Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15885

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.
Vioxx marketing campaign was misleading, Federal Court told
The Australian 2009 Jun 25
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25686843-5013404,00.html

Full text:

LAWYERS for the man who is suing the manufacturer of anti-arthritis drug Vioxx claim the company is negligent because it was misleading in the way it marketed the product.

Julian Burnside QC told the Federal Court yesterday that Merck & Co and its Australian subsidiary, Merck, Sharp and Dohme, gave general practitioners inaccurate information about the cardio-vascular safety of Vioxx.

He said the company was internally concerned about the association between the drug and an increased risk of a heart attack but still sent sales staff out to doctors reassuring them there was nothing wrong with it.

Mr Burnside is representing lead plaintiff Graeme Peterson, 58, in a class action that alleges Vioxx contributed to their heart attacks or strokes. He also alleges the company covered up the cardio-vascular risks of the drug long before it voluntarily withdrew it in late 2004.

Lawyers for Merck & Co claim there is no scientific proof that Vioxx caused heart attacks and that the company acted reasonably in the marketing of Vioxx.

As part of his closing address yesterday, Mr Burnside told Federal Court judge Christopher Jessup that there was a difference in what Merck knew about the safety of the drug and what it made public.

He said that at the same time that Merck management were internally expressing concerns over whether Vioxx caused increased heart attacks in the wake of a 2000 clinical trial, sales representatives were instructed to say the opposite.

“The question is what did Merck know about the CV (cardio-vascular) safety of Vioxx in comparison to what they said?” he said. “We invite you to find that a marketing campaign with this context and this content was misleading and was negligent in that it wasn’t a reasonable response to the circumstances in which it found itself.”

Mr Burnside said Merck & Co research laboratories head Ed Scolnick wrote in emails in 2001 that he was “racked with doubts” about Vioxx and the outcome of trials that found it increased the risk of heart attacks compared with another drug.

But Mr Burnside said a true explanation of the emails would never be given because Mr Scolnick had not been called to testify in the trial.

“His absence from the witness box is highly significant,” he said.

When Mr Burnside was presenting his case about the marketing of Vioxx, Justice Jessup said it was expected that pharmaceutical companies needed to market their products. “These companies are, of course, driven by their profit margins,” he said. “If people didn’t buy their products … you may as well shut down MRL (Merck Research Laboratories) … and there won’t be any advances in the pharmaceutical industry.”

The case is expected to finish today.