Dr. Joseph Fraiman

And, you know, if you do that is, you know, and it wasn't until later.

Oh, by the way, first, it wasn't Pfizer.

That's not Pfizer's drug, Vioxx.

It's, I believe, a Merck.

It's a Merck drug.

Yeah, the concern with Vioxx is, yes, if they were honest and said, yes, this does cause some heart attacks, but we still think it's great, and then they pushed it and that got through, my guess is that drug would probably not have been a particularly good moneymaker.

I don't think that many people would have taken it.

There could have been a small group of people who were willing to take that risk, but in general, it probably wouldn't have been...

uh probably wouldn't have made them much money and so they instead decided to suggest that it was the naproxen that that uh was preventing heart attacks and that their drug didn't cause it they only discovered it a couple years later when they tried to show that Vioxx prevented colon cancer in a randomized trial they were doing a colon cancer trial that's interesting

And then when they were trying to prevent colon cancer with Vioxx, that was when they discovered that they had an increase in heart attacks in the Vioxx group.

Also, just for your knowledge, it seems like you are the biggest Vioxx fan I've ever run into.

I was.

I was.

But it actually did reduce colon cancer a little bit.

Yeah, no, well, I mean, I think, as even you're saying there on the Vioxx, like, I personally don't know if I agree with you so much in that I, well, I've never, as a physician, Vioxx was gone before I got there, so I never had the opportunity of putting myself in the position where I had prescribed it, or taken it myself.

But I can say what you're suggesting is the idea that we have medications, we can have informed consent.

And this is true, I believe, for about everything.

It's true for everything that we are doing.

And if people understand what they're taking, it's okay.

And that's their choice.