Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Oh we are back.
Speaker 3: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast with doctor tave
Speaker 3: Hoda and Robert Evans where Sophie is out of the
Speaker 3: house right now, so you know, we're.
Speaker 4: Just just the boys.
Speaker 2: The boys. No girls allowed listeners.
Speaker 3: That's like half our listeners. Please keep listening, ladies.
Speaker 4: Sorry, so sorry, We're we're trying to be better. I apologize.
Speaker 4: We didn't mean that.
Speaker 3: We didn't mean that, just like MRK didn't mean to
Speaker 3: kill all those people that they're about to kill thanks
Speaker 3: part to utilizing Dorothy Hamil's star appeal. Poor Dorothy, she
Speaker 3: really did not. Again, it's one of those things where
Speaker 3: it's like, we just shouldn't have pharmaceutical ads like the
Speaker 3: way that we have them, because you can't. Dorothy Hamil's
Speaker 3: was a great figure skater. Nothing in her life preparedared
Speaker 3: her to adequately vet whether or not yacks was a
Speaker 3: safe medication to advertise, no can't, we can't put that
Speaker 3: on Dorothy Hamil.
Speaker 4: No part of her training of her many hours prepared
Speaker 4: her to look critically at the data that was available
Speaker 4: to her. What was available to her, she wasn't even
Speaker 4: available to her.
Speaker 3: She wasn't getting up at four in the morning every day.
Speaker 3: Is it like adolescent girl to have like the Cox two?
Speaker 3: And Zime explained to her, like.
Speaker 5: No, no, that was like me, yeah, not her. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we had different paths different You're a terrible figure skater,
Speaker 5: not that bad. Okay, I have never seen you figure
Speaker 5: I've never seen you figure skate can.
Speaker 4: Cow maybe sure? Is that like a skateboarding move?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Probably Yeah.
Speaker 3: This has been skate talk with Robert and Cava to
Speaker 3: people who probably don't skate. So when we left our
Speaker 3: heroes at Bios, they just latched upon the brilliant of
Speaker 3: having Dorothy Hamill sell box. If you've been wondering how
Speaker 3: tens of millions of your fellow countrymen could be convinced
Speaker 3: to vote for a guy like Trump, just remember that
Speaker 3: an awful lot of them saw a video of a
Speaker 3: figure skater promising she knew a solution to their chronic
Speaker 3: pain issues and desperate for relief. Millions of people followed
Speaker 3: her to their demise. Like that really does explain a lot. Now,
Speaker 3: in fairness, very few people are doctors. It is unreasonable
Speaker 3: to expect people who are hurting and in some cases
Speaker 3: literally being driven mad by pain to personally overcome the
Speaker 3: weight of a multimillion dollar ad campaign and all of
Speaker 3: the science washing that a big pharmaceutical company can do.
Speaker 3: In fact, during the early years of iax's success, it
Speaker 3: would have seemed as if Cox two inhibitors were medical
Speaker 3: marvels backed by the best science, and it would have
Speaker 3: seemed that if you were someone who did what should
Speaker 3: be like the responsible amount of reading on this subject,
Speaker 3: not like the amount of reading that we could expect
Speaker 3: from like a research scientist, because research scientist who we're responsible,
Speaker 3: knew the dangers. But if you were, say, like a
Speaker 3: normal educated person who's like, oh, well, I'm going to
Speaker 3: read a paper of record and they're reporting on these
Speaker 3: new drugs written by a medical doctor interviewing other medical doctors.
Speaker 3: That's really all you, as a layman, should be.
Speaker 6: Expected to do to try to figure out, you know,
Speaker 6: how safe a medication is.
Speaker 3: And if you were doing that with viox, you would
Speaker 3: have walked away misinformed. And this brings us to one
Speaker 3: of the chief medical merchants of viox disinfo, a Harvard
Speaker 3: Medical School professor named doctor Jerome Grutman. He had embarked
Speaker 3: on a career as what you might call a professional
Speaker 3: semi celebrity doctor authoring articles for The New Yorker about
Speaker 3: health and the pharmaceutical industry, which he does today. Doctor
Speaker 3: Grutman is not someone who you would call the crank.
Speaker 3: He served in the advisory board of the National Heart, Lung,
Speaker 3: and Blood Association. He was the Dina and Raphael Recanati
Speaker 3: Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He'd worked at
Speaker 3: a high level for the s and was a listed
Speaker 3: author on some one hundred and fifty papers. One of
Speaker 3: his books had been adapted into a TV show, Gideon's Crossing,
Speaker 3: which I didn't expect to run into a Gideon's Crossing
Speaker 3: references amiteral on this episode. It wasn't great, as tom
Speaker 3: NeSSI writes in the book Poison Pills, even among top
Speaker 3: level physicians who are generally known as opinion or thought leaders,
Speaker 3: Groupman stands out it was no small matter. Therefore, when
Speaker 3: he wrote a linky article for The New Yorker in
Speaker 3: June of nineteen ninety eight entitled super aspirin new arthritis
Speaker 3: drug Celebra. Celebra was the name for the drug lender
Speaker 3: and as celebres, and very close in composition to viox.
Speaker 3: The article had been carefully authenticated by the famous fact
Speaker 3: checking department of The New Yorker, which is an almost
Speaker 3: perfect record of verifying every piece of information the magazine publishes.
Speaker 3: Like Hamill, Groupman began his discussion of super aspirin with
Speaker 3: a personal story. He himself had suffered debilitating pain brought
Speaker 3: on by oarthritis developed while training for the Boston Marathon.
Speaker 3: Despite years of searching for relief, he had found no
Speaker 3: satisfactory remedy. How or remarkable new class of drugs was
Speaker 3: offering hope to people like him and millions of others,
Speaker 3: and Groupman provided the anecdotal story of a firefighter from
Speaker 3: Nebraska whose arthritis had been alleviated miraculously thanks to super aspirin.
Speaker 3: A responsible scientist would note that the anecdotal evidence was
Speaker 3: more fit for a pharmaceutical commercial than an article in
Speaker 3: The New Yorker by a doctor. But doctor Grupman did
Speaker 3: speak with other medical experts, like Harvard's doctor Lee Simon,
Speaker 3: who had a seat on the FDA's Arthritis Advisory Committee
Speaker 3: and had been part of an FDA panel to evaluate
Speaker 3: how to approve super aspirins. This probably shouldn't have been
Speaker 3: allowed to happen because while he was sitting on that
Speaker 3: FDA panel deciding how to approve these medications. Doctor Simon
Speaker 3: was also a paid employee of Seerle conducting clinical trials
Speaker 3: for celebres. He did not disclose this conflict of interest,
Speaker 3: and doctor Grutman's article did not make any note of
Speaker 3: this fact that might have compromised a source's objectivity.
Speaker 4: That's actually pretty shocking, I have to say. I mean,
Speaker 4: because I mean, I know it's not a medical journal
Speaker 4: that he's writing in, but that is like the New
Speaker 4: Yorker though, Like I mean, yeah, you would think he
Speaker 4: would he would know, he should know better. Like that
Speaker 4: is like if you write anything. I wrote a piece
Speaker 4: in the BMJ recently, and I had to disclose everything,
Speaker 4: including who I was voting for, yeah, you know, in
Speaker 4: the election. So it's like in who I donated money
Speaker 4: to in the election. So that's pretty shocking to me that,
Speaker 4: like they did not require.
Speaker 3: That, they didn't require that. It's unclear to me if
Speaker 3: Grutman knew that doctor Simon was a plaid employee of Cerle.
Speaker 3: But I don't think Grutman is doing as much of
Speaker 3: his due diligence as he ought to. Saw what Simon
Speaker 3: is doing is obviously the more shady of the thing, but.
Speaker 2: It's one of those this is what I say.
