The Green Files

Some slightly related from Technorati and Google.

[Watching Washington] Drug Censors: When well respected physician Gurkirpal Singh of Stanford University started raising questions about the safety of the prescription painkiller Vioxx, the drug's maker set out to discredit him -- even though they'd earlier recurited him to promote the drug -- and even though the company knew by then the heart risks of Vioxx.

[Pharma Watch] Take the money and shut up: " I received a call from a medical director at Merck, stating that someone on my staff had been making wild and irresponsible public statements about the cardiovascular side effects of Vioxx," Fries says. He says Sherwood hinted there would be repercussions for Fries and Stanford if Singh's statements didn't stop. He was left with the sense that Merck's financial support to Stanford was at risk.

[Celebrex and Vioxx Update] Vioxx Danger Buried by Merck: In 2001, when the FDA became increasingly aware of the dangers of the drug, it went to Merck and asked the company to include prominent new warnings on the drug label. Merck balked and complained that the FDA should, instead, highlight the drug's positive gastrointestinal features. Instead of demanding the inclusion of the warning label (like a fully empowered regulatory body might do), the FDA caved in and actually reached a compromise with Merck that resulted in a new label promoting the claim that Vioxx would caused fewer stomach upsets!

[Vioxx Daily] FDA Chooses Drug Industry Health Over Public Health: The FDA veteran said he was "told in very clear, emphatic and very terse, unfriendly tone of voice and terms, we were not to present these data. These data could not be presented." Last year, Graham led a study on Merck's Vioxx that indicated 30,000 to 55,000 Vioxx-related deaths in the United States, and more still globally. Similar questions about cardiovascular problems have been raised about Pfizer's Celebrex and Bextra.

[MemoryBlog] FDA Scientist Censored at Drug Safety Summit: Last November, the FDA publicly repudiated comments by Dr Graham naming five drugs, including AstraZeneca's cholesterol lowering pill Crestor and GSK's asthma drug Serevent, that he thought could be too dangerous for use. The agency argued that it has struck the right balance of benefits and risks when assessing new drugs for launch, but it has been accused of being too close to the drug industry and has faced political calls to split its safety monitoring functions into an agency separate from the drug approvals process.

[Blog.lawinfo.com] LawInfo Blog: Attorney Links, Lawyer Websites, Locating Law Firms ...: Merck’s disclosures stemmed from a motion accusing Rogers of committing fraud against the court. The company said the Vioxx samples Rogers provided to them as the medicine her husband was taking didn’t leave the company until six months after he died. Moreover, the doctor who was treating her husband said he had no record of giving him Vioxx samples.

[Legalnewswatch.com] Vioxx Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Merck in Illinois: you need a case like mine....35 years old , in good health other than rheumatoid arthritis and taking vioxx for more that 18 months(4years)....in january at the age of 34 I suffered an acute occipital lobe stroke...causing vison loss on the right side in both eyes...I also have an angiogram performed at the time that shows no evidence of heart disease...therefore being no other trigger for the stroke than the vioxx....

[Xnerg.blogspot.com] skippy the hussein kangaroo: a former merck employee at the center of the story, dr. louis sherwood, ... ...dr. louis sherwood's campaign to "fix" vioxx critic gurkirpal singh began ...

[Aurorawdc.com] Competitive Intelligence: FDA Whistleblower: Broad Consequences of ...: While I was in Bombay this past Thursday, a certain FDA whistleblower decided to smack the FDA across the face for its buddy-buddy relationships with Big Pharma during Senate testimony on the Merck debacle, with Gilmartin looking on. Commenting that the FDA's slack could prove to be the source of the "single greatest drug safety catastrophe in the history of this country or the history of the world," the agency researcher, Dr.

[Animalswithinanimals.com] stAllio!'s way: merck expected singh to be a good little paid-off corporate shill and ix-nay on the eart-hay ... Here the dossier is filled with Dr. Singh's take on Vioxx, ...

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