Kia Franklin
New Research Attacks Part of Merck’s Vioxx Defense
In the Wall Street Journal today is an article on a new Vioxx research study showing that the drug increased patients’ risk of heart attack immediately after they began taking it, not, as Merck claimed in its defense, 18 months into use. The study also showed that patients’ risk of heart attack completely disappeared within two weeks of stopping use of the painkiller. Read Eric Turkewitz’s blog on this study.
Posted at 11:13 AM, Jul 03, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
I give up with Eric.
These are old data, not a new study. No one died of Vioxx cardiac events. If you have a couple thousand old people, taken off their baby aspirin, you will have cardiac events, probably more than in the study. The size of the population makes the small differences statistically significant. When corrected for the amplification of significance by sample size, there is no statistical significance. The different in proportions were never clinically significant. These differences warranted a warning to patients and doctors. They did not warrant taking a drug off the market, disrupting the safe care of millions of patients, doing well on Vioxx.
If a patient was a Vioxx responder and had to scramble for alternatives, starting from scratch, thank lawyer intimidation of Merck. The FDA did not want Vioxx off the market.
http://www.newstarget.com/005043.html
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | July 4, 2007 12:26 PM