Speaker 3: What I'm like, you really I just made that comment
Speaker 3: about like people being led by a figure skater, but like, yeah, again,
Speaker 3: if you're if you're doing your research, you could still
Speaker 3: get misled about this stuff, right, absolutely.
Speaker 4: I mean by a Harvard doctor. I mean, if COVID
Speaker 4: has done nothing else. It has also raised some doubts about,
Speaker 4: you know, the reputation of places here in the Bay Area,
Speaker 4: like UCS, SAT and Stanford where a lot of you know,
Speaker 4: anti vaccine cranks seem to be coming out of. So like,
Speaker 4: it's not totally shocking to me that it's Harvard, you know,
Speaker 4: but I could absolutely see the danger in someone with
Speaker 4: a name that big, the H bomb you dropping there,
Speaker 4: leading people to believe this this in New York must
Speaker 4: be right, the intellectual elites, you know, leading them all
Speaker 4: to believe the safety of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and Simon's quotes in The New Yorker are It's
Speaker 3: one of those things. He's really relying a lot on
Speaker 3: the fact that he's this fancy Harvard doctor, because the
Speaker 3: shit he is actually saying in this article is shit
Speaker 3: no doctor should ever say. He described celebrates as incredible
Speaker 3: and told doctor Grutman that unique among all other medications
Speaker 3: ever created, it had no side effects whatsoever. Specific they stated,
Speaker 3: there are no side effects, which most don't exist. You
Speaker 3: might not experience side eft, but someone will. There's no
Speaker 3: drug that has zero side effects of any kind.
Speaker 4: It's not a drug. If it's if I am doing
Speaker 4: the safest procedure in the world, I am never ever
Speaker 4: gonna say this is no risk because that's like jinxing it.
Speaker 4: Why would you do that. You never do that. It's
Speaker 4: just stupid. It's untrue.
Speaker 2: That is zero shocking.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is maybe that's a big old red flag. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And this is.
Speaker 3: This is I think where it gets into like the
Speaker 3: value of actually having a higher level of like kind
Speaker 3: of medical like medical even training. It may not be
Speaker 3: totally the right world, but like word, but like in school,
Speaker 3: so that because that's the sort of thing it is
Speaker 3: easy to like train people to have people in general,
Speaker 3: Layman be aware of, like, oh, if I see that,
Speaker 3: if I see somebody claiming there are zero side effects
Speaker 3: for anyone of this medication, that's something you shouldn't That's sketchy.
Speaker 3: You know, absolutely so, Asnessi notes, this should have been
Speaker 3: a massive and immediate red flag, just as we noted.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Doctor Grutman's article cited other medical experts making
Speaker 3: similarly dubious claims. He quoted another Harvard professor, doctor Clifford Saper,
Speaker 3: as saying super aspirin might hold the key to treating Alzheimer's. Now,
Speaker 3: this is a case where there was not evidence that
Speaker 3: it had efficacy treating Alzheimer's. Doctor Saper had a theory
Speaker 3: that inflammation in the brain caused by injured neurons led
Speaker 3: to swelling the damaged brains, and that as a result,
Speaker 3: viox might help. Right, And that's a perfectly valid thing
Speaker 3: to want to test.
Speaker 4: Right, yea.
Speaker 3: But you shouldn't go out an article be like this
Speaker 3: might here Alzheimer's based on that, because that's just a theory, right.
Speaker 4: And you know, and it's read, it's read by people
Speaker 4: understandably who are going to then relate it to somebody
Speaker 4: else as this is what it does. This is like
Speaker 4: we think it does this, and like there's so many steps.
Speaker 4: There's so many steps. There's years of steps between point
Speaker 4: A and point B, and that.
Speaker 3: Yep, and yeah so quote. Doctor Saper said that celebrc's
Speaker 3: probest to break open the vicious cycle of inflammation in Alzheimer's.
Speaker 3: Quite an astonishing statement of itself, and even more so
Speaker 3: since he did not cite results of a single human study.
Speaker 3: Yet the claim is part of an age old school
Speaker 3: of medical thinking that holds that logic in what makes
Speaker 3: sense or rational therapy should dictate the practice of medicine.
Speaker 3: But rational therapy needs to be buttressed by randomized, controlled
Speaker 3: human trials to determine what is and what is not
Speaker 3: effective treatment. That's from the book Poison Pills Now. Theorizing
Speaker 3: like Sabrid did is of course part of the medical process,
Speaker 3: but maybe not one that should be presented to the
Speaker 3: public in a widely read article where like people who've
Speaker 3: got loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's are going to be like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, a miracle drug might be coming through. No,
Speaker 3: even if it works, it's fucking fifteen years out or whatever,
Speaker 3: like from you know. Grutman's article also wildly exaggerated the
Speaker 3: harms of existing insets like Motrin and advil, failing to
Speaker 3: discuss newer versions that had been approved and came with
Speaker 3: fewer of the side effects that so called super aspirin
Speaker 3: was meant to avoid. In his article, Grupman cited the
Speaker 3: work of doctor James Frees, a professor at Stanford at length.
Speaker 3: Freese himself claims Grutmann distorted his research in order to
Speaker 3: make claims that Freese was not making about Cox two inhibitors. Now,
Speaker 3: doctor Grutman was not being bribed by merk nor did
Speaker 3: he violate the law or medical ethics in any way
Speaker 3: that I'm aware of other than writing a bad article.
Speaker 3: He fucked up, and part of why he fucked up was,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, he was looking to merge developing medical
Speaker 3: science with magazine Pop Science in a way that's not
Speaker 3: wildly different from what Malcolm Gladwell is going to be
Speaker 3: doing a few years later.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: I think that's irresponsible, but not malicious or outright criminal. Right,
Speaker 3: And we are talking about some people who did outrite
Speaker 3: criminal acts in this. I want to make it clear,
Speaker 3: I am not accusing doctor Grutman of doing anything criminal
Speaker 3: the same but not But.
Speaker 4: It's a slippery slope. It is, I mean it.
Speaker 3: Is, and see why it leads to people doing it.
Speaker 4: You know, And I've said this to you before too.
Speaker 4: It's like I think in the past, you know, when
Speaker 4: I was earlier in my medical training of my career,
Speaker 4: I didn't care that much about things like that. I
Speaker 4: would probably read it and be like, what is he saying?
Speaker 4: What does he mean? Forget it and let it go,
Speaker 4: not worry about that much. But this is how it starts.
Speaker 4: This is how it starts. It raises enough doubt, it
Speaker 4: raises enough like it makes it vague enough, it makes
Speaker 4: it cloudy enough that it's hard for people to know
Speaker 4: what is real and what isn't real. And this is
Speaker 4: where medical information, like the roots of it begin. It
Speaker 4: begins in good places sometimes like a Harvard doctor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's the same thing where we have
Speaker 3: this problem in journalism.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: There's a great movie called Shattered Glass starring Haymen Christensen
Speaker 3: about about a journalist for the New Republic who was
Speaker 3: like their star reporter, super young, and it turned out
Speaker 3: all of his stories he was just making them up,
Speaker 3: like complete bullshit, like literally just inventing people and things
Speaker 3: in order to write entertaining stories. The New York Times
Speaker 3: a little bit later had another reporter get blown up.
Speaker 3: A star reporter for the same thing, just completely lying
Speaker 3: about shit, tricking fact checkers, and it's one of those
Speaker 3: things doesn't have to happen all that often for people
Speaker 3: to be like, well, then these outlets are no better
Speaker 3: than whatever like weird fucking conspiracy, rag info wars or
Speaker 3: whatever that I like. And you know what, that's kind
Speaker 3: of on the journalists for fucking up in that way, right,
Speaker 3: that's on the newsroom, that's on the editors. That's on
Speaker 3: to people wanting these big stories that are exciting and
Speaker 3: that get eyeballs on. Right here, you kind of have
Speaker 3: the merger of the two. Right, the New Yorker wants
Speaker 3: an article that gets a lot of people to read it,
Speaker 3: because fuck, this is a miracle medicine that might help
Speaker 3: me and my loved ones with things that are really
Speaker 3: like causing us problems. And as the doctor, you want
Speaker 3: to be the first. You want to be the doctor
Speaker 3: who kind of establishes himself as like, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: on the ground floor of this breaking for people.
