Several people have sent this along, or similar writeups. The claim is that Vioxx actually was responsible for over 500,000 deaths, which would be about ten times the absolute highest (and much disputed) estimate that’s been seen to date. Ron Unz, the publisher of the American Conservative who makes these allegations, says that they’re obvious in death-rate figures, particularly in the older population:
“We find the largest rise in American mortality rates occurred in 1999, the year Vioxx was introduced, while the largest drop occurred in 2004, the year it was withdrawn,” says Unz. “Vioxx was almost entirely marketed to the elderly, and these substantial changes in the national death-rate were completely concentrated within the 65-plus population.”>
I found this claim very hard to believe. (For one thing, how could all those patients and lawyers suing Merck have let this get past them?) Looking at the statistics themselves, I can see no evidence for Unz’s claim. Here, for example, is the death rate in the US, crude and age-adjusted, over this time span:
And to get more specific, here are the numbers for cardiovascular deaths for people 65 and over. (They’re in a chart comparing them to cancer death rates as well):
I do not see the effects that Unz is talking about. Not at all. A single-cause change in the death rate of the magnitude that he’s proposing should most certainly show up in these figures (particularly the latter chart), but it isn’t there. I see no reason to take this claim seriously.
For those wanting more, there are more arguments against this theory in the comments here).