Vioxx: A Mercky Story

"After paying out almost $5 billion in the US, Merck is defending a class action in Australia where a journal that never was came to light. Meanwhile in the UK victims see no prospect of compensation - writes Prof. Peter Saunders"

There are about 10,000 people in the United Kingdom who believe they are due compensation for damages they suffered while on Merck's Vioxx. These persons cannot get legal aid and if they lose they will have to pay Merck’s costs. Merck has deep pockets so the company has effectively been handed a default victory by the British government. However, in Australia, 1000 Vioxx users are bringing a class action to trial, and the outcome there may be quite different.
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Merck employee wants to search and destroy noncompliant doctors

A fascinating court case in Australia has been playing out around some people who had heart attacks after taking the Merck drug Vioxx. This medication turned out to increase the risk of heart attacks in people taking it, although that finding was arguably buried in their research, and Merck has paid out more than £2bn to 44,000 people in America – however, they deny any fault.

British users of the drug have had their application for legal aid rejected, incidentally: the health minister, Ivan Lewis, promised to help them, but documents obtained by the Guardian last week showed that within hours Merck launched an expensive lobbying effort that convinced the minister to back off.

This is a shame, because court cases can be tremendously revealing.

The first fun thing to emerge in the Australian case is email documentation showing staff at Merck made a "hit list" of doctors who were critical of the company, or of the drug. This list contained words such as "neutralise", "neutralised" and "discredit" next to the names of various doctors.

"We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," said one email, from a Merck employee. Staff are also alleged to have used other tactics, such as trying to interfere with academic appointments, and dropping hints about how funding to institutions might dry up. Institutions might think about whether they wish to receive money from a company like that in future. Worse still, is the revelation that Merck paid the publisher Elsevier to produce a publication.

The relationship between big pharma and publishers is perilous. Any industry with global revenues of $600bn can afford to buy quite a lot of adverts, and pharmaceutical companies also buy glossy expensive "reprints" of the trials it feels flattered by. As we noted in this column two months ago, there is evidence that all this money distorts editorial decisions.

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Sounds like the Mob, doesn't it? We wonder if physicians, after reading about these tactics, will not question the Pharma-funded education they have received - and the Merck manual itself.
Hat tip to MDE: Thank you.

Gardasil in UK

A trial of the new cervical cancer vaccine programme for schoolgirls across the country has encountered opposition from parents, with 20% refusing to give permission for their daughters to have the jab.

A third of those who gave a reason for refusal said they were worried about the long-term safety, on which there is no data. But some may have concerns that allowing vaccination may promote promiscuity, because the cancer-causing virus which the vaccination targets is passed on in sexual intercourse. Two schools declined to take part for religious reasons.

The findings from the pilot study, involving 2,817 girls aged 12 and 13 in year 8 at 36 secondary schools in Greater Manchester, are published by the British Medical Journal today. In an accompanying editorial, Professor Jo Waller and Dr Jane Wardle from the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London say 12- and 13-year-old girls whose parents refuse consent may be competent to decide for themselves.

Article here

Aside from its ALUMINUM adjuvant, Gardasil has a few other teeny problems.

You can get these HPV warts from non-intimate activities, like sharing a towel at a pool.
Many Americans are already infected with HPV according to the Washinton Post. Is the sky falling? No. It isn't even a blip on the public health screen. Most people who get these warts get over them without ever knowing they had them. In Canada, a country of 30 million, there were a mere 400 mortalities from cervical cancer last year.

$o, what's this all about? Follow the money. Just like Bush's attempt to screen the entire US population for mental illness (TMAP), this story has links to Texas. Read about Texas' Governor Goodhair's good deeds for Merck here.

What You Didn't Know About Vaccines And Human Animal Husbandry

By Mark Owen

February 14, 2005

In 1946, future pharmaceutical czar George Merck reported to the US Secretary of War, that he'd managed to weaponize the toxin extracted from the Brucella bacterium and to isolate it into an indestructible crystalline form using only the DNA particles. Aerial spraying of the crystals via chem-trails was deployed on Chinese and Korean populations during the Korean War. Many veterans of the war later developed Multiple Sclerosis. The army recognized that the MS was Brucella-related and paid the veterans compensation. Although the Brucella micoplasma can lay dormant for decades, it can be triggered by vaccines. Vaccines have been mandatory in the US military since 1911.

Besides MS, this bacterium has been linked to a variety of diseases including; AIDS, cancer, diabetes, Parkinsons, Alzheimers and arthritis. In 2000, Dr. Charles Engel of the National Institute of Health stated that the brucella mycoplasma was probably responsible for chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia as well.

In addition to the aerosol vector, mosquitoes were heavily tested as pathogen dispersal agents. In the 1950s, the Dominion Parasite Laboratory in Belleville, Canada was raising 100 million mosquitoes per month. They were then shipped to Queens University in Kingston and other facilities where they were infected with the crystalline disease agent.

A large outbreak of chronic fatigue was reported in 1957 in Punta Gorda, Florida. The previous week a huge influx of mosquitoes was reported. The National Institute of Health stated that 450 persons became ill with chronic fatigue within the month. Many such tests have been carried out on civilians over the last 50 years.

Dr. Maurice Hilleman, Merck's current chief virologist, stated recently that the Brucella pathogen is now carried by everyone in North America and possibly the world.

con't here-link