Speaker 4: I'm here right treat people. And there's going to be
Speaker 4: people who are going to be upset if Celebrates goes
Speaker 4: away or if these medications go away, because there are
Speaker 4: people out there who like, this is the one that
Speaker 4: works for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fucked so again. I just made the point that
Speaker 3: Grupman was not breaking the law. The same cannot be
Speaker 3: said for the next doctor we're going to discuss, an
Speaker 3: anesthesiologist named Scott Rubin. Starting in the year two thousand,
Speaker 3: Rubin published what would become twenty one papers claiming to
Speaker 3: show evidence that COX two inhibitors performed better than nonsteroidal
Speaker 3: anti inflammatory drugs for patients who'd received orthopedic surgery. Now,
Speaker 3: the last episode we mostly focused on Murk, and we
Speaker 3: will later in this one as the bulk of the
Speaker 3: blame lies with them. But our old friends at Pfiser
Speaker 3: don't have totally clean clean hands.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 3: Ruben was largely pushing a line that Peiser's product celebrates
Speaker 3: was a game changer, and that it was when it
Speaker 3: was paired with neurontin and Lyrica, both Pheiser products together
Speaker 3: they safely reduced post operative pain and could help eliminate
Speaker 3: the need for dangerous addictive drugs like morphine after surgery.
Speaker 3: Piser funded a great deal of Reuben's research from two
Speaker 3: thousand and two to two thousand and seven, effectively picking
Speaker 3: him up after he'd established himself as an expert in
Speaker 3: the burgeoning field of COX two inhibitor research. The good
Speaker 3: news is that, in the field Reuben attempted to influence
Speaker 3: orthopedic surgery, his work had less of an influence than
Speaker 3: he'd hoped. Most surgeons hesitated to switch to COX two
Speaker 3: inhibitors because some very good animal studies showed they slowed
Speaker 3: the rate at which bones heel, which is kind of
Speaker 3: a big deal if you're in the orthopedic surgery business.
Speaker 4: Wow, I'm just impressed that the orthopedic surgeons were reading anything. Hey, sorry,
Speaker 4: big the orthopedic surgeons.
Speaker 3: Speaking of orthopedic surgeons. They don't listen to podcasts, so
Speaker 3: fuck them. Here's some ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 3: If you're an orthopedic surgeon, hit me up. I got
Speaker 3: too many bones. I could use a couple less. Probably, so,
Speaker 3: Ruben's work formed an influential mass of positive seeming scientific
Speaker 3: pr arguing in favor of drugs like Biax and celebrates
Speaker 3: as safer super aspirins. An article in Scientific American notes.
Speaker 3: A two thousand and seven editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia
Speaker 3: stated that Ruben had been at the forefront of redesigning
Speaker 3: pain management protocols through his carefully planned and meticulously documented studies.
Speaker 4: Was to say that him he called his own studies.
Speaker 3: No, that's what the an editorial to how like the
Speaker 3: editors of the paper described him. And there's only one
Speaker 3: problem with these carefully the twenty or so carefully planned
Speaker 3: and meticulously documented studies that he had authored over a
Speaker 3: twelve year period, they were all complete bullshit, fraudulent in
Speaker 3: every way. Now, we will talk more about Reuben later
Speaker 3: because a lot of history occurs after the collapse of Yox,
Speaker 3: But it's important to note that Justice Pfeiser underwrote ruben
Speaker 3: shoddy research. Murk had deeply questionable science that they funded
Speaker 3: in an equally dubious way. Back during the FDA approval process,
Speaker 3: Merk had launched a strategy called Advantage in all caps
Speaker 3: because it was a very tortured acronym assessment differences between
Speaker 3: biox and neproxyen to ascertain gastronomical tolerability and effectiveness. An
Speaker 3: analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists describes the goal
Speaker 3: of Advantage as using flawed methodologies toward bias towards predetermined
Speaker 3: results to exaggerate the drug's positive effects. Quote as part
Speaker 3: of their strategy, scientists manipulated the trial data by comparing
Speaker 3: the drug to neproxen, a pain reliever sold under brand
Speaker 3: name such as a leave rather than a placebo. And yeah,
Speaker 3: we covered that a little earlier. But what's important is
Speaker 3: that we now know that Merk had a great deal
Speaker 3: of evidence when they were pushing this study suggesting that
Speaker 3: like viox massively increased the risk of cardiovascular events, which
Speaker 3: makes the case that this was not just something where
Speaker 3: they did a bad study and put this thing next
Speaker 3: to to proxen and it looked less risky than it
Speaker 3: does because it was next to a proxy and they
Speaker 3: conducted that study with new proxyen because they had data
Speaker 3: showing that viox massively increased the risk of heart attacks,
Speaker 3: and they were deliberately trying to hide that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: This is all stuff that came out later as a
Speaker 3: result of the Senate investigation and numerous court cases. So yeah,
Speaker 3: we know that Mark had a lot of evidence showing
Speaker 3: this was dangerous and they deliberately hit it. And we
Speaker 3: know that this was incredibly profitable for Merk. From nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety nine to two thousand and four, Viox made them
Speaker 3: two and a half billion dollars a year on average.
Speaker 3: It swiftly became the best selling drug in MRK history
Speaker 3: and one of the best selling drugs of all time,
Speaker 3: and just as swiftly, it started to kill people. One
Speaker 3: of the first to die was Bob Ernst. He was
Speaker 3: a fit, fifty nine year old triathlete who started taking
Speaker 3: biox because of recurrent arthritic pain in his hand. His wife,
Speaker 3: Carol had urged him to try ViOS after seeing an
Speaker 3: ad and Bob had gone on the medication. On May sixth,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, the two at an anniversary date
Speaker 3: at an olive garden in Keene, Texas. Bob passed away
Speaker 3: in his sleep later that night, dead from heart failure. Now,
Speaker 3: Bob had been in very good shape, but the death
Speaker 3: of a fifty nine year old man from heart failure
Speaker 3: is simply not the kind of thing that most pathologists
Speaker 3: are going to consider super suspicious. It was Carol herself
Speaker 3: who got suspicious, so since started digging into Bob's one
Speaker 3: medications is the only thing. He was prescribed biox. Even
Speaker 3: as early as two thousand and one, there were studies
Speaker 3: showing that Vyas was bad for heart health. Murck had
Speaker 3: successfully buried many of them, but there was still stuff
Speaker 3: that you could find with enough digging online. And that's
Speaker 3: exactly what his wife did. She found a lawyer, Mark Lanier,
Speaker 3: who made to take her case. In the book Poison
Speaker 3: Pill does a wonderful job of chronicling the work that
Speaker 3: they did. I'm going to have to give you a
Speaker 3: summary here, which is that in August of two thousand
Speaker 3: and five, a Texas state jury awarded almost twenty five
Speaker 3: million dollars to Carol Earnst in compensatory damages and more
Speaker 3: than two hundred million impunitive damages.
Speaker 2: Now that latter a.
