Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15654
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Rout M.
Nurses paid to scout for Vioxx drug firm
The Australian 2009 May 19
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25504484-2702,00.html
Full text:
AUSTRALIAN marketing staff from pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co paid specialist nurses half-a-million dollars to “hunt” through patient records for potential candidates for their blockbuster anti-arthritis drug Vioxx.
The Federal Court was told the company aimed to identify 100 patients of each targeted general practitioner who were not taking Vioxx and could be recommended to take up the drug for their condition.
Known as the “bone and joint care program”, the marketing initiative employed “bone care” nurses — via an independent third party — to go through patients’ records with permission of their general practitioner.
A class action heard yesterday that nurses interviewed these patients, some of whom were over 60 and had osteoarthritis, about their condition and options for pain management.
The plaintiff also said yesterday in the court in Melbourne that Merck gave pharmacists incentives to recommend Vioxx to patients who were on other drugs such as paracetamol.
Merck, Sharp and Dohme and its parent company Merck & Co are being sued by more than 1000 Australians, led by Graeme Peterson, who alleges the drug caused his heart attack in December 2003.
Mr Peterson says the company knew about the cardio-vascular risk of Vioxx and played it down long before it voluntarily recalled the drug in September, 2004. Merck is fighting the class action, claiming it did nothing wrong.
Australian Penny Dobson, who was Merck’s marketing director for Vioxx and other drugs from 2001 to 2003, confirmed to the court yesterday that the $500,000 bone and joint care program was implemented.
“The purpose was to review patients who perhaps need a change in their arthritis therapy,” she said of the program, detailed in an internal marketing plan. “We hoped Vioxx … would be an appropriate medication.” Ms Dobson said the team had aimed to identify 100 possible candidates for Vioxx at each GP.
“We employed bone care nurses who were employed by a third party agency, they were not Merck employees,” she said. “They would have had access to GP records with permission of the GPs.”
The court also heard of the “incentivise” program by the Merck marketing team in Australia to use pharmacists to recommend suitable patients talk to their doctor about Vioxx. When pressed Ms Dobson said she could not remember the exact incentives but they may have given out Merck manuals to pharmacists who helped them.
“(The aim of the program was) to ask patients that were buying paracetamol whether they were happy … (and say) there are new medicines available and why don’t you ask your doctor,” she said.
Ms Dobson, called to give evidence by Merck, also said the company never promoted Vioxx as “safe” to the marketplace, rather they just used the heading “safety” in promotional material addressing health concerns about the drug, like “cardiovascular safety”.
“Safe means something in particular. Safety is more of a heading,” she said. “We did not ever say Vioxx was safe.”
Counsel for the plaintiff, Julian Burnside, QC, tendered what he called a “light-hearted” funny marketing presentation given to Australian Merck sales representatives at an end of year celebration. He said the presentation made fun of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association — which had previously run an article raising concerns about the cardiovascular safety of Vioxx — by renaming it the Journal of the American Mullet Association complete with a picture of a man with a mullet-style haircut.
Counsel for Merck, Peter Garling SC, indicated he would like to make an application to restrict the broadcast and publication of the mock presentation.
The trial continues.
