Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17361

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

Woodhead M
Vioxx case on misleading GP promotion
6Minutes.com 2010 Mar 5
http://www.rheumatologyupdate.com.au/news/vioxx-case-on-misleading-gp-promotion

Full text:

The landmark award of $287,000 compensation to a Melbourne man who had a heart attack in 2003 while taking rofecoxib (Vioxx) was based on the way the drug was promoted as safe to GPs.

In a case against Merck in the Federal Court today the judge said he accepted that the drug carried a two-fold higher risk of myocardial infarction, although Merck would not have known about this for certain until trial results became available in 2004.

However the judge said there were early warning signs about possible cardiovascular risks of rofecoxib that the company either ignored or played down in its promotion to GPs.

The judge heard how drug reps were given advice to say: “Doctor, this is just mischief and misinformation created by representatives of the other COX-2 [inhibitors]. Vioxx has no problem with cardiovascular disease compared to conventional NSAIDs or the other COX-2 [inhibitors].”

[The company], under its common law duty of care, ought to have warned his doctor of the cardiovascular signal to which I have referred, and ought not to have emphasised the safety of Vioxx,” the judge said in his summary.

The plaintiff lawyers, Slater and Gordon, said the win would pave the way for a class action by several hundred other Australian patients who had a heart attack while using Vioxx.

In a statement, MSD Australia said it was reviewing the judgement with a view to an appeal, and the said the evidence showed the company acted responsibly with Vioxx, regarding “the careful safety monitoring while Vioxx was on the market, right up through the decision to voluntarily withdraw the medicine in September 2004.”