May
22
I Want My Vioxx Back!
Filed Under Medicine
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.
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2 Responses to “I Want My Vioxx Back!”
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I totally disagree with your comments. Merck has clearly been up to all kinds of underhand tricks, lies and deceptions to cover up the fact that their own studies showed an increase in cardiovascular problems. Vioxx has been shown to significantly increase the risk in quite a number of studies.
Sure, it was an effective drug in dealing with arthritic pain - that (and the claim that it was safer than other drugs such as NSAIDs) was why I was happy to use it for well over a year each night, and never suspected it as a possible cause of my 2 strokes I suffered while taking it until they suddenly took it off the market. One of the strokes was described as a “temporary ischemic event” because although I was partially paralyzed down my left side for several days I gradually regained function. However, the second one completely blocked blood supply to my auditory nerve in my left ear and it is now totally deaf, leaving me with my previously worst ear to hear with - and I have other associated problems.
When my carotid arteries were checked with ultrasound the technician could not understand why I had had the strokes as there was so little plaque or hardening of the arteries - until I told him I had been taking Vioxx (the news of its withdrawal had just come out). I also had low levels of cholesterol and had no other indications pointing to me being at risk from stroke. My GP was also puzzled, after the very first incident (in which I had gone totally blind in one eye for a few minutes - luckily it gradually came back - another “temporary ischemic event”), when I was on the other main COX-2 inhibitor, Celebrex. That was when he put me on Vioxx and started me on daily doses of aspirin.
Since I stopped taking Vioxx, I have had absolutely no cardiovascular problems but find the deafness a real liability (as does my wife). I have no sense at all of the direction sounds are coming from or how far away they are coming from. Think about it - when a car honks its horn, for instance and your are crossing the street. The present case here in Australia is showing clearly that Merck has acted in very unethical and probably illegal ways, setting up phony journals with supposed authors who had never sighted the articles their name were added to, harassment of Doctors and scientist uneasy about Vioxx, paying specialist nurses to scan through medical files to find patients on other meds and try to convince them to try Vioxx, and other outrageous behaviour. There are thousands of people with similar or much worse stories than mine.
No, I think the directors of the company at the time should be jailed and Merck severely punished to try to put an end to the psychopathic behaviour of so many big corporations.
I should have added to my previous note that I can no longer enjoy the subtleties of music - it is like listening to it through a wall, and I am unable to follow most conversations - unless someone speaks directly to me and I can see their lips to help make the consonants clear. It is especially difficult when more than one person is speaking. I can’t follow T.V. or videos unless they have English captions, etc., etc. It is really horrible and I am getting more and more socially isolated. Don’t wish for Vioxx to come back - just be grateful you didn’t suffer any problems. Hopefully, there will be drugs just as effective at dealing with the pain as Vioxx (I initially though it was a wonder drug too) and without such dangerous side effects as the ones we have now within a few years. Several companies are testing new ones now.