Vioxx Drug Study Used Primarily As Marketing Tool

A 1999 clinical study that Merck & Co Inc said was done to test side effects of its now-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx was done primarily to support a marketing campaign before its launch, according to researchers. The real aim of the study, called ADVANTAGE, was to promote prescription of the new medicine when it became available -- a so-called 'seeding' project -- U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. The research team based their conclusions on an extensive trawl of Merck internal and external documents collected by plaintiffs' lawyers preparing for Vioxx lawsuits. 'Documentary evidence shows that ADVANTAGE is an example of marketing framed as science,' they wrote in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Kevin Hill, a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and colleagues said the findings showed how studies masquerading as clinical science could be used to bolster marketing plans.

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