The Lies That Keep On Running

Late last week, Merck unveiled the results of a study that purported to show that a one-year follow-up of the patients in the Vioxx trial that led to the drug being pulled from the market did not suffer from an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes after they stopped using the drug. Within 24 hours, the story had completely turned around: It turns out this was only true if you excluded some late arriving data, which added a number of strokes to the total and suggested that people who took Vioxx will remain at increased risk years after they've stopped taking the pill.

Then, this morning's Wall Street Journal carried a damning piece on the role of the New England Journal of Medicine in covering up its own role in failing to correct its original 2000 science article touting the virtues of Vioxx. It turns out last fall's "expression of concern," the first time the prestigious journal corrected the original article, was part of a public relations strategy to deflect attention from the fact that NEJM editors had been made aware that Merck scientists hid data in that original article, data that was submitted a few months later to the Food and Drug Administration and almost immediately brought to the attention of NEJM editors, who chose to ignore it.

Clearly, the courtroom drama surrounding Vioxx is spilling over into a recriminations battle among experts over who knew what and when. I highly recommend you go to the original sources if you're interested, and today's Wall Street Journal has all the links (pay the buck if you don't have an online subscription).

I have one major quibble with the article. It prominently quoted Dr. Gurkirpal Singh as a critic of Merck. When Singh last appeared in the press, he was working for Pfizer. And if you go back into the late 1990s, this minor academic was working for Merck and more than any other person was responsible for the myth that there was a major gastrointestinal side effect problem with traditional pain relievers that needed to be addressed by Cox-2 inhibitors like Vioxx and Celebrex. I wrote about this in my book, and I wrote about it again last year (see this GoozNews). But it seems that Dr. Singh's chameleon-like role in the long-running Vioxx saga is like the lie that travels a thousand miles before the truth even wakes up. He's still running strong. I keep waiting for an enterprising reporter to conduct a thorough post-mortem on his role in the Vioxx/Cox-2 affair.