April « 2009 « Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

April 30, 2009

Psychs Feeling The Pressure Of Bad Media Over Unreported Payola

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 2:02 pm

A featured topic at the 2009 International Forum on Mood and Anxiety Disorders conference in Monaco is “Making sense of media attacks on experts: is this a wanton witch hunt?” If the shoe fits . . .

Several prominent psychiatrists have been receiving seriously negative media lately following Congressional revelations that they failed to disclose payments from Big Pharma for “studying” various drugs and promoting them around the country.

For some background from earlier blogs about non-disclosure of millions of Big Pharma payola bucks, go here and here and here and here.

The Alison Bass blog reports this week that “some of these key opinion leaders (KOLs as they are known in the industry) are pushing back, accusing the press of launching a ‘witch-hunt’ and trying to intimidate some of the media messengers.”

Evidence of the growing unease among psychs about the negative publicity is a featured topic at the 2009 conference of the International Forum on Mood and Anxiety Disorders in Monaco in November. Titled ‘Making sense of media attacks on experts: is this a wanton witch hunt?’ the forum is “essentially an ‘astroturf creation’ of Pharma directed by two prominent psychiatrists with industry ties in Europe,” Ms. Bass reports.

The Forum’s speaker list includes Alan Schatzberg, who claims his stepping down from the psychiatry chair at Stanford has nothing to do with the media blitz over his own failure to disclose financial ties to Big Pharma, revealed by the Congressional investigative team run by Sen. Chuck Grassley. Turns out Schatzberg owned $4.8 million in stocks in Corcept Therapeutics, a company he co-founded, while operating as principal investigator of a NIH-funded study of Corcept’s own drug for depression.

Stanford did not fully disclose Schatzberg’s stock ownership until The New York Times, Business Week and other media reported the story. Shortly thereafter Stanford asked Schatzberg to step down as principal investigator of the NIH study — NIH prohibits its grant money from being blended into Big Pharma personal payola. And now, says Ms. Bass, Stanford is looking for a new chair of its psychiatry department, although they claim that Schatzberg decided to step down long before the conflict of interest story broke. Yeah, sure.

Meanwhile, says Ms. Bass, Shatzberg and Stanford have been berating various media for continuing to discuss the situation: the New York Review of Books for running Marcia Angell’s medical corruption article which included Schatzberg’s financial conflicts); CBS, which covered the Stanford problems; and the Corporate Crime Reporter, which published an interview with Ms. Bass about conflicts of interest in medicine. In spite of demands for corrections from the doctor and the university, none has been issued.

A few years ago, Schatzberg sued University of Massachusetts psychiatrist Anthony Rothschild, alleging that Rothschild libeled and defamed him by claiming on a Yahoo message board under an assumed name that Schatzberg was using his position at Stanford to promote Corcept’s new drug, and that he and his cofounder both knew since 2005 that the drug didn’t work, yet they continued to sell company stock. (Corcept stock has dropped from over $8 five years ago to around 90 cents.)

Rothschild and Schatzberg have an interesting back-story, reports Ms. Bass. In the late 1980s, while both were at Harvard’s McLean Hospital, they began working on the idea of using a drug to block the stress hormone cortisol as a possible treatment for depression. Then Schatzberg went to Stanford in 1991, and took the idea with him, co-founding Corcept to develop the new drug. Partners, which owns McLean Hospital, sued Stanford over the patent for Corcept’s drug, but the case was settled in mediation.

“What all this shows is that Schatzberg is not afraid to throw lawyers at his critics,” Ms. Bass suggests. “I wonder if that’s the kind of aggressive action he’ll advise at the wanton witch-hunt session in Monaco. What I want to know is: who’s paying for his trip there?”

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April 28, 2009

Court Discloses More Proof That Merck Knew Vioxx Was Risky

Filed under: Big Pharma, Vioxx, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales — Rod Malcolm @ 8:31 am

In an internal email from 2001, a critical senior Merck researcher says interpretation of Vioxx test data was “wishful thinking . . .interpreted to support a preconceived hypothesis.”

Merck paid a cardiologist to sign his name to a 2001 medical journal article written by Merck staff that claimed no evidence of cardiovascular events arising from its painkiller Vioxx, according to court records in an on-going Australian class-action suit.

