by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
The family of a Jacksonville man who died unexpectedly of a severe heart attack this summer is suing Merck & Co., charging that Vioxx was responsible for his death.
The suit was filed in Duval County Circuit Court Wednesday morning by Chad Roberts of Spohrer Wilner Maxwell & Matthews. It is one of the first to be filed nationwide in what is expected to be a flood of suits against the pharmaceutical giant.
S.E. Lowe, 71, died July 29 after taking Vioxx for “well over a year” for arthritis, said his widow, Sandra, during a press conference at Spohrer Wilner.
He had no history of heart problems and had an angiogram four months before he died, she said.
“He was convinced there was nothing wrong with his heart,” said Sandra Lowe. “When he first began to have the symptoms, they felt comfortable nothing was wrong with his heart.”
S.E. Lowe was retired from the family business, Biltmore Starter & Alternator, an automotive electrical business that opened in 1977.
“He stayed active,” said Mark Lowe, who accompanied his mother to the press conference. “He did a lot of carpentry, cabinet building — for family, mostly.”
The Lowes met when she was 13 years old. They had five children and had been married for 48 1/2 years.
“It has been widely known in the medical community for almost two years now that there is a significant, heightened risk of sudden death through heart attacks and stroke complications for persons who are taking the prescription drug Vioxx,” said Roberts. “For a number of years, the clinical medical community has confronted and published these studies with Merck.
“Merck, over these years, has just as diligently worked to find reasons to dismiss the conclusions of all these clinical studies.”
Merck & Co. on Sept. 30 issued a “voluntary worldwide withdrawal” of Vioxx, its arthritis and acute pain medication.
The decision, the company announced, was based on “new three-year data from a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
“In this study, there was an increased relative risk for confirmed cardiovascular events, such as heart attack and stroke, beginning after 18 months of treatment in the patients taking Vioxx compared to those taking placebo.”
“While we are declining to comment on the specifics of any litigation brought against Merck, we continue to believe that we have strong and meritorious defenses to the lawsuits brought against us,” said Chris Loder, Merck spokesman at the company’s headquarters in Whitehouse Station, N.J.
What happened to S.E. Lowe has been reported in other patients, said Roberts.
“Mr. Lowe is just the kind of profile that doctors had been seeing in their patients for years on Vioxx,” he said. “There were no plausible, explainable reasons — no other risk factors — other than their taking Vioxx.”
A study by the Food and Drug Administration claims that the widespread use of Vioxx may have led to more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before it was removed from the market.
Vioxx became available to the public in 1999 and has been marketed in 80 countries. It was taken by an estimated 20 million people and was responsible for $2.5 billion in sales last year.
The Lowe family has not decided what damages would be appropriate.
“The family’s primary motivation is to make sure other folks are protected,” said Roberts. “It would be very premature at this point to specify damages.
“The law provides a statutory scheme for evaluating the damages based on the evidence that’s developed: Mr. Lowe’s contribution to his family and the need his family had for him.
“Those are primarily issues that the jury decides for you.”
Other local firms have been evaluating the possibility of suits against Merck, but Spohrer Wilner’s is the first to be filed in North Florida. Suits may already have been filed elsewhere in Florida, but Roberts doesn’t know of any.
Two suits are set for trial in Alabama.
The family’s biggest concerns right now are the potential continuing effects of the drug.
The Lowes’ daughter, Cathy Bozeman, who is 39, had been taking Vioxx for her arthritis “for a long time,” Sandra Lowe said.
“She called me up not long ago and told me she was having chest pains, and her arm was bothering her,” she said. “I told her she needed to get that checked. She got all right. And she quit taking Vioxx.”
The anxiety being felt by the Lowes is an echo of what’s happening across the country right now, said Roberts.
“The first wave with these kinds of events kind of turns out to be the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “Doctors and universities don’t know the additional risk factors yet.
“So there is great anxiety in this group of 20 million Americans that have been taking Vioxx: ‘What’s going to happen to me now?’ ‘Am I safe?’ ‘How long am I at risk after I stop taking Vioxx?’
“We don’t know.”
It was practically inevitable that this day would come, said Roberts.
“You can deny it for so long, and you can issue press releases, denying it for so long,” he said. “You can generate your own studies denying it for so long.
“But some day, through our tort system, there’s going to be a day of accountability. That day of accountability for Merck was about a month away in Alabama in the lead case. It certainly played a significant role in their decision to finally step up to the plate and take this drug off the market and put the interest of their patients’ safety above that of their shareholders.”