Originally published September 8 2005
Vioxx ruling offers hope for users of Indian version of the drug
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
In the wake of the recent $253 million award in favor of the widow of a former Vioxx user, Indian users of the local version of the same drug, Rofecoxib, have hope that they will be able to get compensation for side effects they suffered before the drug was banned last year.
A Texas jury's decision yesterday to award $253 million in a single lawsuit alleging negligence in the death of a man taking the once-popular painkiller Vioxx has brightened the possibility that Indians who have used the medicine's local version --- Rofecoxib --- could obtain legal relief for damages.
The verdict, which grabbed American TV and print headlines yesterday and today, will be a precedent in 4,200 lawsuits that are already in US courts holding Merck, the manufacturer of Vioxx, responsible for heart attack or stroke among thousands of the 20 million people who had used the drug by the time of its recall in September last year.
The pharmaceutical industry here estimates that Rofecoxib had annual sales in India of Rs 1,350 million and was used by hundreds of thousands of arthritis patients and others suffering from inflammatory pain.
The possibility that Indian patients --- even Indian companies which pirated Merck's US patent rights and manufactured Rofecoxib --- could sue Merck under the American justice system stems from allegations that Merck deliberately misled the US Food and Drug Adminis- tration (FDA) into allowing Vioxx to be in drugstores in the US.
The New York Times reported as early as 2000 that Merck overruled one of its scientists after he suggested that a 73-year-old female patient had probably died of a heart attack.
In e-mail exchanges between Dr Edward M. Scolnick, Merck's senior scientist and Dr Alise S. Reicin, vice-president for clinical research, Reicin repeatedly advised Scolnick to change his views about the death "so that we don't raise concerns".
In later reports to the FDA and in a paper published in 2003, Merck described the cause of this death as "unknown".
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