Side effects of painkillers cost Merck dearly

Side effects of painkillers
U.S. company Merck Vioxx costs nearly a billion
Authorities make the painkiller Vioxx for tens of thousands of heart attacks is responsible. The U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck has taken it off the market years ago. The debate about the side effects continue to this day. Now, the manufacturer must pay nearly a billion dollars because he had sold the drug without approval.

The U.S. again Pharmarkonzern Merck paid almost a billion dollars to settle the dispute over the painkiller Vioxx. Merck has admitted to having sold Vioxx as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted to the appropriate approval.

Because of the side effects of the painkiller Vioxx, the U.S. manufacturer Merck has already paid nearly five billion dollars. Now added another 950 million.
A total of $ 950 million, the Group must now expend in order - roughly a third of which is attributable to a penalty, the remaining million of receivables from civil lawsuits. The pharmaceutical companies had already formed in the past year now agreed provisions in the amount of payment.

Merck & Co., not to be confused with the German drugmaker Merck KGaA, Vioxx had not only sold from 1999 as a painkiller, but also as a drug against rheumatoid arthritis. Only in 2004 the anti-inflammatory drug was withdrawn from the market after being linked with numerous heart attacks and strokes. In its advertising, however, have made Merck lied about the possible risks for the heart to the sales figures continue to push upward, said the Justice Department.

According to the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and Food Inspection FDA may for a period of five years 88000-139000 heart attacks are attributed to the ingestion of Vioxx. Up to 40 percent of which were fatal.

Already in 2007, Merck had reached an agreement out of court with the great majority of thousands of plaintiffs, which provided for the payment of 4.85 billion dollars. Then as now, the company said, it was not an admission of guilt connected.