The class action alleges Merck covered up a higher risk of cardiovascular conditions.

More than 1000 complainants cite cardiovascular conditions following at least one prescription of the drug.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a 2001 email submitted in court shows that senior Merck researcher Briggs Morrison “expressed concern about the claim that Vioxx was not associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events.”

“That seems wishful thinking, not a critical interpretation of the data,” Dr. Morrison said in the email to colleagues. “The data appears to have been interpreted to support a pre-conceived hypothesis.”

But the claim of no risk was nonetheless included in the final version of the article, which was sent to consulting U.S. cardiologist Dr. Marvin Konstam for approval and signature, and eventually published in the medical journal Circulation in October 2001, the Herald reports.

Dr. Konstam was named lead author, five of the authors were Merck employees, and the other two, including Dr. Konstam, were paid consultants.

If you’ve been following the Vioxx saga for the past few years, the name Briggs Morrison might ring a bell. Back in 2005 in Atlantic City, NJ, Morrison achieved notoriety of sorts when the judge in the second Vioxx trial ordered his defense testimony on behalf of Merck be stricken from the record, saying he overstepped his role as a fact witness.

Judge Higbee said at the time: “Quite frankly, I felt sick yesterday afternoon. I realized how I have got sucked into this. I feel that I was misled during the testimony.”

Higbee said Morrison, Merck’s lead-off defense witness, testified about a series of animal tests and their implications for the safety of Vioxx, but was not an expert on the subject and completely unqualified to testify.

Will it ever end? Merck’s grasping financial greed and ethical deficiencies are matched only by its stupidity.

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April 23, 2009

Vermont Report Reveals Psychs Got More Pharma Money Than Any Other Specialty

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 12:13 pm

Nearly $3 million was paid out by Big Pharma in miniscule Vermont. The mind boggles at the vast amounts pumped into the system across all 50 states. And some people still wonder why drugs are so expensive in America.

A report from Vermont’s attorney general, William H. Sorrell, shows psychiatrists received more money from Big Pharma than any other medical specialty during the period from July, 2007, through June, 2008. And Eli Lilly’s spending lead the parade in the state’s list of drug-company payments to health professionals.

The report, made annually as part of Vermont’s Pharmaceutical Marketing Disclosure Law adopted in 2002, breaks down Big Pharma payments and gifts to physicians, hospitals, universities and others involved in health care, including consulting and speaker fees, travel expenses, gifts and food.

Items exempt from disclosure include free samples, payments for clinical trials, and gifts less than $25 in value. And Pharma can nominate not to disclose certain details, citing protection of trade secrets.

This last aspect of the statute continues to generate discussion and criticism among consumer protection groups, lawmakers and more than a few health care professionals. But Big Pharma is adamant, claiming some expenditures could reveal marketing strategies to competitors.

Excuse me? Some of us thought that publicly revealing Big Pharma’s marketing payola strategies was the purpose of the statute. Oh well.

This year, 78 drug makers reported spending a total of $2,935,248 to market their products to the health care industry in Vermont. According to the annual report, the top five givers in rank order were: Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, Merck and Forest Pharmaceuticals.

The report also reveals Big Pharma’s favorites. Nearly $1,770,000 was expended on only 100 individual recipients out of the total 2,280 of them.

“With approximately 2280 recipients,” says the report, “4.3% of the recipients received 60% of the total payments in that year. The greatest amount of expenditures went to psychiatrists as a group, totaling nearly half a million dollars; one psychiatrist received over $112,000 — the greatest amount of pharmaceutical marketing dollars spent on any single person in [fiscal year 2008].”

The top five drugs, neatly tallied for us by the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, were:

Drug Use Maker

Strattera ADHD Eli Lilly

Cymbalta Depression, Neuropathic Pain, Anxiety Disorder Eli Lilly

Exelon Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Novartis

Januvia Diabetes Merck

Lexapro Depression, Anxiety Disorder Forest

And the top five specialties receiving pharma-money were:

Specialty Total Rec’d Recipient average

Psychiatry $479,306.19 $43,573.29

Internal Medicine $332,880.14 $14, 473.05

Neurology $185,007.43 $23,125.93

Endocrinology/Diabetes/Metabolism $156,832.36 $52,227.45

Ionizing Radiation Privileges $111,326.98 $12,369.66

When you consider that nearly $3 million was paid out by Big Pharma to the miniscule medical population of Vermont, we can only imagine the vast amounts pumped into the system across all 50 states. It boggles the mind. And some people still wonder why drugs are so expensive in America, compared to every other country in the world.

