Merck vs the grandmother:
Merck & Co. will be back in court in Atlantic City, New Jersey, next week as the next Vioxx liability trial gets under way with the drug maker facing a 68-year-old grandmother who blames the withdrawn pain drug for her 2004 heart attack.Elaine Doherty says she used Vioxx daily for three years to treat pain from arthritis of the hands and knees, and even continued to take the medicine after suffering a heart attack in January of 2004.
Related posts:
- Plaintiffs are starting to drop their Vioxx lawsuits
- Merck’s prevailing Vioxx strategy
- Bring Vioxx back?
- The success of tort reform
- Zelnorm, RIP
- How the deck is stacked against patient apologies
- Obesity and heart attacks
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{ 2 comments }
This is a pain management issue – and, once again – we must recognize that nonsteroidals carry a certain index associated with important side effects.
Forget, for now, cardiovascular risks; focus on the other side effects.
Mild to moderate doses of opioids should be considered in the mid-elderly with refractory pain. They are safe and not likely to cause addiction.
Show me a therapy for arthritis that improve pain and functional status that does not carry some risk. Most antirheumatics have a substantial risk of serious side effects and yet people willingly will trade a risk of death for potential improved funcion. Why should the non-steroidal class of drugs be any different?
The only question is not whether the drugs are a modest risk for cardiovascular outcomes, but whether the company unreasonably prevented this risk from being adequately being weighed by the the patient prior to use.
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