Ex-Merck employee turned anti-vaccine activist now terrorize

Ex-Merck employee turned anti-vaccine activist now terrorize

"We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live," wrote a Merck & Co. employee who was actively plotting to murder or discredit doctors who had voiced concerns regarding the adverse health effects of an anti-inflammatory drug called Vioxx.

Launched in 1999, Vioxx was extremely popular (with more than 80 million users worldwide), as its makers heralded the drug as being the answer to inflammation, minus the nausea that often follows with anti-inflammatory medication.

It was later discovered that the New Jersey-based Merck & Co. was knowingly selling a drug that frequently caused heart attacks and strokes in its unsuspecting victims. A studyhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-11/merck-australia-s-win-in-vioxx-ruling-is-upheld-by-court revealed that Vioxx actually doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes, prompting the company to voluntary withdraw the drug from the market in 2004.

Prior to the drug being pulled from the market, several Merck & Co. staff exchanged emails in which they discussed a "hit list" they drafted of doctors whom they believed needed to be "neutralised" or "discredited" due to their criticism of Vioxx.

Merck & Co. long history of harassing and threatening those who stand in the way of drug profits

The emails surfaced in court after 58-year-old Graeme Peterson claimed the drug caused him to have a heart attack in 2003 after taking the medication for three years to treat his back pain and arthritis.

Merck & Co. and its Australian subsidiary, Merck Sharpe & Dohme, were sued for damages by more than 1,000 Australians (and many others in the US), who claimed that they suffered heart attacks and strokes at the hands of Vioxx.

The court ruled in Peterson's favor, allotting him just under $300,000 in compensation; however, the ruling was reversed in 2010 by an appeal panel in Federal Court in Melbourne.

The court said it wasn't proven that Vioxx caused Peterson's heart attack, despite accusations that the American pharmaceutical company misconstrued Vioxx's health riskshttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-10-11/merck-australia-wins-bid-to-overturn-vioxx-trial-decision in medical literature, advertisements and statements to doctors by sales representatives.

Big Pharma's domestic terrorism branch emerges as vaccine truth tellers are terrorized

It seems that Merck & Co. was never held accountable for the threats it made against doctors, researchers and academics, in which at least eight clinical investigators were harassed and intimidated, giving the drug company no reason to stop such intimidation tactics.

Those same tactics are in play to this day and are carried out against anyone who stands in the way of Big Pharma's profits. One of the most recent, and particularly disturbing, examples of this involves a woman named Brandy Vaughan, an ex-employee of Merck & Co. who used to rep Vioxx.

Vaughan worked for Merck & Co. from 2001 to 2003, but resigned after learning that her employer falsified safety data on Vioxx, covering up the fact that it doubled the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

After living overseas for quite some time, Vaughan returned back to the US with her six-month-old son and took him to a wellness visit in California. Knowing little about vaccines, but enough to know not to trust pharmaceutical companies, she asked the doctor, who was pushing for her son to be vaccinated, to see the inserts. This angered him.

He accused her of not trusting him before storming out of their visit, after which the nurse made sure to let them know that they weren't welcome back.

The experience sent Vaughan down the rabbit hole of vaccine research, which unveiled a multitude of concerning information leading her to decide to not vaccinate her son. After learning about the flawed data on vaccines, the toxins they contain and the total lack of safety testing, Vaughan turned to activism as she began to spread awareness about the risks of vaccines, focusing particularly on speaking out against California's SB277 forced vaccination law. Read more