Are Pharmaceutical Companies Compromising Your Health?

In 2004, Merck pulled its popular drug Vioxx off the market after concerns about the drug's tendency to cause heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots surfaced. But later evidence showed that Merck had known about the dangers Vioxx posed before it pulled the drug off the market.

Thanks to Merck's sly marketing and commercially funded studies, Vioxx was kept on the market longer than it should have been. In fact, doctors in the United States prescribed $7 billion worth of Vioxx prescriptions, thinking that it was safer than similar drugs available on the market. Researchers estimate that Vioxx caused upwards of 144,000 cases of heart disease.

Merck conducted its own studies on Vioxx, which clearly showed that the drug was more dangerous than its counterparts on the market and caused significantly more heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots. So why didn't doctors prescribing the drug know more about these studies? Some say the answer lies in the journals that published articles on Vioxx and Merck's decetive marketing tactics.

Today, most clinical trials are commercially funded, which some suspect has led scientists and corporations to manipulate the findings of these trials.  The journals that publish these findings are also dependent on the drug companies for financial support. Reprints of favorable articles can cost upwards of $1.75 million, but these are then handed out to doctors who prescribe the medications, ultimately generating profits for the drug companies. In 2003, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that clinical trials that received commercial funding were three times more likely to conclude that the drug being studied was safe, compared to non-commercially funded studies.

Often, the results of these studies are not made available to the journals publishing articles about the drugs. This veil of secrecy has led many to believe that the articles published are not trustworthy, but they are nevertheless relied upon by doctors prescribing these medicines to thousands, if not millions, of patients.

The marketing tactics used for Vioxx were even more suspicious. Merck told its sales representatives not to bring up negative studies relating to the use of Vioxx when speaking with doctors. If the doctors questioned the studies, sales representatives were told to direct any questions to Merck's headquarters and to stick to the information contained on the drug's label.

By the time Vioxx was pulled off the market, it had generated $2.5 billion in sales each year and was taken by an estimated 80 million patients.

Merck recently redesigned the label of Zocor (generic name Simvastatin), its widely popular cholesterol-lowering drug, because research indicated its 80mg dose is more dangerous than previously though.  Over the past few years, Simvastatin has skyrocketed to being the second most prescribed drug in the United States. Despite calls from some doctors to take 80mg Zocor off the market, Merck refuses.  Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, has been a staunch supporter of banning 80mg Simvastatin.  He argues that the recent restriction on the drug is too little too late.

Consumers will have to wait to see whether evidence comes forward that Merck had actual knowledge of widespread muscle damage caused by Zocor. But all of this begs the question, are drugs becoming so expensive to develop that pharmaceutical companies will risk patient's lives to recoup research costs and generate large profits before they take these dangerous drugs off the market? Or are these companies simply greedy for money?