VIOXX CAN CAUSE A STROKE IMMEDIATELY
Vioxx is already banned in advanced countries for all its negative health characterisirics. Therefore the manufactirers are conviniently pushing the drug into developing countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and others where the Food and Drug laws are not at all strict as compared to U.S. standards.
Intermittent use of Vioxx or even a day’s use of the painkillers could be enough to cause a heart attack a prominent heart and medication expert testified Monday on behalf of a man who is suing the maker of the drug, claiming it caused his heart attack.
Vioxx breaks down so slowly in the body that it takes about 85 hours to clear out of the blood ,testified Dr Benedict Lucchesi, a professor at the University of Michigan who helped develop the first pacemaker.
Based on the science there’s every reason to believe that a single dose ,multiple doses, whatever can lead to an adverse event such as a heart attack or stroke Lucchesi said.
That could be a key point in 60-year=old Idaho postal worker Frederick Mike Humeston’s case against Vioxx maker Merck.
Vioxx, launched in May 1999, was pulled from the market in September 2004.
Humeston had a heart attack in 2001 after taking Vioxx for only two months and skipping some doses. The company contends that Humeston’s condition and sedentary lifestyle led to his heart attack and that Vioxx was not the cause.
Lucchesi also told jurors that repeated evidence and warning signs linked heart risks to the painkiller Vioxx before and after its launch.
He also testified that after a 2000 study showed significant heart risks to Vioxx users Merck told doctors and the public that Vioxx was safe.
Lucchesi said that there was an explosion of reports by Merck saying that the other drug in that study, Naproxen, prevented heart attacks, not that Vioxx caused them.