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 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) - A scientist who helped develop the painkiller Vioxx rejected assertions by a plaintiff's lawyer Wednesday that Merck & Co. actively tried to conceal from regulators unfavorable data about the popular arthritis drug's potential heart safety problems.
In a court session delayed briefly by a bomb scare, Dr. Briggs Morrison defended the company's handling of a 1995 clinical study of the effect of so-called Cox-2 inhibitors such as Vioxx on the body, saying the data was included in Merck's 1998 application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell Vioxx. Cox-2 inhibitors were touted for causing less stomach upset than older painkillers.
But plaintiffs attorney Mark Lanier, in a pointed cross-examination of Morrison, said Merck's new-drug application consisted of enough documents to fill more than 120 boxes, suggesting that Merck purposely buried the data because it showed Vioxx made users more susceptible to heart attacks.
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