Vytorin Side Effects: My Personal Struggle and the Company's Attempts to Hold Off Class Action Lawsuits

I first wrote about why I stopped taking Vytorin here: www.associatedcontent.com/article/543857/my_personal_experience_with_vytorin.html
This was long before the newspapers were filled with headlines about the drug's problems and how the company may have held back data indicating that Vytorin had side effects and, just as important, it didn't cut the risk of heart disease or deaths. Since then, my condition hasn't improved and Merck and Shering Plough, the makers of Vytorin, are hearing more complaints about Vytorin side effects, especially liver problems.

They are also facing class action lawsuits from people whose side effects were dismissed or didn't fall within the range of "abnormal" on blood tests. But those people still had problems - and many still do. I know. I was one of them. I still am having problems that started when I took Vytorin. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Updated information, pretty alarming, can be found here in the Feb 3, 2008 edition of the New York Times: query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html
Don't be confused by the fact that this article focuses on a drug called Zetia. Vytortin is a drug that combines both Zetia and Zocor so they are all connected and it may well be the Zetia in Vytorin that is causing many problems. It is the Zetia part of Vytorin that is the focus of most news stories and the newest information is very alarming.

The latest information (contained in the above article and others) indicates that the drug company conducted tests that indicated there were problems and side effects but didn't reveal this. The drug was released and it wasn't until much later that the facts came out - allowing a window of time for the drug to be sold and potential profits to be made. But did the drug do any good for the people shelling out their money to buy it, including me?

If the latest information is correct, probably not.

This meant that millions of people may mistakenly have believed they were taking a drug that was helping them. If the information had come out earlier, they could have gotten different treatments and even prevented the risk of Vytorin's side effects.