NOLA.com: Search: "Merck didn't reveal Vioxx risks, professor says
Man's suit blames drug for heart attack
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
By Susan Finch
A Harvard Medical School professor who studies prescription drugs told a federal court jury in New Orleans on Tuesday that Merck & Co. didn't level with doctors about the risks and benefits of Vioxx, a painkiller approved for sale in 1999 but pulled off the market in the fall of 2004 after studies linked its use to heart attacks.
Testifying via videotaped deposition in the lawsuit of a Kentucky man who blames Vioxx for his 2003 heart attack, Dr. Jerry Avorn said a Merck-financed study that compared the effects of Vioxx and Naproxen, an older drug of the same type, in 8,000 arthritis patients turned up an unexpected finding: Patients on Vioxx had five times more heart attacks as those on Naproxen.
But in a published article about the study, which also showed the two drugs performed about equally as painkillers, Merck said only that patients who took Naproxen had a decreased rate of heart attacks, Avorn said."