Speaker 3: Matt verdict was lowered quite a bit due to a
Speaker 3: Texas law, but would be fair to call this a
Speaker 3: massive victory against Merk, and much of the case against
Speaker 3: Merk hinged on the fact that in June of two thousand,
Speaker 3: Merck had provided a tranch of early user data to
Speaker 3: the FDA that revealed vyox users had four times as
Speaker 3: many heart attacks as people on the prox and they
Speaker 3: didn't state this though this was in the data. You
Speaker 3: could find it if you analyze the data, but it
Speaker 3: was not in any of the conclusions that like Merk
Speaker 3: sent along to the FDA. And the FDA really just
Speaker 3: didn't do the work to actually like figure this out
Speaker 3: very quickly, and so it wasn't until fourteen months later
Speaker 3: in April of two thousand and two that the FDA
Speaker 3: actually forced through changes and how viox was labeled to
Speaker 3: reflect the evidence of risk. Merk took no action on
Speaker 3: their own to warn users about the fact that they
Speaker 3: knew that viox was causing heart attacks. Now, in the
Speaker 3: Leader trial that would develop from all this, CEO Raymond
Speaker 3: Gilmartin would claim that Vyox wanted to add a warning
Speaker 3: label the instant they were aware of the danger. This
Speaker 3: was a lie, as Cope and Barry Wright in their
Speaker 3: article Mirk in the Viox Debacle. Lanier, that's the lawyer
Speaker 3: introduced in the Ernst trial internal Mirk documents, which revealed
Speaker 3: that Merck resisted the FDA's efforts to add warnings to
Speaker 3: Vyax's label and eventually complied in ways that the Ernst
Speaker 3: jury found obscure. You had to dig three levels to
Speaker 3: see it, one juror stated in March two thousand, when
Speaker 3: Merk became aware of the Vigor studies findings of a
Speaker 3: significant increase in cardiovascular events for those taking vax over
Speaker 3: into Prox, and Merks scientists expressed concern. In an email
Speaker 3: message written in March of two thousand, Doctor Edward Skolnik,
Speaker 3: who was then Merk's head of research, stated the Vigor
Speaker 3: clinical trial had shown that vyax increased heart risks. The
Speaker 3: CV events were clearly there, he wrote, despite clear warnings,
Speaker 3: Merk Deskis decided against conducting studies on the heart attack
Speaker 3: risks because the marketing executives worried it might hurt Biox sales.
Speaker 3: Internal mIRC analyzes in two thousand and two thousand, two,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, and two thousand and two showed
Speaker 3: that Merk was worried about lost profits if warnings or
Speaker 3: precautions were put on its label. During that period, Mirk
Speaker 3: was in private negotiations with the FDA over changes to
Speaker 3: its Yox label. David Anstis, who at that time was
Speaker 3: the president of Merk's Human Health division, projected that a
Speaker 3: strict warning would reduce sales by at least fifty percent
Speaker 3: after the Vigor study findings in March of two thousand.
Speaker 3: A second internal mIRC analysis performed in October two thousand
Speaker 3: showed a significant increase in cardiovascular events for those taking vyox.
Speaker 3: The mIRC analysis plaintiff's atorney Mark Laneer, has argued was
Speaker 3: never presented to the FDA nor the media, and certainly
Speaker 3: was not given to the physicians for scribing byox. So
Speaker 3: this is entirely the marketing team and the CEO coming
Speaker 3: in and saying like this will cut profits, So bury
Speaker 3: it as long as you can. Every additional year we
Speaker 3: get to sell this stuff without a warning. Is worth
Speaker 3: it to us? Right, whatever number of deaths there are,
Speaker 3: the money this is bringing in is so huge, Like
Speaker 3: it's fine, right, that's literally a decision being made.
Speaker 4: You know. It's like the what's interesting to me is
Speaker 4: looking at these things is what could the FDA have
Speaker 4: done better in some of these circumstances. It's hard because
Speaker 4: some of the information is just not being given to
Speaker 4: them in what seems like a very fraudulent manner. But
Speaker 4: they need to have the power to do certain they
Speaker 4: need to teeth to do certain things. When a drug
Speaker 4: is first approved, there's still a lot of unanswered early
Speaker 4: safety questions because for most of the studies that are
Speaker 4: getting them approved, there's like maybe two to four thousand
Speaker 4: at most patients in a study. Sometimes oftentimes that's not
Speaker 4: enough to see like the safety evidence and what risks
Speaker 4: are associated with it. So the FDA has to be
Speaker 4: there pushing to see more data making sure that it
Speaker 4: stay safe. Once those numbers come out, they need to
Speaker 4: be there to do the post marketing studies. It's it's
Speaker 4: interesting to me to see it's terrifying to me to
Speaker 4: see going back to what's coming in the future, what's
Speaker 4: going to happen to our fdo god and how deregulated
Speaker 4: it's going to become, and to see what they're going
Speaker 4: to be able accomplish. It's it's going to be I mean,
Speaker 4: I just I mean, I hate to say it, but
Speaker 4: I think we're going to see more drug induced injuries
Speaker 4: than ever before because more medicines are going to be
Speaker 4: coming out and few of them are going to have
Speaker 4: the post marketing studies to prove it.
Speaker 3: And that's that's what's fucking scary, right is that, like
Speaker 3: we're talking, this is a massive failure by the FDA too.
Speaker 3: That happened when it was funded, right, like we can
Speaker 3: argue should have been funded more, but like that happened
Speaker 3: in a period totally different from the one we're entering into. Now, Like,
Speaker 3: what kind of shit is going to go come by
Speaker 3: now that there's there's no guardrails on any of this stuff, right,
Speaker 3: Like these fucking MBAs who are managing all of these
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical companies have absolutely and these marketers have absolutely no
Speaker 3: restrictions anything that they can shovel into people's faces to
Speaker 3: make a profit.
Speaker 4: It's funny. I'm like, you know, I get a lot
Speaker 4: of shit online for being like a pharma shill because, like,
Speaker 4: you know, I promote vaccines, like because they work and
Speaker 4: they're great, and you know, I can go into that
Speaker 4: in great detail if you like. But like, the the
Speaker 4: funny thing is the people, those people who are so
Speaker 4: against drug companies, so few of them are against drug
Speaker 4: companies for the right reason, for reasons like this. You know,
Speaker 4: when there's real reason to be mad about pharmaceutical companies,
Speaker 4: more people are upset about like the vaccines that have
Speaker 4: come out with good data behind them and with good
Speaker 4: studies in the limited amount of time that they're able
Speaker 4: to do. You know, it is it is hard. It's
Speaker 4: hard for me to wrap my brain around that. How
Speaker 4: I have to be the one defending pharmacuol companies and
Speaker 4: I'm asked, skeptical of them as anybody, Yeah, because of
Speaker 4: shit like this and then stuff we've seen.
Speaker 3: Like this, and it's yeah, it's just fucking I mean,
Speaker 3: what's coming is going to be sick folks in a
Speaker 3: very literal term. But what happened in the past was
Speaker 3: pretty sick too. So it took about four years for
Speaker 3: the Carol Ernst legal case to wind on against Bios
Speaker 3: right from her realizing there was probably something wrong with
Speaker 3: her husband's medication to actually getting a victory, which is
Speaker 3: actually pretty quick for one of these lawsuits.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 3: The company continued to push the mountain of disinformation during
Speaker 3: this time about their new star medications dangers. One February
Speaker 3: two thousand and one sales memorandum for bade sales rep
Speaker 3: from discussions on a study that raised heart concerns when
Speaker 3: they talk to physicians. Right, can't talk about this study
Speaker 3: about heart attacks from our medication when you sell it
Speaker 3: to doctors. Salespersons were also ordered to avoid discussing heart
Speaker 3: health risks and instead hand over a cardiovascular card to
Speaker 3: physicians which said Vyox is protecting the heart rather than
Speaker 3: potentially harming it. To take care of all of their
Speaker 3: questions oh good, you give me a card. Well, you
Speaker 3: got you guys got card money. There must be nothing
Speaker 3: wrong with this stuff could afford this kind of embossing.
Speaker 3: My god, look at that. It's okay, guys, they gave
Speaker 3: me a card.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 3: The Ernst lawsuit was not the first or last against Mirk.