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April 20, 2009

New Leadership Could Bring Needed Changes At The FDA

Filed under: FDA, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 12:36 pm

“For too long the agency has behaved as though its job is to speed brand-name drugs to market, not to ensure that they are safe and effective,” says Dr. Marcia Angell.

Writing in the Boston Globe last week, Dr. Marcia Angell suggests seven crucial, and very reasonable, changes in FDA policy, which the new leadership should adopt to foster safer medications without seriously affecting Big Pharma’s time-to-market.

Dr. Angell also says that the newly nominated commissioner, former public health administrator Dr. Margaret Hamburg, and newly appointed deputy commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein (“a longtime critic of the pharmaceutical industry,” Dr. Angell says) offers new hope that such changes could become reality. As an appointee, Sharfstein doesn’t need Senate approval, and already has taken charge of the agency as acting commissioner, pending Dr. Hamburg’s (hopefully swift) Senate confirmation.

Dr. Angell, former editor of New England Journal of Medicine, and author of the widely-read and chillingly insightful book, The Truth About Drug Companies, is up-beat about the new FDA leadership.

“[Sharfstein’s] appointment gives real hope that the FDA will stop kowtowing to the big drug companies,” Dr. Angell says. “For too long the agency has behaved as though its job is to speed brand-name drugs to market, not to ensure that they are safe and effective. But while new leadership is crucial, more needs to be done.”

Dr. Angell’s proposals should be considered in depth, so do follow the link above to her Globe article.

Briefly, Dr. Angell says:

Congress should repeal the Prescription Drug User Fee Act.

Consultants for drug companies should no longer be permitted to serve on FDA advisory panels.

The agency should ensure that post-marketing studies it mandates are actually carried out.

The FDA should review generic drugs as fast as brand-name drugs.

Congress should give the FDA the authority to require drug companies to compare new drugs with existing drugs of the same type.

The FDA should stop approving me-too drugs on the basis of surrogate endpoints.

The FDA should prohibit direct-to-consumer advertising for three years after drugs are approved.

The first point, to repeal the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, is essential. “This 1992 law, renewable every five years, authorizes drug companies to pay ‘user fees’ to the FDA for every drug the agency considers for approval,” Dr. Angell says. “That puts the FDA on the payroll of the industry it regulates, and makes it more likely that drugs will be reviewed favorably — a bargain for drug companies. Drug companies should not be considered ‘users’ of the FDA; the public is the user, and it alone should support the agency.”

Hear hear! Nothing would go further than giving financial and political independence back to the FDA.

“It is time to restore the FDA to its purpose, which is to protect the public from unsafe food, drugs, and devices, not to accommodate the industries it regulates. The change in leadership is reason for optimism,” Dr. Angell concludes.

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April 17, 2009

FDA Asks For Proof Of Safety For Untested Legacy Medical Devices

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA — Rod Malcolm @ 8:09 am

After more than 30 years, the agency has finally stepped up to the plate to ascertain the safety of potentially risky older devices.

After Congress passed the first medical device law in 1976, all devices subsequently produced have required testing and FDA approval. But for decades prior to the law, the FDA approved devices for sale without demanding rigorous tests showing that they worked safely. And Congress, in its wisdom, simply instructed the FDA to gradually examine devices already in use, and decide which ones needed more extensive testing.

I guess the FDA had its own definition of the term “gradually”. Some 33 years later, the agency had never finished the process, leaving 27 different types of devices still untested, unexamined, and still on the market.

Now, the New York Times reports, two of those 27 pre-1976 device types have finally been reviewed by the FDA. And the makers of the remaining 25 devices have been asked to submit safety and effectiveness information to the agency within 120 days.

What jump-started the process was a thorough scolding of the FDA by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this past January, for the agency’s failure to address its reviewing system for pre-1976 devices.

