Virologists Complaints Lead To Lawsuit Over Mumps Vaccine

[@PersonalLiberty]

02.11.13 10:01 PM

Two former Merck virologists claim in a False Claims Act complaint — filed in 2010 but just recently unsealed — that Merck knowingly falsified its mumps vaccine test data and issued a vaccine that it knew was not as effective against the disease as it claimed.

In fact, the efficacy of the vaccine was not known because it was tested in blood samples that were intentionally contaminated with rabbit antibodies to make the vaccine appear to be 95 percent effective in order to allow Merck to maintain a FDA-supported monopoly on the vaccine and continue to rake in hundreds of millions in profits. According to the complaint, this fraud allowed the spread of mumps in children that would have otherwise been protected against the disease.

Following release of the complaint, Chatom Primary Care filed suit against Merck that alleges the company, among other things:

• Engaged in a decade-long scheme to falsify and misrepresent the true efficacy of its vaccine.
• Fraudulently represented and continues to falsely represent in its labeling and elsewhere that is mumps vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent or higher.
• Knows and has taken steps to conceal — using improper testing techniques and falsifying data — that its vaccine is, and has been since 1999, far less than 95 percent effective.
• Designed testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield the desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the findings.
• Used animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results.
• Destroyed evidence of the falsified data and lied to an FDA investigator.
• Threatened a virologist in the company’s vaccine division with jail if he reported the fraud to the FDA.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mumps was supposed to be eradicated by now. But Merck’s fraudulent actions have allowed the disease to spread and is responsible for outbreaks in 2006 and 2009, Chatom Primary Care alleges.

Of course, Merck’s fraud is not new. In the last several years Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have both been hit with billion dollar lawsuits regarding the marketing and testing of their drugs.

Hat tip: Naturalnews.com




http://personalliberty.com/2013/02/12/128602/