Greatest Hits Policy Policy Policy Quality Health Plans Providers Health plans Recent Posts Categories Featured Posts by Harvey Frey MD by John Abramson MD by The Industry Veteran By Matthew Holt By Gregory Pawelski | August 19, 2005 PHARMA: Brutal news for Merck The jury in the first Vioxx trial has found . Merck had to fight this one as it didn't even seem to be the kind of heart disease that those people who did get heart disease in the VIGOR and other studies died from.  But they lost, and the jury awarded $253.4m.  Where they got the .4 from I'm not sure, but that's a hell of a lot of punitive damages.  Guess that "Dodgeball" memo was pretty expensive in the end. So if you play out the math there are an alleged . So if every 4 death's costs Merck  $1 billion, then they owe some 14 trillion dollars.  That somewhat exceeds the gross na

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