据外电综合报道：
(Adds details, background, stock activity; rewrites from
brief)
By Ransdell Pierson
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - Merck & Co <MRK.N> said on
Thursday that more than 97 percent of eligible U.S. claimants
had elected to participate in its $4.85 billion proposed Vioxx
settlement, an adequate number to trigger funding of the
program.
"The company expects that the distribution of interim
payments to qualified claimants will begin in August and will
continue on a rolling basis until all claimants who qualify for
an interim payment are paid," Merck said in a news release.
The Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based drug maker earlier
had said it would not commit itself to the settlement until at
least 85 percent of eligible patients elected to participate.
To be eligible for the proposed settlement, patients or
their survivors had to have filed a Vioxx product liability
lawsuit in the United States for alleged heart attacks, stroke
or death or have signaled officially their intent to do so.
Vioxx had generated sales of $2.5 billion a year before the
arthritis and chronic pain pill was withdrawn from U.S.
drugstores almost four years ago, when a Merck study showed
that long-term users had twice the risk of heart attack and
stroke.
Merck said on Thursday that more than 48,500 of the
approximately 50,000 people who had registered eligible
injuries had enrolled in the program.
Last year the company took a pretax charge of $4.85 billion
for the proposed settlement.
Personal-injury lawyers representing former Vioxx users
agreed to the settlement after Merck triumphed in a high
percentage of court battles with plaintiffs who said the
medicine had harmed them.
A very large clinical trial of Vioxx conducted almost a
decade ago showed the medicine caused about a fourfold higher
risk of heart attack than the widely used painkiller naproxen.
Even so, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed
Vioxx to remain on the market, and Merck launched a splashy
advertising campaign that over a period of years helped turn
the product into one of the world's biggest-selling drugs.
Merck unexpectedly withdrew Vioxx in September 2004 after a
twofold higher heart attack risk was seen in a smaller trial,
meant to determine whether the drug could prevent polyps that
raise the risk of colon cancer.
Industry analysts say the FDA has become far more careful
about approving new medicines in the wake of the Vioxx
withdrawal and criticism of the agency's oversight of the
medicine.
Merck shares were down 31 cents at $36.32 in morning New
York Stock Exchange trade.
(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
((ransdell.pierson@reuters.com; 646-223-6034; Reuters
Messaging: ransdell.pierson.reuters.com@reuters.net))
Keywords: MERCK/
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