In an unprecedented change of posture, the New England Journal of Medicine has reversed itself on the issue of whether Vytorin causes cancer.
Vytorin is the controversial cholesterol lowering drug that is the center of a major advertising fraud that netted Merck and Schering-Plough over 10 billion dollars in sales in the past two years. Merck and Schering-Plough are facing congressional investigation, various state attorney general investigations, and plaintiff class action lawsuits. All the negative publicity has caused sales to fall off, yet the questionable drug is still a top seller for Merck and Schering-Plough in 2008.
Underneath the advertising fraud is a far more damaging prospect from the Big Pharma point of view, that the theory of lowering LDL cholesterol with drugs to prevent heart disease is itself a major fraud that has been perpetrated on the American public for the past decade. Indeed, while Vytorin is the most effective drug combination of all time in terms of lowering LDL, doing so does not produce cardiovascular health or reduce cardiovascular mortality.