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Merck: Vioxx Not Cause of Heart Attacks

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 March 2006, 18:00 CST

By JOHN CURRAN

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - After two weeks on the defensive, Merck & Co. began presenting its side of the Vioxx story to a jury Tuesday, hoping to show that the popular arthritis drug was thoroughly tested before being sold and didn't cause the heart attacks suffered by two New Jersey men.

Confident history wouldn't repeat itself, Merck's lawyers called as their first witness a company scientist whose testimony in a previous trial here was thrown out by an angry judge because it overstepped the bounds of restrictions she set in advance.

The witness, Merck Research Laboratories vice president Dr. Briggs Morrison, outlined the history of the painkiller's development for the eight-person jury and said Merck told regulators before the drug hit the shelves there were concerns about its cardiovascular effects.

The drug, once a $2.5 billion-a-year blockbuster, was pulled off the market by Whitehouse Station-based Merck in September 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes when used for more than 18 months.

Merck now faces about 9,650 civil suits filed by former Vioxx users or their survivors, including the ones brought by trial plaintiffs Thomas Cona and John McDarby, who say the drug they turned to for arthritis pain relief turned on them instead, triggering heart attacks.

Cona, a 59-year-old Cherry Hill businessman, and McDarby, a 77-year-old retiree from Park Ridge, are the first Vioxx plaintiffs alleging long-term use to have their cases tried.

Time is an issue in the trial in another way, too.

Both sides agreed to time limits on their presentations - 40 hours for the plaintiffs and 38 for the defense - with the judge's law clerk using a chess clock to keep track.

When court began Tuesday, the plaintiffs had used 25 hours and 32 minutes of their time, and Merck 16 hours and 19 minutes.

Merck contends that both men were at risk for heart attacks because of existing health problems - McDarby is a diabetic; Cona had high cholesterol, borderline obesity and sleep apnea - and that Vioxx can't be blamed.

But lawyers for the men have made the case that because of their pre-existing conditions, Cona and McDarby were the kinds of Vioxx users most at risk.

Lawyers for Cona and McDarby rested their case against Merck after presenting 14 witnesses and hammering away at a handful of key themes: that Merck knew the risks of Vioxx and failed to warn consumers, that the company fought the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over a label change and that Cona and McDarby would not have taken Vioxx if they had known what the company knew.

On Tuesday, Merck's lawyers unsuccessfully petitioned Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee for a directed verdict, saying the plaintiffs hadn't presented enough evidence to support a jury verdict in their favor.

Higbee denied that motion and two others by Merck asking that she strike the testimony of two plaintiffs' experts.

Merck then put on Morrison, who participated in the development of the drug and spent a day last fall testifying about it in Higbee's court, in a Vioxx suit brought by an Idaho postal worker.

His testimony in that trial was stricken because he gave expert opinions about Merck's testing of Vioxx on rabbits even though he had not participated in the tests and had not been qualified as an expert witness in the trial.

On the stand Tuesday, he was careful - as was Brock in questioning him - to stick to his own areas of expertise and the clinical studies of Vioxx in which he participated.

Brock showed jurors a 1999 letter from Maria Villalba, a medical officer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in which Villalba said it was impossible to conclude with certainty that Vioxx was increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes on patients in the studies.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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