Federal Vioxx jury says Merck not liable in death

[WhiteTara]

a lot has slid under the radar of the heartless shooting.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-02-17T235715Z_01_N17268590_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-MERCK-VIOXX-DC.XML

Federal Vioxx jury says Merck not liable in death
Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:58 PM GMT

By Michael Depp

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A federal jury said on Friday that drugmaker Merck Co. Inc. was not liable in the 2001 death of a Florida man who used the recalled painkiller Vioxx.

The eight-person jury's verdict was the first in a federal court and the third out of more than 9,000 cases filed against Merck in U.S. and state courts claiming the company hid the once-best-selling painkiller's health risks.

Specifically, the jury found Vioxx was not a defective product, that Merck was neither negligent in making the product nor did it fail to warn users of its risks.

big pharma wins again

[babylonsister]

1. And in TX a widow won $26M...

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=FT&Date=20060217&ID=5518378

snip//

Merck has received split decisions in the first two trials held in state courts. It lost the first trial in Texas, where a jury awarded $26m in damages to a widow, and it won a case in New Jersey in November.

snip//

[Warpy]

2. The problem with Vioxx was how it was marketed

as a pain control to be used long term. Those Cox-2 inhibitors should be used short term, only. I found them to be astonishingly good at ending dental pain, and I suspect they'd be equally good for a lot of acute pain.

Merck knew full well there was a problem and Merck did hide that problem for several years. The article is unclear about whether or not this particular person took the drug after it was recalled, or before.

The real root of the problem is the drug war, though. Big Pill is determined to come up with a non opiod treatment from chronic pain, and it seems that the safest long term pain control is the opioids. Everything they have come up with from aspirin on down the line has too many life threatening side effects when used over the years that pain patients must use drugs in order to cope to be a viable solution, and the deaths of pain patients are the result.

[pitohui]

3. well sorry to say i'm rooting for merck

vioxx was a good drug, and it doesn't cause that mental fuzziness or in my case nausea caused by the opiates, we do need something new that is not an opiate and allows us to keep our mental clarity while fighting pain