God bless the First Amendment

God, I am so screwed....(see above)


But I love my granny....

Merck has tried an interesting line of defense, though suitable only for public consumption. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday that several key executives have revealed that immediate family members of theirs took Vioxx, in an attempt to dissuade the casual non-thinker that the executives are, in the words of Opus, "Incompetent fibbing poopyheads."

This sort of thing is not admissable as a defense, because it assumes a) that Raymond Gilmartin did not intend to kill his wife, and b) that they didn't decide to take their chances just to avoid the $10 co-pay. In other words, there are lots of reasons someone might choose one drug over another.

Meanwhile, clean arteries.

The AP reports that the cardiologist who treated the plaintiff in the Atlantic City Vioxx trial had clean arteries, in the "top 5%." The stories do not mention who the physician was testifying for - the plaintiff, or the defense. This news indicates that the pool of possible plaintiffs might be smaller than just anyone who had a heart attack while on Vioxx, if they've also got some artery clogging. The goal of the plaintiffs is make Vioxx the proximate cause of the injury, and the evidence shows that it increases the risk of heart attacks, not plaque.