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When I stumbled upon a recent Guardian article about the current court case in Australia regarding the link between taking Merck drug Vioxx, and suffering a heart attack, I was not immediately surpris

When I stumbled upon a recent Guardian article about the current court case in Australia regarding the link between taking Merck drug Vioxx, and suffering a heart attack, I was not immediately surprised. This is not the first time that a drug company has been faced with a lawsuit due to adverse effects of their drug afterall.The fact that despite affecting some 44,000 US citizens, Merck refuse to admit fault is clearly bad PR management.

Couple this with the somewhat sinister cover up operation involved in hiding the research which suggested the drug's link to cardiac problems and you have a regrettable situation which does little to dissipate the general distrust the public have of pharma. Merck even went to the trouble of lobbying the UK health minister, Ivan Lewis, to ensure that British users of Vioxx do not receive legal aid.

The Guardian article reveals how in the Australian court case, incredible information has been revealed such as lists of doctors critical of Vioxx, and action points next to them such as "neutralise", "neutralised" or "discredit." Other tactics stooped so low as suggesting funding being stopped and getting involved in academic appointments (or lack of!) It really seems to be the stuff of a John Grisham novel.

Much is being made of the partnership Merck created with global publisher Elsevier. The result was a somewhat biased publication 'The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine,' which was basically a group of reprinted summaries of other articles. Many of these articles were about Vioxx (in issue 2, 9 out of 29 were) and all of them were positive about the drug.

Elsevier, despite at first denying that this was really a journal, have since apologised for what happened and their part in it.

As The Guardian points out, it is somewhat depressing that so much money is spent on cover up jobs such as this as drug companies desperately try to shoehorn a less than viable drug into the 'blockbuster' category.

Have we forgotten that drug development should be to protect and prolong life.. not risk it? What has happened to the mentality of an industry that will go to such lengths to hide such serious side effects. You have to wonder at the pressure on Merck execs if such tactics were deemed necessary to keep Vioxx on the shelves.
And you have to wonder about the Elsevier execs who appear to have valued the cash over the integrity of their brand name in this case.

Did anyone stop to think of the effect of the printed word? Doctors reading those journals would have come away with a rosy picture of Vioxx, and perhaps unwittingly prescribed the drug and been responsible for many heart attacks. Should doctors have to start becoming cynical about the journals that are meant to help in advising and informing them about new drugs on the market?

Lots of questions here and I doubt there are many satisfactory answers to hand. We can at least take comfort from stories such as Roche recently announcing they will be providing an additional donation of 5.65 million packs of Tamiflu to WHO. However, the severity of such poor judgement from the industry in the Vioxx case and others really makes one wonder about when pharma's heart is going to be in the right place?