The GAO’s investigators stated in their reports that “it is imperative that FDA take immediate steps” to fix its system for approving such devices. And lo and behold, the agency agreed and got busy.

Mary Long, an FDA spokeswoman, told the Times she could not predict how long the process would take. “It will really depend on the amount and quality of the information we get,” she said. “We have to review each device type separately. It will take some time.”

Hopefully not another 33 years.

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April 16, 2009

Sen. Grassley Probes Big Pharma Financing Of Mental Health Group

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 7:56 am

Continuing his investigation into drug company influence on health care costs, the Republican from Iowa wants to know who’s financing the non-profit psych front group National Alliance for Mental Illness.

A recent article in Bloomberg News reports that Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA), as part of his ongoing investigation into Big Pharma’s financial influence on the practice of medicine, is asking the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) about its funding.

Sen. Grassley recently sent a letter to NAMI requesting the nonprofit mental health front group to disclose any direct financial backing from Big Pharma and any foundations or other front groups created by Big Pharma (of which of course there are many).

Over the past year or two, Sen. Grassley has been on something of a crusade to unearth Big Pharma’s financial influence on America’s health care providers, researchers and educators.

“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry shapes the practices of nonprofit organizations which purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Sen. Grassley wrote in his letter.

Bloomberg says NAMI did not return calls asking for comments on Sen. Grassley’s request.

Founded in 1979, NAMI calls itself “the nation’s largest grassroots organization for people with mental illness and their families.” NAMI’s web site claims to have affiliates in every state, and in more than 1,100 local communities across the country.

Bloomberg reports that NAMI came under scrutiny in 1999, when the magazine Mother Jones reported that 18 drug companies gave the group $11.7 million from 1996 to mid-1999. These included Janssen ($2.08 million), Novartis ($1.87 million), Pfizer ($1.3 million), Abbott Laboratories ($1.24 million), Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals ($658,000), and Bristol-Myers Squibb ($613,505), the Mother Jones article said.

The article also reported that at one point, Jerry Radke, a Lilly executive, was “on loan” to NAMI, working out of the organization’s Arlington, VA, headquarters.

The 2007 NAMI annual report showed that the group’s “corporate partners” included:

* Abbott Laboratories
* AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
* Bristol-Myers Squibb
* Eli Lillyy
* Forest Laboratories
* GlaxoSmithKline
* Janssen
* Magellan Behavioral Health (a mental health specialty HMO)
* McNeil Consumer Healthcare (a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary)
* Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc.
* Pfizer, Inc.
* PhRMA (the drug industry’s DC lobbyist trade association)
* Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
* Vanda Pharmaceuticals
* Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based nonprofit that promotes ethical research, told Bloomberg News that NAMI may have drawn Grassley’s attention because it lobbies Congress for mental-health funding.

“Academics and physicians give an appearance of authority,” Sharav told Bloomberg. “Industry gives them the money. Grassley has been going after each group systematically, and the dots are being connected.”

In January, Sen. Grassley and Senator Herb Kohl, (D, WI.), reintroduced the Physician Payment Sunshine Act. If passed by Congress, the act would require manufacturers of pharmaceutical drugs, devices and biologics, with $100 million or more in annual gross revenues, to disclose the amount of money they give to doctors through payments, gifts, honoraria, travel and other means. Penalties for not reporting would range from $10,000 to $100,000 per violation.

“Right now the public has no way to know whether a doctor’s been given money that might affect prescribing habits,” Sen. Grassley said last September when the bill was first introduced. “This bill is about letting the sun shine in so that the public can know. Whether it’s dinner at a restaurant or tens of thousands of dollars or more in fees and travel, patients shouldn’t be in the dark about whether their doctors are getting money from drug and device makers,” he added.

“At our June hearing,” Sen. Kohl said at the time, “the pharmaceutical industry told the Aging Committee that they believe their practices are above-board. If that is the case, full disclosure will only serve to prove them right. If that is not the case, full disclosure will bring their influence-peddling out from the shadows. Either way, patients win.”

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April 15, 2009

After Me Comes God, Harvard Psych Tells Prosecutors

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 9:31 am

Dr. Joseph Biederman, the daddy of broad antipsychotic drug use in children, can predetermine the outcome of clinical trials, apparently if the price is right.

