Lawyer Grills Merck Executive on Tactics to ‘Neutralize’ Doctors | WSJ | 7.19.05
ANGLETON, Texas — Merck & Co.’s marketing team targeted doctors viewed as unfriendly toward Vioxx to bring them into the fold, neutralize or discredit them, the plaintiff’s lawyer in the nation’s first Vioxx-related lawsuit to go to trial alleged Tuesday.
Houston litigator Mark Lanier questioned Nancy Santanello, head of Merck’s epidemiology department, about an internal list of 36 doctors identified as “physicians to neutralize” in an email circulated two months after the popular painkiller went on the market in 1999.…
On Monday Dr. Santanello testified that an in-house training game for Vioxx sales representatives dubbed “Dodge Ball” wasn’t about learning to dodge questions from doctors about the drug’s safety. Mr. Lanier presented an internal memo laying out the “Dodge Ball” training and asked Dr. Santanello why trainees could only move on to the next round of the card game if they gave Merck-approved answers to possible doctors’ questions about Vioxx safety or dodged such questions altogether.…
Lawyer comes out swinging in Vioxx trial | Houston Chronicle | 7.18.05
Among those was a letter (FDA) Merck received in September 2001 — two years after Vioxx was introduced to the market with much fanfare — about Vioxx marketing in the aftermath of a 2000 study dubbed VIGOR. The study found some Vioxx users suffered five times as many heart attacks as people who used the older pain reliever naproxen, sold under the brand name Aleve.
Neutralize? Dodge ball? I’ll bet many physicians have suspected as much.