Pharmaceutical unethical/corrupt practices: what's the FDA role/connection

[philb]

Merck & Co. trained its sales staff to mislead doctors in an aggressive campaign to boost prescriptions for its painkiller Vioxx despite evidence that the drug increased heart attack risks, according to a House committee analysis of company documents.
Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market in September because of heart attack and stroke risks, built up sales topping $2 billion during a period when safety concerns were mounting among scientific experts and federal regulators, said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee on Thursday.

Doctors were induced to write millions of Vioxx prescriptions by Merck sales strategies that amounted to "disinformation and censorship,'' said Waxman, whose staff analyzed 20,000 documents related to the promotion of Vioxx.

Sales representatives who visited physicians at their offices and hospitals were told to make spurious claims of superior cardiovascular safety for Vioxx, but they were forbidden to discuss Merck's own 2000 study linking the drug to heart attack risks five times greater than those with another painkiller, the report concluded.

“A Food and Drug Administration official said Merck's practices weren't illegal.”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/06/MNGKLCL3V31.DTL