If Merck had told people about all of the negative side-effects ahead of time in an effective way, the issue of the "the risk/benefit profile of some whiz-bang new pharmaceutical" would have been irrelevant in court. (Or course, Vioxx wouldn't have sold as well either.) The only reason that profile was relevant was that it had been hidden from users.
Juries may be no good at making extremely technical judgments, but they're good at deciding whether the defendant was lying or not. And that's what's relevant in court.
On 8/22/05, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >... Jurors who voted against Merck said much of the science sailed right
> >over their heads. "Whenever Merck was up there, it was like wah, wah, wah,"
> >said juror John Ostrom, imitating the sounds Charlie Brown's teacher makes
> >in the television cartoon. "We didn't know what the heck they were talking
> >about." ...
>
> Bingo. That may be the best example ever of my longtime view that the Age
> of Enlightenment hasn't improved all that enlightening and the technocratic
> society is ultimately ruled not by rationality but faith.
>
> Laypersons and even scientists outside their narrow specialty are simply not
> equipped to understand and judge disputes involving advanced technologies.
> This is one thing that makes today's world so bewildering and frightening to
> so many people, i.e., that their lives are dependent on technologies -- from
> PCs to pharmaceuticals -- that are completely baffling to most users. Let's
> face it, if the FDA is scratching its head over the risk/benefit profile of
> some whiz-bang new pharmaceutical, there is no way that you, the patient in
> the street, are going to be able to parse the pharmacological dynamics of
> that pill in your hand; you just have to swallow it and have faith it will
> do you good ... like, say, a communion wafer.
>
> It's no wonder that the technocratic society shows so many signs of
> imploding and that so many people are reverting to the (also
> unsatisfactory!) world explanations offered by history's great know-it-alls,
> established religion.
>
> Carl
-- Jim Devine "He should take it easy" -- My cat's vet.