Vioxx: the headache that won’t go away

For drug makers, developing a popular prescription medicine can do wonders for the bottom line. Unless, of course, the medicine leaves its users worse off than they were, or even kills then. Then it can be a real money pit. Take Vioxx, for instance. For Merck, it’s four down and another 9,996 to go—lawsuits, that is, over the once-popular prescription pain reliever, which Merck removed from the shelves in 2004 after users started keeling over in disproportionate numbers from heart attacks and strokes.