A New York Times article reported recently that during pre-trial discoveries involving the use of antipsychotics, Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. Joseph Biederman stated categorically that, above his station in life, there is only God.

Biederman has become a key witness in a series of lawsuits filed by state attorneys general claiming that some makers of antipsychotic drugs defrauded state Medicaid programs by improperly marketing their drugs. Biederman’s work, they allege, helped fuel the expansion of antipsychotic prescribing for children.”

During an exchange between state lawyers who deposed Biederman, and the great man himself, Biederman was asked what rank he held at Harvard.

“Full professor,” he answered.

“What’s after that?” asked a lawyer, Fletch Trammell.

“God,” Dr. Biederman responded.

“Did you say God?” Mr. Trammell asked.

“Yeah,” Dr. Biederman said.

Biederman’s nearer-to-God-than-thee powers of precognition were illuminated in court documents. A slide presentation prepared by Biederman for J&J executives stated that a planned 2004 study would compare risperidone with competitors in managing “pediatric bipolar disorder” and that the trial “will clarify the competitive advantages of risperidone vs. other neuroleptics.” And a slide presentation for 2005 projects said a planned of Concerta, a Johnson & Johnson stimulant, will “extend positive findings with Concerta.”

We blogged last July about the professor’s failure to properly disclose payments from Big Pharma to the tune of $1.6 million between 2000 and 2006, while accepting research grants from the National Institutes of Health. The inquiry by Senator Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) into Biederman and two other Harvard psychiatrists for non-disclosure of Big Pharma payments has extended to numerous researchers at other institutions.

The Times article said Biederman is “the world’s most prominent advocate of diagnosing bipolar disorder in even the youngest children and of using antipsychotic medicines to treat the disease, but much of his work has been underwritten by drug makers for whom he privately consults.”

Biederman, critics say, “invented” bipolar disorder in children. Harsher critics conclude it could only be to sell more drugs and to make more money for Big Pharma and himself. Considering the hundreds of horror stories rolling about from kids whose lives have been ruined or lost from being pumped full of antipsychotics, Biederman’s legacy will be a bloody one. Hundreds of others, possibly thousands, are complaining they were subjected to incorrect and unnecessary psychiatric diagnoses of bipolar disorder, leading to Biederman-style cocktails of damaging antipsychotics.

Incorrect and unnecessary psych diagnoses? Hey, is there any other kind?

Now, according to a letter from Biederman’s law firm to the trial judge, the good doctor wants the court depositions sealed. He doesn’t want his connections to Big Pharma publicly known. He says it could be bad for his reputation.

Wow. And what reputation was that, exactly?

As one anonymous commenter at Ed Silverman’s In Vivo blog coverage of Biederman’s claims to sainthood put it:

Q. What’s the difference between a psychiatrist and God?

A. God doesn’t think He’s a psychiatrist!

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April 14, 2009

Supreme Court Revives Antidepressant Suicide Cases Against Pfizer, GSK

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 9:39 am

Justices ask 3rd circuit appeals court to reconsider a number of suits in light of the recent Wyeth vs. Levine ruling.

When Congress set up the federal drug-approval system decades ago, it clearly intended traditional state tort liability suits to act as an additional layer of protection for consumers beyond that provided by the Food and Drug Administration.

But this essential component of public safety became the center of what has come to be known as ‘the pre-emption wars’, with the Bush administration championing the concept that federal regulations trump state tort, effectively nullifying consumer product liability lawsuits aimed at Big Pharma.

Nearly a year ago, Big Pharma scored a major victory when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 majority decision that the makers of Paxil and Zoloft could not be sued for failing to warn of a risk of suicide, because the Food and Drug Administration had explicitly refused to order such warnings. The court found that such lawsuits must be pre-empted because they directly conflict with action already taken by the FDA.

A couple of weeks ago, however, the U.S. Supreme Court fired a devastating broadside in the pre-emption wars, effectively sinking the pre-emption ship for the foreseeable future by ruling in favor of Diana Levine in Wyeth vs. Levine. And this week the Supremes instructed the appeals court to reconsider the stalled antidepressant lawsuits. Wyeth vs. Levine reaffirms patients’ right to sue drugmakers for product liability, they said.

