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American Medical System and Vioxx

Rodney

Illuminator
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Aug 28, 2005
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"In July 2000 I analyzed a JAMA article by Dr. Barbara Starfield from Johns Hopkins School of public health.

"I carefully reviewed her data and came to the conclusion that doctors were the third leading cause of death. I created that headline, and over the last ten years it has been widely distributed all over the Internet.

"When I contacted Dr. Starfield for a follow-up, she told me that she did not agree with my conclusion, but still felt that the conventional medical system was the leading cause of death. Well four years later, Gary Null published a report which indeed confirmed that fact.

" . . . In the early 2000s, Vioxx was an extremely popular anti-inflammatory, taken by nearly 100 million people worldwide -- with sales reaching $2.5 billion annually.

"In 1999 I uncovered a study that showed people taking this drug were at massively increased risk of dying from heart disease and stroke, and I published this information in my newsletter.

"I actually issued the first public warning about Vioxx while it was still in clinical trials -- a year before it became available by prescription.

"Then, in 2004, another study showed that patients taking Vioxx had a 50 percent higher risk of having a heart attack or experiencing a fatal cardiac episode than those taking another popular anti-inflammatory drug – the same conclusion I had warned about FIVE years earlier.

"Merck finally succumbed to public pressure and voluntarily withdrew their anti-inflammatory drug from the market in September, 2004.

"It is tragic that Vioxx was only removed from the market AFTER it had done its damage, and 60,000 people ended up dying from taking it. This was NO accident; the drug’s makers knew this would happen but collected billions of dollars in profit before it was finally withdrawn. Many internal memorandums uncovered during the many lawsuits confirmed this."

See http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...a-Predictions-That-Came-True-Part-1-of-4.aspx
 
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fls said:
Mercola and Gary Null? Really?

If there is something useful to be said about this topic, surely someone with a smidgen of credibility has written on this topic and you could quote them instead?



Linda
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Well I just read an interesting article on a site called "Whale"...
 
fls said:
Mercola and Gary Null? Really?

If there is something useful to be said about this topic, surely someone with a smidgen of credibility has written on this topic and you could quote them instead?
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Perhaps Edgar Cayce said something about it?
 
The manufacturers that failed to test its safety thouroughly enough before giving it out are clearly guilty, of negligent manslaughter for a lot of people. What a horrid drug, and its metabolite maleic anhydride is even worse.

Fabricated efficacy studies

On March 11, 2009, Scott S. Reuben, former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, Mass., revealed that data for 21 studies he had authored for the efficacy of the drug (along with others such as celecoxib) had been fabricated in order to augment the analgesic effects of the drugs. Dr. Reuben was also a former paid spokesperson for the drug company Pfizer (who owns the intellectual property rights for marketing celecoxib in the United States). The retracted studies were not submitted to either the FDA or the European Union's regulatory agencies prior to the drugs approval. Drug manufacturer Merck had no comment on the disclosure.[4]
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Greed before science by the looks of things.
 
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It is also unfortunate that it had the side-effects it did. My doctor has never found anything that worked as well for my arthritis. Almost completely alleviated the symptoms.
 
Zeuzzz said:
The manufacturers that failed to test its safety thouroughly enough before giving it out are clearly guilty, of negligent manslaughter for a lot of people.
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Really? Safety testing for increasingly uncommon effects becomes prohibitively expensive compared to post-marketing surveillance. Are you sure that making new drugs even more expensive and making it even more likely that a company will simply abandon the effort, is a good idea? And how does compliance with where we set that trade-off suddenly become criminal activity?

Linda
 
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Rodney said:
Did Edgar Cayce ever prescribe anything that killed anyone, let alone thousands?
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How would we know?

It should be pointed out that if Vioxx were a supplement, it would still be on the market. We would probably be blissfully unaware of its harm. But even if we did know, the information that was used to pull it from the drug market would be considered inadequate to get it pulled from the supplement market.

Linda
 
Vioxx would likely still be on the market under a Black Box warning if Merck did not attempt to cover up the cardiac side-effects(well...there is the issue with Bextra as well). Their actions have made it impossible to use an entire class of medication.

As with any medication, it is balance of pros and cons and sometimes the benefits of Vioxx outweighs its risks.
 
fls said:
How would we know?
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With all the unconventional treatments that Cayce recommended, including what seemingly were downright dangerous ones, such as giving an infant belladonna (Tommy House case), don't you think someone would have gone to the newspapers, if not to court, to tell how Cayce's treatments had killed their loved one?

fls said:
It should be pointed out that if Vioxx were a supplement, it would still be on the market. We would probably be blissfully unaware of its harm. But even if we did know, the information that was used to pull it from the drug market would be considered inadequate to get it pulled from the supplement market.

Linda
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Do you agree or disagree with this assessment: "FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx
 
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Rodney said:
With all the unconventional treatments that Cayce recommended, including what seemingly were downright dangerous ones, such as giving an infant belladonna (Tommy House case), don't you think someone would have gone to the newspapers, if not to court, to tell how Cayce's treatments had killed their loved one?
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Why would they? Faith does really odd things to people.

Do you agree or disagree with this assessment: "FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx
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Where did you get this number from? If I remember, the Kaiser Permanente study estimates about 30000 "serious" cardiac events.
 
paximperium said:
Why would they? Faith does really odd things to people.
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Perhaps, but Cayce was not a cult figure. People had faith in him because they had heard of other cures he had effected, which were based on unconventional medicine, not faith healing.

paximperium said:
Where did you get this number from? If I remember, the Kaiser Permanente study estimates about 30000 "serious" cardiac events.
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According to the Wikipedia article, the figures were estimated by FDA analysts.
 
Rodney said:
With all the unconventional treatments that Cayce recommended, including what seemingly were downright dangerous ones, such as giving an infant belladonna (Tommy House case), don't you think someone would have gone to the newspapers, if not to court, to tell how Cayce's treatments had killed their loved one?
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How would they know? People didn't realize that Vioxx had killed their loved one.

Do you agree or disagree with this assessment: "FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vioxx
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That statement seems to have been made by one of the authors outside of what was reported in the KP study. Extrapolating from the study gave a bit less than 28,000. Mortality was 27 percent, which gives you about 7500 deaths.

Linda
 
Rodney said:
With all the unconventional treatments that Cayce recommended, including what seemingly were downright dangerous ones, such as giving an infant belladonna (Tommy House case), don't you think someone would have gone to the newspapers, if not to court, to tell how Cayce's treatments had killed their loved one?
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So you believe in the faith based powers of Benny Hinn? He gets people to stop medication and give their health to god. Clearly if this didn't work people would complain about the preventable deaths of their loved ones.

It must work, we need faith healers not doctors.
 
Rodney said:
Perhaps, but Cayce was not a cult figure. People had faith in him because they had heard of other cures he had effected, which were based on unconventional medicine, not faith healing.
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But he had all the press of a good faith healer, word of mouth does them wonders.
 
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