Speaker 3: Most were brought by survivors of heart attacks or morole
Speaker 3: and the family members of people who had perished. Mirk
Speaker 3: upped their game, as this passage from Colpenberry's article makes clear,
Speaker 3: Mirk prepared an in house training game for Vyox sales representatives,
Speaker 3: dubbed Dodgeball. Sales trainees could only move on to the
Speaker 3: next round of the card game if they gave Merk
Speaker 3: approved answers to doctors questions raising Vyox safety concerns, or
Speaker 3: dodged such questions altogether.
Speaker 4: Wow, dodgeball.
Speaker 2: They're literally playing.
Speaker 3: Dodgeball with their death medicine, you know, questions about their
Speaker 3: death medicine.
Speaker 4: It is death medicine. It is interesting. Like they they
Speaker 4: the way they train their reps, like they train them
Speaker 4: to deal with different types of doctors. They're very smart.
Speaker 4: They recognize that there's like four or five different types
Speaker 4: of doctors and They range from like the owl, which
Speaker 4: is like the name they'd give one when they're training sessions,
Speaker 4: which is the guy you want to avoid, the person
Speaker 4: you want to avoid because they're going to ask them
Speaker 4: more detailed questions. They're going to keep drilling to get
Speaker 4: the answers. And then the one they love are the
Speaker 4: ones they call the peacocks, which you just have to
Speaker 4: kind of stroke their feathers, tell them they're pretty and smart,
Speaker 4: and those are the ones they're going to sell your medication.
Speaker 4: I mean they they know the psychology of doctors very well,
Speaker 4: probably better than doctors do. So it is there's the
Speaker 4: farm reps. It's changed maybe a little bit, but this
Speaker 4: was this was like the most evil time of the
Speaker 4: farm reps. Oh, they had the most power and doctors
Speaker 4: were the least prepared to deal with. Right. Right.
Speaker 3: It's also this kind of like there's less of an
Speaker 3: inbuilt like immunity within the medical community because you guys
Speaker 3: weren't used to being sold to this way. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: like when they first started getting Americans hooked on cigarettes,
Speaker 3: and like people had never seen an advertisement before and
Speaker 3: they're like a cowboy, well I'm buying a cigarette now,
Speaker 3: So a later congressional inquiry found that Merk leadership divided
Speaker 3: the studies on vyos into approved and background studies, and
Speaker 3: any study that showed a danger to heart health was
Speaker 3: considered a background study, and so their salespeople were forbidden
Speaker 3: to discuss them with doctors. This was a violation of
Speaker 3: company policy now all through two thousand and one. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and two, the FDA sent letters to Merk
Speaker 3: poking at it for failing to properly disclose the dangers
Speaker 3: of viox, but it still took again fourteen months for
Speaker 3: any sort of labeling change to be mandated. Part of
Speaker 3: why is that officials within the FDA were in the
Speaker 3: tank for Merk, not all of them, but enough. At
Speaker 3: later Senate committee investigations, an FDA scientist testified that he
Speaker 3: had brought forward concerns about viox to his superiors and
Speaker 3: been pressured to shut up. Another researcher who had gone
Speaker 3: to the FDA with complaints was Girk and Paul Singh,
Speaker 3: a Stanford professor who claimed that a Merck senior executive
Speaker 3: complained to his superiors at the university when he reported
Speaker 3: yox to the FDA. Singh claimed I was warned that
Speaker 3: if I persisted in this fashion, there would be serious
Speaker 3: consequences for me, because, of course MRK has the ability
Speaker 3: to donate a lot of money to a university like Stanford.
Speaker 3: Now still, some brave academics continued to blow the whistle,
Speaker 3: as this paragraph from a New York Times article by
Speaker 3: Alex Berenson, Gardner, Harris, and Barry Meyers summarizes. In two
Speaker 3: thousand and one, the first major study critical of the
Speaker 3: drugs appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Speaker 3: The report, written by Eric J. Tapol, and cardiologist at
Speaker 3: the Cleveland Clinic, reanalyzed data from several clinical trials of
Speaker 3: viox and celebrates. It reported that both drugs appeared to
Speaker 3: increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, but that
Speaker 3: the danger from biox appeared higher. Doctor Tapol, the chairman
Speaker 3: of the Clinics Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, immediately called for
Speaker 3: trials tol whether or not the drugs increased cardiovascular risk.
Speaker 3: Merck and Pfizer both rebuffed that request and said that
Speaker 3: the Cleveland Clinic report was flawed because it failed to do,
Speaker 3: among other things, to include data from other studies. Doctor
Speaker 3: Tipol became a harsh critic of both drugs, but his
Speaker 3: ire focused on viox and MERK. Even before his two
Speaker 3: thousand and one report repaired. He said in a recent
Speaker 3: interview that company scientists came to Cleveland to try to
Speaker 3: convince him not to publish it. Murk officials denied doing so.
Speaker 3: A year later, a study by doctor Wayne Ray, an
Speaker 3: epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University, found that medicaid patients in Tennessee
Speaker 3: who were taking high doses of vyos greater than the
Speaker 3: recommended long term dosage of twenty five milligrams daily had
Speaker 3: significantly more heart attacks and strokes than similar patients who
Speaker 3: were not taking high doses.
Speaker 4: So back when Alex Berenson used to write useful.
Speaker 3: Things, Yeah, it's okay, his careers move forward now he
Speaker 3: doesn't have to do that anymore.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's all pretty bad, right, Like that's I mean, there's
Speaker 3: a degree to which like, at least you can see
Speaker 3: these these heroes who tried to do something, even though
Speaker 3: you know your university is telling you stop. MRK is
Speaker 3: sending scary guys to your door to be like, are
Speaker 3: you sure you want to publish that study?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah it is it is funny, Like I didn't
Speaker 4: realize until this how slow moving a car wreck. This
Speaker 4: was yes, like this has been this a whole thing.
Speaker 4: It's been happening for a while. It's I didn't realize
Speaker 4: that it is someone. It's more nefarious than I expect it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well because MRK, Like, there's no argument they don't
Speaker 3: know exactly what they're doing. They are trading lives for dollars.
Speaker 3: The longer they know, eventually, we'll have to stop selling
Speaker 3: this stuff because we know how dangerous it is. But
Speaker 3: every day we get to keep selling it. We were
Speaker 3: recouping that investment. We're making a profit, and whatever we
Speaker 3: have to pay out in the end is going to
Speaker 3: be less than what we're making.
Speaker 4: I wonder how they justified it to themselves.
Speaker 2: If they did money money money.
Speaker 4: I know, and your listeners are like, what the fuck
Speaker 4: is wrong with this guy? What kind of does he
Speaker 4: not listen to the show? Does he not understand? But
Speaker 4: I mean, like I feel like everybody.
Speaker 2: Thinks like sheesh baby.
Speaker 4: But like these farm like the people the head of
Speaker 4: this farm company they are doing this now are how
Speaker 4: like is are they lying to themselves in some way?
Speaker 4: And what lie is that? That they're telling themselves. That's
Speaker 4: the part I don't understand.
Speaker 3: They know who to lie to and not they're lying
Speaker 3: I think to a lot of the doctors and to
Speaker 3: some of the salespeople. You know, salespeople don't maybe know
Speaker 3: how to like analyze whether or not this is a
Speaker 3: good study or whatever, so they're just like, oh, those
Speaker 3: other studies that showed a danger, they're not good for
Speaker 3: this reason or that reason. And like you're just some
Speaker 3: fucking sales rep that got hired out of college. Maybe
Speaker 3: you don't really give that much of a shit. But
Speaker 3: there are people plenty of people who know exactly what
Speaker 3: they're doing, right, And like those people who know exactly
Speaker 3: what they're doing just don't care. They don't feel bad
Speaker 3: about the fact that they're getting people killed.
Speaker 4: Right. There's just like in every episode I do, there's
Speaker 4: like this one moment where I turn to you and
Speaker 4: I'm just like, Robert, why do bad people do bad things?
