(Tom: Don’t for one second be mistaken or misled into thinking that pharmaceutical companies are your friends. I heard one insider say they were only marginally less ruthless than drug cartels.)<\/p>\n
According to an email passed back and forth between the staff of drug giant Merck, the company created a hit list of doctors who needed to be \u201cneutralized\u201d and \u201cdiscredited\u201d for having criticized the safety of Vioxx, the blockbuster pain medication which emerged in 1999, caused thousands of heart attacks and strokes, and was withdrawn from the market in 2004.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,\u201d a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff. \u2013Milanda Rout, The Australian<\/p>\n
The email emerged in Melbourne\u2019s Federal Court as part of a class action against Merck, which is also claiming that Merck intimidated drug researchers by threatening to cut institutional funding and block academic appointments when it was met with opposition. More than 1000 Australians are suing the company for having suffered heart attacks and strokes as a result of Vioxx use.<\/p>\n