by Playfuls Staff |
15th April 2006
The popular osteoporosis drug made by Merck, Fosamax, has now been linked to a condition called osteonecrosis, according to findings published in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. This rare disease causes a patient’s jawbone to rot and die.[more]
Merck also makes Vioxx, which was pulled off the market in 2004 after it was shown to cause an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Merck was recently hit with major punitive damages and is facing 10,000 Vioxx-related lawsuits, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This week a Florida-based law firm has filed suit against Merck in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers seeking class action status claiming that Fosamax was heavily marketed as a safe drug while the company hid the dangerous side effects from the public. Fosamax appears to be headed in the same direction as the now defunct Vioxx.
This is a health scam, states Byron J. Richards, nationally-recognized health expert and author of Mastering Leptin.
Fosamax is being promoted as preventative health care when there is no real research to back up this claim.
Christopher Loder, a spokesman for Merck, claims that ONJ with Fosamax is
exceedingly rare. But while this may appear to be true, experts say it is always good to consider that at least 90% of drug side effects go unreported to the FDA, so the actual number of people stricken with ONJ is likely to be much higher.
In a statement, Merck said that in
all of our controlled clinical trials with Fosamax, which involved more than 17,000 patients, including some that were 10 years in duration, we had no reports, according to the April 3, 2006 LA Times.
On April 10, 2006, a lawsuit was filed against Merck alleging Fosamax is a defective product because it can cause osteonecrosis of the jaw, and also alleging that Merck concealed the drug’s dangerous side effects from doctors and patients.
The lawsuit alleges that the FDA asked Merck to add an ONJ warning to Fosamax's label in August of 2004 and that it has yet to comply with that request.
Merck claims it received a request from the FDA to update the label in January 2005, and says the warning was added in July 2005. However, the "label" referred to is actually a 22-page document that is provided to pharmacies that fill prescriptions for Fosamax, and the warning does not appear until page 13.