Speaker 4: I just don't understand it. I'm so dumb in that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah doesn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's not dumb, you just aren't. You
Speaker 3: just have a soul and.
Speaker 4: I'm working to get rid of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's that's the only thing that's going to
Speaker 3: let us win. We all have to get rid of
Speaker 3: our souls today. Which, by the way, I've got a
Speaker 3: great new medication for getting rid of your souls. First step,
Speaker 3: you're going to go to your local not a local
Speaker 3: gas station. Actually, you want to go to a truck
Speaker 3: stop about thirty or forty minutes outside of town. Right
Speaker 3: if you can actually like see like people like like.
Speaker 3: If there's more than a half dozen rigs parked outside,
Speaker 3: that's probably a good truck stop. And you're going to
Speaker 3: go in there and behind the counter there should be
Speaker 3: a wall of pills and you're just going to ask
Speaker 3: for all of them, and you pour that into a cup.
Speaker 3: And this is critical. You mix it in with mountain
Speaker 3: dew code red, not Baja blast. That'll fuck it up.
Speaker 3: Do not mix Baja blast in mountain dew code red.
Speaker 3: And then shoot that ship as fast as possible. And
Speaker 3: that's gonna get rid of your soul. And then you're
Speaker 3: ready to join us on the front lines fighting the demons.
Speaker 4: Don't don't do that, people.
Speaker 3: You'll also be able to see demons. That's that's a promise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're gonna see some demons.
Speaker 6: Yeah, all of that fucking ibagain, or whether they fuck they
Speaker 6: put us in those pills, those random trucker pills that
Speaker 6: they just they all they almost call them adderall but
Speaker 6: not quite.
Speaker 4: I want to go check it out now. I mean,
Speaker 4: I live in San Francisco, so we don't have like,
Speaker 4: you know, forty minutes outside of town is like another town,
Speaker 4: So I gotta like go pretty far.
Speaker 3: You gotta go down the five to that place that
Speaker 3: sells split piece soup. Uh and then yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can find there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, I'm gonna do it. Actually, I think
Speaker 4: that's a good day trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this will be good. Let's let's let's go do
Speaker 3: it together. We'll buy all the Trucker pills and we'll
Speaker 3: see how they.
Speaker 4: Work to live stream that. I think that would really.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah. So in late September two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, as the death toll mounted and Merk's legal
Speaker 3: team was buried in cases, they made the decision to
Speaker 3: pull vax off the market all together. This is right
Speaker 3: after the case has been decided against them. There is
Speaker 3: no longer keeping this cat in the bag, and now
Speaker 3: it's about damage control. Their official justification was that they
Speaker 3: just had a long term clinical trial which showed that
Speaker 3: some patients developed cardiovascular problems after taking the drug for
Speaker 3: eighteen months. The data showed fifteen heart attack, strokes or
Speaker 3: blood clots per thousand people over three years, compared with
Speaker 3: seven and a half cardiac events in the general population.
Speaker 3: And even if you believe this Merk study, which I
Speaker 3: think is kind of trying to pad how bad it is,
Speaker 3: that's still much worse's that's still.
Speaker 2: A real problem.
Speaker 3: The stock market reacted first, costing Merk somewhere in the
Speaker 3: neighborhood of twenty six billion dollars in a day. But
Speaker 3: that's not real money. They get it back, you know
Speaker 3: how the stock market works. The next reaction came from
Speaker 3: the families of people who died due to viox, leading
Speaker 3: to a rush of new lawsuits. But the initial public
Speaker 3: reaction was beyond muted. It was, in fact, downright hostile
Speaker 3: to the victims. And this likely has something to do
Speaker 3: with a particularly toxic aspect of US culture I call
Speaker 3: scalding McDonald's coffee syndrome. Now, you probably heard the story
Speaker 3: about the woman who had a hot coffee spill in
Speaker 3: her lap at McDonald's drive through, and she sued them
Speaker 3: and got a bunch of money. This is a thing
Speaker 3: that especially when I was younger. I think more people
Speaker 3: know their real story now, But you would see viral
Speaker 3: memes all the time. You'd see it in like newspapers.
Speaker 3: You know, it was really a thing like my parents'
Speaker 3: generation loved to hate on. It was particularly a big
Speaker 3: thing for like conservatives who were angry at how mean
Speaker 3: all these slight, these frivolous lawsuits hurting innocent corporations, Like
Speaker 3: this woman spills coffee in her own lap, and like
Speaker 3: the reality was McDonald's had the coffee way higher than
Speaker 3: they were legally allowed to have it. They should not
Speaker 3: have been selling or handing people coffee hot and it
Speaker 3: gave her third degree burns to like her entire genital area.
Speaker 3: Like it was a hideous, hideous, life altering injury that
Speaker 3: she suffered because they were not doing what they legally
Speaker 3: should have been doing. Anyway, we don't need to rant
Speaker 3: on this, but at the time this happens, a lot
Speaker 3: less people realize the true story there, and so there
Speaker 3: is this big backlash against frivolous lawsuits against companies and
Speaker 3: what the murk vax lawsuits initially get lost in that right.
Speaker 3: When Carol von Ernst won her case against Merk, A
Speaker 3: lot of pundits of the day kind of looped this
Speaker 3: in with the McDonald's coffee case as another example of
Speaker 3: our sue happy culture run amok. From the book Poison Pills,
Speaker 3: Carol Earnst. Lawyer Mark Lanier was blasted by everyone from
Speaker 3: physicians to newspaper columnists for winning the trial by twisting
Speaker 3: the facts and relying on nothing but an ignorant jury
Speaker 3: of hicks, despite the fact that his witnesses included some
Speaker 3: of the best known physicians and scientists in the world.
Speaker 3: Even as the Texas jury was deliberating, Merk's lead attorney,
Speaker 3: Jerry Lowry, said if he Lanier had any evidence causes arrhythmia,
Speaker 3: this case would have been over three weeks ago. A
Speaker 3: few months after the trial verdict, CNBC broadcast a debate
Speaker 3: between Lanier and Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished
Speaker 3: Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and
Speaker 3: a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. The professor had
Speaker 3: written an op ed piece for The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 3: and said that physicians lamented the fact that they could
Speaker 3: no longer use the drug. Many leading newspapers, including The
Speaker 3: Washington Post, also mocked the Ernst trial. In an editorial
Speaker 3: entitled the viox Hex, the Post wrote that the Texas
Speaker 3: jury in that case awarded two hundred and fifty three
Speaker 3: point four million to the widow of a man who
Speaker 3: died of a heart attack triggered by arrhythmia, which is
Speaker 3: not a conditioned Viyax has been proven to cause. The
Speaker 3: Post said, the jury was confused about the medical evidence.
Speaker 3: And this is number one, that fucking dude debating Laneer
Speaker 3: on stage as a Hoover Institute guides right wing thing tape.
Speaker 3: But number two, you've got all these like big publications
Speaker 3: going like, oh, these it's a Texas jury. So clearly
Speaker 3: they're hicks. They don't understand our big cities science. They
Speaker 3: just got bamboozled by this smooth talking law who just
Speaker 3: hated Merk.
Speaker 2: It's so fucked up.
Speaker 4: You're totally right. It was like this era where it
Speaker 4: was like people like there has to be personal accountability
Speaker 4: for this, Like they should have known that there was
Speaker 4: a small risk with medications, and they, I mean, they're
Speaker 4: missing the point, which was that the risk was obfuscated
Speaker 4: in the beginning, I think, I mean, it sounds like,
Speaker 4: to be honest with you, it it's still at some
Speaker 4: point they look back at these medications and they said,
Speaker 4: you know what, there might be a role for them,
Speaker 4: and they're actually, you know, very well, could be a
Speaker 4: good use for some of these uses and stuff, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, even viox could have had specific uses for
Speaker 4: very well chosen patients. And they'll never get to that.
