Are some corporate giants getting away with murder? When thousands are killed by a drug that should have been withdrawn years earlier and no-one is brought to justice, one has to wonder. by Kieron Mcfadden
When an organization produces a product that kills people, then keeps it on the market and continues to promote and sell it even though it is fully aware that its product is continuing to kill people - in its homeland to boot - by the tens of thousands, what would you think of such an organization?
Most of us would agree that this is criminal conduct and many might conclude such an organization is guilty of virtual genocide. You would think too would you not, that such conduct would result in the perpetrators and masterminds of this operation being brought to book and made to stand trial.
After all, if you recklessly kill or maim just one person through some criminally irresponsible act, such as dangerous driving for example, you would rightfully expect to have the book thrown at you. If your actions caused the death, say, of dozens of people, you would expect no mercy. If you killed thousands…..
Ah yes, but you are not a pharmaceutical manufacturer. When you are a pharmaceutical giant, apparently the authorities are content to stand by and let you wreak havoc and mayhem and not see in your actions enough to warrant criminal proceedings.
It is not clear why such double standards exist and why certain elite groups of the nation’s citizens enjoy such immunity and protection but it does appear that they do.
Take the pharmaceutical giant Merck as a case in point.
In 1999 Merck introduced the pain-reliever drug Vioxx (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug known generically as rofecoxib) and it quickly became a commercial success, with sales climbing to $2 billion annually. But it turned out that while these profits were climbing into the financial stratosphere, Vioxx raised the risk of cardiovascular problems in the user soon after he or she started taking it, the most notable adverse effects being heart attacks and deaths, Even quitting the drug is of limited help as the risk of dropping dead from a heart attack remains high for a year or more after stopping taking it.
In a recent study investigators came to the conclusion that serious safety concerns of which Merck was well aware were raised four years before the company finally took the drug off the market.
It looks in fact very much as if Merck stopped selling Vioxx only after the deaths linked to the drug and the associated lawsuits became a too numerous for them to ignore.
No one knows for sure exactly how many deaths Vioxx caused while kept on the market. However, Dr. David Graham, a whistleblower who tried to alert the medical community to the dangers of the drug, gave testimony before the US Senate in 2002 indicating 88,000 to 139,000 Americans experienced heart attacks as a side effect from the drug. Of these, 30 to 40% died, which puts the deaths caused by Vioxx in a likely yet staggering range of 27,000 to 55,000 people!
In other words, tens of thousands of Americans apparently died that need not have died had Merck done the humane and responsible things and taken their drug off the market as soon as its dangers became evident.
And what action has government take to protect people from a repeat of such wholesale killing for profits or to bring those responsible for these thousands of deaths to justice?
I’ll give you one guess.
The health and lives of the public are fair game, it seems, in the eyes of both Big Pharma and of its lackeys in government so far as pharmaceutical profits are concerned.
Most of us would agree that this is criminal conduct and many might conclude such an organization is guilty of virtual genocide. You would think too would you not, that such conduct would result in the perpetrators and masterminds of this operation being brought to book and made to stand trial.
After all, if you recklessly kill or maim just one person through some criminally irresponsible act, such as dangerous driving for example, you would rightfully expect to have the book thrown at you. If your actions caused the death, say, of dozens of people, you would expect no mercy. If you killed thousands…..
Ah yes, but you are not a pharmaceutical manufacturer. When you are a pharmaceutical giant, apparently the authorities are content to stand by and let you wreak havoc and mayhem and not see in your actions enough to warrant criminal proceedings.
It is not clear why such double standards exist and why certain elite groups of the nation’s citizens enjoy such immunity and protection but it does appear that they do.
Take the pharmaceutical giant Merck as a case in point.
In 1999 Merck introduced the pain-reliever drug Vioxx (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug known generically as rofecoxib) and it quickly became a commercial success, with sales climbing to $2 billion annually. But it turned out that while these profits were climbing into the financial stratosphere, Vioxx raised the risk of cardiovascular problems in the user soon after he or she started taking it, the most notable adverse effects being heart attacks and deaths, Even quitting the drug is of limited help as the risk of dropping dead from a heart attack remains high for a year or more after stopping taking it.
In a recent study investigators came to the conclusion that serious safety concerns of which Merck was well aware were raised four years before the company finally took the drug off the market.
It looks in fact very much as if Merck stopped selling Vioxx only after the deaths linked to the drug and the associated lawsuits became a too numerous for them to ignore.
No one knows for sure exactly how many deaths Vioxx caused while kept on the market. However, Dr. David Graham, a whistleblower who tried to alert the medical community to the dangers of the drug, gave testimony before the US Senate in 2002 indicating 88,000 to 139,000 Americans experienced heart attacks as a side effect from the drug. Of these, 30 to 40% died, which puts the deaths caused by Vioxx in a likely yet staggering range of 27,000 to 55,000 people!
In other words, tens of thousands of Americans apparently died that need not have died had Merck done the humane and responsible things and taken their drug off the market as soon as its dangers became evident.
And what action has government take to protect people from a repeat of such wholesale killing for profits or to bring those responsible for these thousands of deaths to justice?
I’ll give you one guess.
The health and lives of the public are fair game, it seems, in the eyes of both Big Pharma and of its lackeys in government so far as pharmaceutical profits are concerned.
