May
22
I Want My Vioxx Back!
Filed Under Medicine | 2 Comments
If you have been living under a rock or something, maybe you are not familiar with the whole Vioxx debacle. In a nutshell here’s the deal: A big drug company named Merck introduced an anti-inflammatory drug called Vioxx about ten years ago. Unlike many anti-inflammatory drugs however this one did not contain steroids. It was a very ideal drug for people like me who have painful arthritis but don’t want to use drugs that have steroids in them.
And then some people died. A few people suffered from strokes and a few others had heart attacks while on the drug. Did the drug cause this? Were these people predisposed to these maladies because of things like hypertension (high blood pressure)?
Well anyway, Merck reacted to the onslaught of greedy lawyers that were beating down their doors with frivolous lawsuits by pulling the drug off the market. Well I don’t suffer from hypertension. This Vioxx proved to be a miracle drug for me. I’m not saying it was for everyone, but it was for me! I feel bad for the families of people who died, but was Vioxx the sole reason these people died? Really, there were no other factors involved? So now I am back to using the steroids that I don’t want to use.
