[BlackRain]

In the future if you're ill, don't call a doctor, call a lawyer, they can protect you much better than the "evil ones".

I don't agree with mega lawsuit settlements. However...

If a pharmaceutical company still markets a drug that it knows to damage patients, it's still okay in your book?

That appears to be what Merck did, it just wanted to keep making the $2.5 billion annual profits on Vioxx sales and patient's health be damned.

[battlecry]

I'm not sure that you will find a modern drug that will not harm some patient. Have you read the disclaimers and the notes that come with the drugs? Enough to make you sick, I tell you...

[krshnbrn]

The Cleveland Clinic, one of the better respected group of chest cutters out there where trying to warn of the risks of this drug 5 years ago. Merck fought them all the way, can't feel too sorry for them.

[Mister Baredog]

Your living with the illusion that drugs are safe.

Even aspirin has side effects which can be deadly to some.

Your logic is flawed.

This is another field day for lawyers.

The lawyers will try to make Merck responsible for EVERY ailment they can that any consumer of Vioxx suffered.

It's the TORT system that will kill more people than imaginable. Are you a lawyer, just curious?

[slowhandluke]

If a pharmaceutical company still markets a drug that it knows to damage patients, it's still okay in your book?

I suppose you'd get rid of prednisone then? It does serious damage: loss of eyesight, thinning bones, weight increase, diabetes. Those are only what it gave me, not the total list. However, I would not have taken it if the benefits had not (at first) been better than not taking it.

Does this excuse any company from hiding side effects? No, it does not. If you keep to the 'no damage' rule, we'll have precious few things on the pharmacy shelf.

The issue is not drugs with damage, it's uninformed consent. The claim is that while Merck knew about possible damage, the doctors prescribing Vioxx did not nor did the patients taking Vioxx. Had everyone known about the possible damage, there would be no case here.

[BartMan1]

By your logic , Bayer should remove all aspirin tablets from the market -- the fact is , far more people die every year due to untoward side effects of aspirin therapy such as GI bleeding than ever died or were harmed by Vioxx.

The question a prescriber of any medication should ask: does the benefit of the drug outweigh the risk for potential harm ?

Having prescribed Vioxx hundreds if not thousands of times, I can tell you that I rest easy that even with what we know today, the folks for whom I prescribed the drug were treated with a drug whose benefits outweighed the risk associated with treatment.