You Want a Moral Issue? How About Drugs That Don't Kill?

[Guest guest]

You Want A Moral Issue? How About Drugs That Don't Kill?

 

November 24, 2004

http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=745 ]

 

 

As Democrats continue to search heaven and earth for a moral values issue

 

they can call their own, I have just the prescription: Why not start with

 

the immoral behavior of giant drug companies such as Merck that continue

to

sacrifice the health of the public on the altar of higher and higher

profits?

 

According to last week's Senate testimony by Dr. David Graham, associate

director for science and medicine in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, as

many as 55,000 patients may have died as a result of taking Vioxx.

Shocking.

But not to Merck, which had spent hundreds of millions of dollars

convincing

Americans to take its blockbuster pain pill even though the company's own

 

studies showed that it greatly increased the risk of heart attacks and

strokes.

 

If Democrats want to appeal to voters who believe in promoting what the

president calls " a culture of life, " they should make it a priority to

put

an end to the kind of corporate behavior that promotes a culture of

death.

 

Merck's actions throughout the entire Vioxx affair have been utterly

despicable. When the company pulled the drug off the market in September,

 

CEO Raymond Gilmartin claimed that the scientific findings that led to

the

withdrawal were " unexpected. " This is like releasing a ravenous wolf into

a

pen full of sheep, then acting surprised that lamb chops are on the menu.

 

Recently uncovered internal Merck documents show that, as far back as

1998 -

a year before the drug was even approved by the FDA - the drug giant had

evidence indicating that Vioxx was a potential killer.

 

But instead of going back to the drawing board, the company made the

heart-stopping decision to push ahead - using every weapon in its

well-funded arsenal to put off regulators, rope in consumers and keep the

 

bad news from surfacing. They did a masterful job, turning Vioxx into a

commercial elixir: Last year alone, sales of the drug totaled $2.5

billion.

It was a huge success. Unless you were one of the people who had to be

sacrificed for it.

 

Merck's CEO also claimed that the company's handling of Vioxx showed it

was

" really putting patient safety first. " Which it definitely did - if by

" first " he meant right after profits and Merck's stock price.

 

Indeed, those internal documents reveal that nothing in the Merck

corporate

hierarchy was more important than covering the company's backside. One

offers an " obstacle handling guide " for " all field personnel with

responsibility for Vioxx. " Another is titled " Dodge Ball Vioxx " and

suggests

ways Merck salespeople can deal with troubling questions raised by

doctors

concerned about the safety of Vioxx. The final four pages of the manual

each

contain a single instruction: " DODGE! " (I wonder if Ben Stiller has heard

 

about this? I smell sequel!)

 

Merck also exhibited a rare gift for putting negative findings into a

positive light. When one scientific study found that Vioxx, while indeed

multiplying the risk of cardiovascular complications, caused fewer

digestive

side effects than other pain-relief drugs, the company strong-armed the

FDA

into allowing it to display the good news about fewer upset stomachs more

 

prominently on the drug's label than that pesky stuff about more heart

attacks. I'm surprised they didn't try to turn this tidbit into a TV ad:

" Sure Vioxx can increase your chances of cardiac arrest, but at least you

 

won't have an upset tummy when it kills you! "

 

Speaking of ads, the most loathsome aspect of the whole Vioxx affair is

the

way Merck used a $500 million marketing campaign to persuade over 20

million

Americans to pop its noxious little pill. And company executives

continued

to run these ads long after they knew there was big trouble brewing. I'm

sure our evangelical friends in the red states will agree that there

ought

to be a special place in hell for corporations that show such a wanton

disregard for human life.

 

And if any of this sounds familiar, it should. It's certainly giving me a

 

profound sense of drug company deja vu, with the tragic stories of

Baycol,

Rezulin and Duract still fresh in my mind. How many times do we have to

travel down this deadly path - the side of the road littered with bodies

and

the empty containers of drugs that were approved despite serious

questions,

and left on the market despite growing evidence of innocent lives being

lost?

 

And after each case come the inevitable calls for accountability and

promises to reform the system - promises that are then forgotten until

the

next killer drug hits the headlines.

 

During last week's hearings on the Vioxx scandal, Dr. Graham, while

citing

an additional five drugs that he feels pose a danger to the public, said

that the nation's compromised drug-oversight system had left Americans

" virtually defenseless " against killer drugs and warned that we are

facing

" the single greatest drug-safety catastrophe in the history of this

country

or the history of the world. "

 

And you thought our biggest problem with pharmaceuticals was President

Bush

refusing to allow us to get cheap drugs from Canada - which he laughably

justifies because of concerns about the safety of Canadian drugs.

 

So why don't things ever change, even as the death toll mounts? As

always,

the answer can be found by following the money. The big pharmaceutical

companies continue to be the 800-pound gorillas of American politics -

their

power stemming from a muscular combination of lobbying ($150 million a

year), campaign contributions (close to $50 million doled out to federal

candidates over the past four years), and powerful friends in very high

places (Don Rumsfeld was formerly CEO of drug industry powerhouse G.D.

Searle; and Mitch Daniels, the former White House budget director and new

 

governor-elect of Indiana, was a senior vice president at Eli Lilly.)

 

In a 2000 e-mail, Merck's chief of research called Vioxx's propensity to

cause heart attacks and strokes " a shame. " Something his company clearly

lacks. Of course, the real shame is that we continue to have a regulatory

 

system in which corporate greed, political timidity and a culture of

cronyism have rendered the public good a quaint afterthought.

 

Sen. Charles Grassley, the conservative Republican who chairs the Senate

Finance Committee that held the Vioxx hearings, lambasted the FDA for

being

" under the thumb " of the very pharmaceutical companies it is supposed to

regulate, saying the agency " has a relationship with the drug companies

that

is too cozy. " Are Democrats going to sit by while conservatives like

Grassley take the moral lead on this issue?

 

If the Democratic Party is serious about reclaiming the moral-values high

 

ground, it needs to stop trying to figure out how to triangulate on gay

marriage and take a long, hard look in the medicine-chest mirror. Then

open

it up, let fly with the proper moral outrage, and start cleaning out the

mess that lies inside. It's time for Democrats to become the real

pro-life

party.