Merck Halts Sales of Vioxx
Caring Medical treats patients naturally without medications as much as possible. Why? We know that drugs are a two edged sword. They can help in some ways (usually temporarily and superficially), but they can also hurt you. The recall of the very popular anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx is a perfect illustration of this phenomenon, and also once again shows that FDA approval of a drug does not guarantee its safety.

Numerous drugs have been recalled due to health risks that only became apparent in the post-approval period during general and sometimes widespread use. Vioxx appears to greatly increase (doubles) the heart attack risk of patients using the drug. This connection has actually been suspected for some time, and physicians had already started to slow their prescribing of this drug. About two months ago I took some CME (Continuing Medical Education) classes on anti-inflammatories and this potential health risk was clearly warned about in the course material.

Ethical issues about when to pull the plug on an unsafe drug arise in this case as well, and we can expect to see much class action litigation on the matter. Almost none of our patients take any anti-inflammatory drugs.

Merck’s response has been to withdraw the drug for the public’s safety. However, I wonder how many people died of heart attacks because they were taking Vioxx? Perhaps we will never know. This should speak volumes in favor of what I have been saying for many years. Don’t trust pharmaceuticals, and always try to solve your health problems with natural therapies first. Drugs should be a last resort. This fiasco is especially tragic since many of these Vioxx patients were taking the drug for arthritis and other musculoskeletal pain. In our opinion, such use of these drugs is actually counterproductive, and we know that Prolotherapy is a far safer and far more effective treatment for those conditions.
 

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