corner
Healthy Skepticism
Join us to help reduce harm from misleading health information.
Increase font size   Decrease font size   Print-friendly view   Print
Register Log in

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17532

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: Journal Article

Moynihan R
Australian court findings on Vioxx may have global ramifications
BMJ 2010 Mar 16; 340:c1485
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/340/mar16_3/c1485


Abstract:

A court in Melbourne has ruled that the anti-arthritis drug rofecoxib (Vioxx) increased the risk of heart attack, while finding that the Australian subsidiary of its manufacturer engaged in negligent and misleading behaviour.

In a class action judgment delivered earlier this month, the federal court judge Christopher Jessup found that rofecoxib contributed to the heart attack of plaintiff Graeme Peterson.

The judge ruled that Merck Sharp & Dohme “fell short” of what was required in the reasonable discharge of its “duty of care” by failing to warn Mr Peterson’s doctor of the drug’s potential cardiac risk and because sales representatives overemphasised its safety.

He also ruled that the drug was not of “merchantable quality” and that, because “Vioxx involved about a doubling of the risk of heart attack, it was not reasonably fit for the purpose of being used for the relief of arthritic pain” (www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/180.html).

The class…

 

  Healthy Skepticism on RSS   Healthy Skepticism on Facebook   Healthy Skepticism on Twitter

Please
Click to Register

(read more)

then
Click to Log in
for free access to more features of this website.

Forgot your username or password?

You are invited to
apply for membership
of Healthy Skepticism,
if you support our aims.

Pay a subscription

Support our work with a donation

Buy Healthy Skepticism T Shirts


If there is something you don't like, please tell us. If you like our work, please tell others.

Email a Friend








...to influence multinational corporations effectively, the efforts of governments will have to be complemented by others, notably the many voluntary organisations that have shown they can effectively represent society’s public-health interests…
A small group known as Healthy Skepticism; formerly the Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing) has consistently and insistently drawn the attention of producers to promotional malpractice, calling for (and often securing) correction. These organisations [Healthy Skepticism, Médecins Sans Frontières and Health Action International] are small, but they are capable; they bear malice towards no one, and they are inscrutably honest. If industry is indeed persuaded to face up to its social responsibilities in the coming years it may well be because of these associations and others like them.
- Dukes MN. Accountability of the pharmaceutical industry. Lancet. 2002 Nov 23; 360(9346)1682-4.