Speaker 4: Those patients will never get to that. They'll never get
Speaker 4: to have that benefit of a medicine that could actually work.
Speaker 4: Because again, instead of all the money going into research
Speaker 4: development figuring out exactly who benefits and who gets harmed
Speaker 4: from it and who should have it and who shouldn't,
Speaker 4: they spent all their money and energy in finding ways
Speaker 4: to sell it and for as long as possible, and
Speaker 4: they painted themselves into a corner at the end, and
Speaker 4: they couldn't at that point and then say, okay, well,
Speaker 4: actually the only these small set of people should use
Speaker 4: the medication because the risk is then worth it in
Speaker 4: these the small subset. But they couldn't do that. They
Speaker 4: had to withdraw completely. So it's just so stupid on
Speaker 4: so many levels. It's so it's such a waste, and
Speaker 4: it's a waste of all the time and effort that
Speaker 4: went into making the medication. Again too, because again the
Speaker 4: concept behind the medication, looking at COX two inhibitors, looking
Speaker 4: at ways to selectively attack those pain the pain pathways,
Speaker 4: shut down the pain pathways before they cascade into inflammation
Speaker 4: and pain. It's all smart, it's good. And now now
Speaker 4: it's my knowledge, I don't know if people are even
Speaker 4: thinking about this anymore. And like we still have problems
Speaker 4: with ensades end says still cause problems. Lots of health
Speaker 4: problems still come from advil leve I profen. They still
Speaker 4: cause me headaches because I have to go and take
Speaker 4: care of people believing because of them that cause hard issues,
Speaker 4: kidney problems, liver problems. Like people should be we should
Speaker 4: be researching new paid medications and worrying about how to
Speaker 4: do that right as opposed to how to make as
Speaker 4: much money off of as possible. But that's not where
Speaker 4: we are, it's not who we are. So I don't
Speaker 4: know why I'm saying this.
Speaker 3: I'm just no, I mean, it's it's all very frustrating, right,
Speaker 3: Like the way that this worked is just comprehensively bad
Speaker 3: for everybody but a handful of people at the top
Speaker 3: of mark. It's bad for the research scientists at MERK
Speaker 3: who were not shady motherfuckers who will always exist under
Speaker 3: a cloud of suspicion because they worked during the vox era.
Speaker 3: It's bad for the people who might have benefited from
Speaker 3: a VIAX that was rolled out in a more reasonable
Speaker 3: way to a smaller subset of people. It's bad for
Speaker 3: all of the tens of thousands of people who lost
Speaker 3: loved ones and the people who had life altering injuries
Speaker 3: as a result of it. It's just terrible for everybody.
Speaker 3: But you know, doctor Hoode, not terrible for anybody. What's
Speaker 3: that products and services that support this podcast, all of
Speaker 3: which have been FDA approved, And if we've learned anything
Speaker 3: this episode, that always means good, good, and we're back.
Speaker 3: So we're drawing to a close in this episode.
Speaker 4: I have a question. Did they actually lose money overall
Speaker 4: from this? How much? Do we know? How much?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, no. They pay in total a little less
Speaker 3: than a billion dollars in penalties and additional civil settlements
Speaker 3: for their victim. They are making two and a half
Speaker 3: billion dollars a year during the period of time where
Speaker 3: they're selling this and it's been it's out for five years,
Speaker 3: something like five years. Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, so that's cool.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite side parts in this story is
Speaker 3: that the Washington Posts takes like a huge strong stance
Speaker 3: to defend an unethical mega corporation and got something wrong,
Speaker 3: which is not a thing that iver happens again.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 3: About a year after the Post's article talking about how
Speaker 3: unfair it is to Suemer, Harvard's School of Public Health
Speaker 3: issues a public health bulletin warning that vyax use was
Speaker 3: associated with severe heart rhythm disorders and an increased risk
Speaker 3: of kidney failure. More research comes out in the following
Speaker 3: years that further vindicates everyone who tried to Warren Mrk
Speaker 3: and the world about biox the medication that had been
Speaker 3: prescribed to some twenty million people in eighty countries by
Speaker 3: the time it was polled. We will never have a
Speaker 3: comprehensive list of the number of people killed and injured
Speaker 3: as a result of viox, but what we do know
Speaker 3: is harrowing. Doctor David Graham, the Associate Director for Science
Speaker 3: and Medicine and the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, testified
Speaker 3: before the Senate Finance Committee that Yax had been associated
Speaker 3: with at least one hundred thousand heart attacks and more
Speaker 3: than fifty five thousand premature deaths, that is, in the
Speaker 3: United States. He compared the cost to two to four
Speaker 3: jumbo jetliners crashing every week for five years.
Speaker 4: Well it shit, yeah, striking imagery.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a lot of dead people.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 3: Now, the lawsuits that resulted from this are far too
Speaker 3: numerous to chronicles, save to note that Merk initially promised
Speaker 3: to fight each of the thirty thousand lawsuits against them independently.
Speaker 2: Well, fight everyone, yes, man.
Speaker 3: Then they agreed in two thousand and eight to provide
Speaker 3: what could have been almost five billion as part of
Speaker 3: the settlement, but I don't know how much of that
Speaker 3: they actually paid out. And then they pled guilty to
Speaker 3: a misdemeanor for a legal promotional activity that was about
Speaker 3: another nine hundred and fifty million in penalties and civil payments.
Speaker 3: So you know, they wound up paying a good amount
Speaker 3: of money. That's like they lost a good like two
Speaker 3: years or so of the profits that they made.
Speaker 4: Did Dorothy Hamil do anytime? No?
Speaker 3: No, Dorothy Hamill does not go to prison for him.
Speaker 3: Many many crimes. They do plead guilty to a misdemeanor
Speaker 3: for introducing a misbranded drug to interstate commerce, So that's nice.
Speaker 3: But no one at Merk is locked up for what
Speaker 3: they did. Nor do any of the scientists who degree
Speaker 3: to help cover up studies or push this info suffer
Speaker 3: lasting career harms, with the notable exception of our friend
Speaker 3: Scott Ruben. Paul White, the editor at the Journal of
Speaker 3: Anesthesia and Analgesia, claims that Ruben's study showing the benefits
Speaker 3: of COX two inhibitors helped sell billions of dollars worth
Speaker 3: of both celebres and vox. In two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: he was revealed to have completely falsified at least twenty
Speaker 3: one of his published papers, all of which claimed to
Speaker 3: show how else super aspirins could benefit post operative healing.
Speaker 3: Pfiser had funded Ruben's work from two thousand and two
Speaker 3: to two thousand and seven, the years when they were
Speaker 3: also making bank on a little medication called Celebrex. His employer,
Speaker 3: Bay State Medical Center, claimed a Scientific American that Ruben
Speaker 3: had been paid directly by Pfeiser for his work, and
Speaker 3: that he had been decided how much of that money
Speaker 3: would fund research and how much would go into his pocket,
Speaker 3: which sounds fine, that's not sketchy, there's nothing. How could
Speaker 3: that lead to anything?
Speaker 2: Bad man?
Speaker 4: You know, it's giving antithesiologists a bad name.
Speaker 2: It is, it is, and.
Speaker 4: These are guys who deal with a lot of fentanyl.
Speaker 4: So that is wild. That is well. I am actually
Speaker 4: I would love to read his articles that are totally fabricating.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's some good breakdowns on them from scientists
Speaker 3: who are more qualified than me to talk about it.
Speaker 4: I do recommend.
Speaker 3: It's a fascinating story. One of my favorite quotes from
Speaker 3: this is that his employer, Base Date, like when people
Speaker 3: would note that, like, well, that's not how pharmaceutical You're
Speaker 3: not just supposed to give a single guy cash, Like
Speaker 3: that's not how pharmaceutical research is supposed to be done.
