These companies are corrupt and we just allow it to go on believeing someone else will fix it.
All it requires for evil to thrive is that everyone stays silent (to paraphrase a quote).
We can no longer stay silent.
Vioxx® (rofecoxib) was a drug produced by Merck and Co. When it hit the market in 1999, it was very heavily advertised and pushed to all the medical professions. However, there was a problem: patients on doses higher than 25 milligrams were suffering heart attacks, strokes and arrhythmias. These were people with no prior conditions. In September 2004, the drug was removed from the market worldwide. An investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that the original trials conducted by Merck in 1998 showed this elevated risk, but the company chose to hide this evidence and continued with promotion and sales worldwide. In the United States, up until 2002 (three years after release), there had been 6,400 lawsuits filed against the company costing an estimated US$3.5 billion. This sparked the FDA to review its process of how it allowed drugs to make it to market. In the U.S., Vioxx® was estimated to have contributed to more than 120,000 premature deaths before it was removed from the market. In Australia, Vioxx® was conservatively estimated to be the cause of 300 deaths but more likely the number is in the thousands. But still it was ignored. For a drug that was on the market for just over five years, it had a substantial effect on many millions of people around the world and this was a result of Merck hiding the evidence of dangerous side effects. Despite withholding the evidence that the drug was killing people, the company is still manufacturing more drugs and still claiming that supplements don’t work. Can you believe this? Can you trust them? For that matter can you trust the regulators?
