THE drug company Merck’s defence against claims for damages by people who suffered heart attacks after taking its painkiller Vioxx has taken a blow from a pillar of the medical establishment. In an online “expression of concern”, The New England Journal of Medicine claims that Merck knowingly omitted three instances of heart attacks from a clinical study published in the journal in 2000.
The journal learned of the omission from documents submitted in one of around 7000 lawsuits pending against Merck since it withdrew the drug in September 2004. So far, Merck has suffered a $253.4 million loss from a…
