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Sanity in the legal system..finally
I started law school because I love law. As I read more and more cases it became apparent to me that decisions, for the most part, were “common sense” right. It is not a perfect system but then again we are not perfect either. When the first Vioxx settlements were handed down I was amazed at the damages that were awarded..hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases. I had read most of the cases and there was no conclusive proof that Vioxx had caused the deaths stipulated by the plaintiffs. But when someone dies before his or her time people want to blame someone and Merck was an easy target.
As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning:
.At the beginning of the Vioxx hysteria, some analysts predicted Merck's liability could spiral as high as $30 billion, threatening the company itself. Last year, Merck settled most of the cases for $4.85 billion. But since Vioxx was taken off the market in 2004, only three of the 20 suits that have gone to juries have ended favorably for plaintiffs. There were other reality checks along the way: Vioxx plaintiffs were denied class-action status in a federal court in 2006, and by the New Jersey Supreme Court last year
Merck's decision to pull Vioxx from the shelves in 2004 may have been self-protective corporate strategy, but it wasn't a medical indictment of the drug. Cardiovascular risks have been shown to emerge only after a year and a half of constant use. Many patients with joint pain and other orthopedic ailments can be helped by Vioxx and other Cox-2 inhibitors, which aren't as rough on the stomach as high doses of ibuprofen, a frequent substitute.
Plenty of patients and doctors would like to see Vioxx back on the shelf as an option to ease otherwise intractable pain. All drugs have risks, and the danger in the Vioxx case was that a tort frenzy would destroy an industry that provides jobs and vital therapies to millions of people. We're glad the courts are allowing reason to prevail.
Can you imagine if Vioxx returns to the market? Yes all drugs have risks but the key here is that consumers, patients and physicians are entitled to know ALL the risks of prescription medications. Drug companies cannot hide behind data anymore with statements like “we are analyzing the results to determine the correlation”. Indeed drug companies have made it extremely difficult for patients and HCP’s to learn about new reported side effects and risks of medications. It would be, for example, relatively easy for drug companies to develop a CRM program to inform patients and HCP’s about new reported side effects and the status of these reports but then that might mean endangering a successful product.
Before Merck walks away like a proud peacock from the latest rulings it had better learn a valuable lesson: never hide data and always put patients health in front of profits. If they continue with business as usual than it will only be a matter of time before some attorney somewhere starts action that could bankrupt a pharma company for good.