Medicine: Vioxx off the market

This is HUGE, kids. The Cox2-i increases risk of heart attack and stroke? Will Celebrex follow? Crazy stuff. This article is also full of plenty of pharm-company bullshit. "We're taking it off the market for the good of the patients." Whatever. You're taking it off the market to save your ass on the 20 million lawsuits that will be filed in the next month. And since Zocor goes generic in 2006, Merck is in some deep shit losing its statin AND it's Cox-2 inhibitor. So notice what they do. They combine it with another cholesterol lowering drug from Schering-Plough. And doctors will prescribe it, b/c we're all scared to death our patients won't take two pills instead of one, even if that small inconvenience is worth a few hundred million in health care costs. The pharm companies need to learn that in order to help patients, you have to do more than simply make sure they have to pay more for their drugs. Bastards.

Capitalism works and all that, but it only works when the good of the general public can exploit the hell out of greedy-ass MBAs. And when the general public CAN'T exploit greedy-ass MBAs, we should shut them down. Usually, patients can exploit MBA-greedy drug company execs, because they make a lot of money, patients get new good drugs. Everybody's happy, sorta. But when companies just start exploiting patent law to make their profits instead of dumping more money into research, well, we should shut their asses down. When all competition does is promote shifty practices, we don't need it. When it promotes putting smiles on the faces of people who don't necessarily drive luxury sedans, that's some good stuff.