time that the drug had been linked to heart risks. In June 2000, one of Merck's own studies found that patients on Vioxx had a greater number of heart attacks than patients on other pain killers. The company changed the drug's warning label to note the risk, and launched a more extensive study.

Then, last October, researchers at Harvard University reported that they had found an elevated risk of heart attacks among 54,000 Medicare patients taking Vioxx.

Merck officials dismissed the findings, even though the company paid for the research. But many doctors took note.


Two months ago, in a study of thousands of patients, an FDA investigator found that those on Vioxx had three times the risk of heart attack and sudden death as those taking no painkillers. The patients on Vioxx also had a 50 percent higher risk than those on a similar painkiller, Celebrex.

BUT THAT DOES'NT MATTER!!!!!!!!!

Again, Merck officials said they were confident of the drug's overall safety, and pointed out that they had already put heart-attack warnings on its label.

But skepticism was growing. "You could tell something was wrong because all the evidence was in the same direction," said David Guay, a professor in the University of Minnesota's School of Pharmacy.



Is it because this drug was No. 20 on the list of top-selling prescription drugs in the nation, with $1.8 billion in U.S. sales last year, that nobody, not even the government, wanted to cease it's sales?

Crying out fucking loud! Is this the same government who wants to hold our hands and protect us from ourselves? Making sure theres nothing Obscene on TV, making sure nobody breathes our second hand smoke, making sure we all wear helmets and seatbelts and dont use cell phones while we drive??? Protecting us from the ALMIGHTY DEVIL'S WEED!!

Is this the same government? Do we only "protect the best intrests of the people" when it's self-serving, to line another fucking politician's pocket?

With the majority of people in this country being either obese or overweight, and our diets consisting of mostly shit food...
it is my humble opinion that a painkiller, an asprin substitute, which increases heart risks this dramatically, is about the last thing this country needs.

but it makes money, right?