Speaker 3: A spokesman for Base State Medical Center told Scientific American,
Speaker 3: I don't know how many dollars went to Ruben or
Speaker 3: his group.
Speaker 2: Wow, no idea, Holy hell.
Speaker 3: A Pfiser spokesperson insisted the grants we're properly dispersed to
Speaker 3: Base State in accordance with Pfiser policy, but that they
Speaker 3: weren't familiar with the record's retention policies of base state,
Speaker 3: so you know, who knows, who knows how much money
Speaker 3: between ten and one hundred thousand dollars at least, But
Speaker 3: he was actually asked to pay three hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in restitution when he got sentenced in twenty
Speaker 3: ten after pleading guilty of massive fraud. Prosecutors argued that
Speaker 3: he'd been paid huge money in grants and never performed
Speaker 3: the studies he'd been paid to conduct. He just pocketed
Speaker 3: the cash and published lies about celebres. Thankfully, justice was done.
Speaker 3: He was given six months in prison and asked to
Speaker 3: pay three hundred and sixty thousand in restitution to the
Speaker 3: pharmaceutical companies who'd sponsored his work, the real victims and
Speaker 3: all this holy shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, actually, I mean he did some time. That's something.
Speaker 4: I mean, I do know doctors that's gone to actual
Speaker 4: prison for like medicare fraud and that sort of thing,
Speaker 4: like done actual time. It's not common, but you know,
Speaker 4: it can certainly happen. I mean, the things I'm seeing
Speaker 4: are there, it's always fraud related, you know. And actually
Speaker 4: six months isn't as long as I've seen other people
Speaker 4: go for what I kind of consider to be lesser crimes,
Speaker 4: but they weren't crimes committed directly against the American government
Speaker 4: and medicare frauds, So that's probably why he only got
Speaker 4: six months.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the story of biocs. Doctor Hoode. How
Speaker 3: are you feeling?
Speaker 2: How are you good?
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I again, it comes down to
Speaker 4: like I'm always a little torn when I do episodes
Speaker 4: or talk about how terrible pharmaceutical companies are, because they
Speaker 4: are terrible and I have so many problems with them,
Speaker 4: but there's always a part of me that's like they
Speaker 4: are super important at the same time, and we do
Speaker 4: need them more than ever to be really focused on
Speaker 4: important world health issues and infectious diseases. And the problem
Speaker 4: is the things I really care about, the things I
Speaker 4: think are really important, are not necessarily things that they're
Speaker 4: going to make money off of, and they just don't
Speaker 4: really care. So I'm very torn. I have a lot
Speaker 4: of mixed emotions about pharmaceutical companies in general, and it
Speaker 4: bothers me when people assume that I am like pro
Speaker 4: pharmacutical company because I hate them more than anybody really,
Speaker 4: I mean, I really do. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: we do need their help unless we get more scientists
Speaker 4: like doctor Peter Hotez, who's you know, a friend of
Speaker 4: the show has come on who has made his own
Speaker 4: pharmacutic or like vaccines at cost, these great like vaccines,
Speaker 4: and people still accuse him of being a pharmacial even
Speaker 4: though he works completely outside of the farmer world. So
Speaker 4: I'm very torn about pharmacual companies in general, and I
Speaker 4: think it is very very very important that we continue
Speaker 4: to like pick at them, analyze them, be super critical
Speaker 4: of them, but also be fair about what they can
Speaker 4: can do, what they should do, and what we should
Speaker 4: expect from them. I think we have to be able
Speaker 4: to look at them critically and look at them in
Speaker 4: a sort of we have to look at them critically,
Speaker 4: but we also have to be able to be fair
Speaker 4: and reasonable about what we expect from a massive corporation.
Speaker 4: These are examples, like this case here of things that
Speaker 4: should never have been allowed to have happened and are
Speaker 4: going to continue to happen because we aren't going to
Speaker 4: have the oversight of these companies and it's going to
Speaker 4: become easier and easier for things like this to happen,
Speaker 4: which is my fear unless doctors and scientists around the
Speaker 4: world have the time and energy to really pick apart
Speaker 4: at every detail and every study that comes from them.
Speaker 4: But I think even academic medicine is going to be
Speaker 4: under the gun in the coming years too. I don't
Speaker 4: feel great for my friends who have, like who have
Speaker 4: academic jobs in medicine. I think they're all going to
Speaker 4: be at who's going to get paid, who's going to
Speaker 4: be able to get to stay, who's going to be
Speaker 4: able to get their research done. It's all going to
Speaker 4: be at the whim of people who know very little
Speaker 4: about science, who care very little about science. So very
Speaker 4: depressed is the answer to your question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's yeah. There's not much more to
Speaker 3: say on the matter than that, right, Like this is
Speaker 3: I guess part of what's so frustrated to me is
Speaker 3: that the sweep of like the anti intellectual crusade that
Speaker 3: is going to cost so many people their lives, is
Speaker 3: of such catastrophic danger to every positive gain that we've
Speaker 3: made as a society in the last one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty years. Is fueled in part by the irresponsibility, greed,
Speaker 3: and wastefulness of people who knew better who are not ideologues,
Speaker 3: who are not misinformed, who are just willing to well,
Speaker 3: the system can handle, you know, me fucking around in
Speaker 3: this way, or like why shouldn't I get paid?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Like, someone will catch it, it won't be that bad. Like,
Speaker 3: And those little acts of malfeasance provide a lot of
Speaker 3: the fuel, like the distrust, the hatred for elites and whatnot.
Speaker 3: You know, when I say elites, I mean like in
Speaker 3: you know, the medical sense, right, You've got doctors and
Speaker 3: people at the FDA who are like in the tank
Speaker 3: for these sketchy drugs that get people killed. And that
Speaker 3: means that when we have a fucking pandemic, less people
Speaker 3: trust them. Right, Like vax is not zero percent of
Speaker 3: why so many people were hesitant to trust medical science
Speaker 3: during COVID, right, and neither is the opiate epidemic. Right,
Speaker 3: And that that doesn't mean that the people that RFK
Speaker 3: has a point. It means that, like, if you let
Speaker 3: people get away with shit like this, and we always do, uh,
Speaker 3: it'll just keep getting worse. Somebody who is who is
Speaker 3: absolutely has no limits whatsoever, will start taking advantage of
Speaker 3: the situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yea, that's exactly right.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's going to be a wild four years.
Speaker 4: There be so much diarrhea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of diarrhea.
Speaker 3: Look, folks, every year I go to Vegas, I find
Speaker 3: whichever buffet has the rancidest muscles, and I eat fourteen
Speaker 3: to fifteen plates, and that provides me with the internal
Speaker 3: strength and resilience I need to handle any kind of
Speaker 3: change to our health and safety food standards. I'm going
Speaker 3: to be fine in this this sick new world, Kava.
Speaker 3: I'm going to be eating rancid muscles like a king.
Speaker 4: So many, so many food born illnesses, so much. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be the.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be the Golden Age of diarrhea, the brown Age.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, that's what. That's what I'm gonna call this, the.
Speaker 3: The Guilden Age and the uh the brown Age. Well,
Speaker 3: actually we could call it the guilt and age, which
Speaker 3: is an old timey term for like shit encrusted on
Speaker 3: your your ass. Perfect well, explain it, but it works. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you have to explain it. You have to explain it.
Speaker 3: But you know, why does that make it bad?
Speaker 2: Anyway?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right?
Speaker 4: For having meat, Yeah, it's always good it's nice seeing you,
Speaker 4: nice in your face. For your listeners who may have
Speaker 4: an interest in learning more about medical topics, you can
Speaker 4: listen to my podcast The House of Pod anywhere you
Speaker 4: get your podcasts, and uh follow me applu skuy at
Speaker 4: cave MT and thank.
Speaker 3: You yeah, thanks for coming on the sheer.
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