According to Bloomberg News, the antidepressant suits were brought by relatives of a woman who killed herself after taking GSK’s Paxil, and a man who committed suicide after taking Pfizer’s Zoloft. Both suits fault the drug makers for failing to warn that their antidepressants might cause suicidal tendencies in adults.

The relatives argued that the companies could have included a warning on the packaging insert, even though the FDA had expressed skepticism about the link with suicide. They said the FDA has never stopped companies from issuing warnings about suicide risks.

After more than two decades of claiming there was no scientific basis for suicide warnings, the FDA did an about-face in 2005 and requested suicide warnings for antidepressants for children under 18, and then in 2006 and 2007 began to urge the same warnings for patients aged 18 to 24, calling for careful monitoring of patients of all ages.

I don’t know how many children and young adults had to die before the FDA finally urged that suicide warnings be added to antidepressant labels for their age groups. But now that Big Pharma cannot hide behind federal pre-emption, antidepressant-linked adult suicide will receive its proper day in court. Let’s hope it leads positively to fewer deaths in the future.

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April 10, 2009

Stanford to Disclose Faculty Receiving Big Pharma And Device $upport

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals — Rod Malcolm @ 9:22 am

Stanford med school says it will identify doctors and faculty members who receive more than $5K annually from drug and medical device companies, but it won’t reveal the exact figure. And $5K is well below proposed transparency legislation.

Stanford University medical school has announced it will begin identifying doctors and other faculty members who receive more than $5,000 annually from drug and medical-device companies.

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports that the medical school expects to post an online list by the end of the summer, listing staff members who received payments, royalties, stock grants and other compensation totally more than $5,000 in 2008.

I suppose that’s a start in the right direction, but it seems woefully inadequate. Although companies providing the compensation will be identified, the dollar amounts above $5,000 won’t be included.

And $5,000 is well below the $500 recommended by the ‘Physician Payment Sunshine Act’ proposed last year by Sen. Charles Grassley (R- Iowa). The act would require drug and device makers to publicly list payments made to doctors that exceed $500.

There is a strong movement afoot in this country to force Big Pharma, device makers, and physicians, researchers and their various institutions, to come clean and make financial transparency firm policy throughout the land. Although not the only factor that could affect the integrity of drug and device testing and reporting, transparency will go a long way in that direction.

Of course, there are other kinds of favors that can be bestowed, non-financial in nature, that could potentially corrupt research or affect public support for one drug over another.

One only has to think back a few weeks to the story about an AstraZeneca medical officer who graced not one, but two females — a researcher and a report writer — with sexual favors, apparently attempting to effect a positive research outcome.

I guess you would have to ask the ladies to get some idea of the dollar value of such gifts.

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April 9, 2009

Email Reveals Merck’s “Hit List” Of Critical Doctors To “Neutralize”

Filed under: Merck, Vioxx — Rod Malcolm @ 10:33 am

An internal email released in an Australian federal court reveal that Merck maintained a hit list of doctors critical of Vioxx with “neutralize”, “neutralized” or “discredit” against their names. The company also threatened critical institutions with loss of funding.

An article in The Australian reports that Merck staff emailed each other about the list of doctors — mainly researchers and academics — who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or Merck and a recommended course of action.

The email came out in Federal Court in Melbourne, Australia as part of a class action against the drug company. Next to the names of doctors were the words “neutralize”, “neutralized” or “discredit”.

The email also alleged that the company used intimidation tactics against critical researchers, including “dropping hints it would stop funding to institutions and claims it interfered with academic appointments,” the article in the Australian said.

“We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,” a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff.

Merck & Co and its Australian subsidiary, Merck, Sharpe and Dohme, are being sued for compensation by more than 1,000 Australians, who claim they suffered heart attacks or strokes as a result of taking Vioxx.

Launched in 1999, Vioxx was used by 80 million people worldwide because it did not cause stomach problems like other anti-inflammatory painkillers. It was voluntarily withdrawn from sale in 2004 after concerns were raised that it caused heart attacks and strokes. A clinical trial testing these potential side effects was aborted for safety reasons.

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