The Story Of Vioxx

Reason #52 that Face Masks Hurt Kids

Dear Reader, 

The wearing of a face mask to protect against a respiratory virus is an act of grand deceit. It is a behavior that defies research on the topic. Wearing a face mask, as this article (one of many) points to — is unsafe to do and is ineffective. 

Until the narrative around mandatory masking has changed, each day by 6am Eastern, I will both post here and send out a science-based reason why no one should wear a face mask. 

I ask that you help me circulate these pieces to those around you who you believe could most benefit from them. It is important not to remain silent on this topic. These are important discussions to be having with friends, family members, business owners, healthcare practitioners, public servants, and others in the community. 

-Allan

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Reason 52: The Story Of Vioxx

The ills of 2020 and beyond were a long time coming. Little of what took place was new. In fact, it was more of the same dishonesty from once trusted institutions. The case of Vioxx illustrates this well.

Vioxx was a painkiller introduced in the late 1990’s by the American Pharmaceutical giant Merck. It was marketed as an improvement over other prescription painkillers based on a better safety profile and reduced side effects in general. It was approved for the treatment of conditions ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to migraines and quickly became a popular drug around the world. It was later withdrawn from the market due to a large number of deaths associated with its use.

By 2005, virtually every trusted pharmaceutical and medical institution had been proven a total, unrepentant sham, unwilling to engage in the most basic meaningful ethics to save lives, as long as they knew there was across-the-board cooperation. Fifteen years later, no one should be shocked when society-wide, that same behavior occurred from the Ides of March 2020 forward.

The pharmaceutical establishment, medical establishment, doctors, media, government, politicians, and other institutions had long been cooperating to do exactly that. The true shocker should be that anyone in the general public continues to trust such corrupt institutions, even going so far as extending more power to them to rule the lives of average people, despite being proven irredeemably corrupt.

I do not expect you to change the world or to change these institutions, but I do expect you to remove these institutions from positions of influence in your own life. I’m going to use the example of Vioxx to illustrate why you should do exactly that.

On September 30, 2004, Merck announced a worldwide recall of their painkiller Vioxx.

This came a full five years after Merck knew that Vioxx killed people. Millions took it. Billions in profit were earned for Merck. Thousands predictably died who would not have if they would have just kept their previous painkiller, which Merck claimed Vioxx to be safer than.

Not only was this information known, but influence peddlers at Merck got The New England Journal of Medicine and the United States Food and Drug Administration to assist in releasing their killer drug and selling it to the public as safe and effective. Silence from these institutions would have been more ethical than their cooperation in this mass murder.

The drama of the story hinges on the hiding of three heart attacks, in order to hide a concerning trend. This made it possible to make a false claim in November 1999 about the heart attack risk related to Vioxx, and to continue to repeat that claim: “While the trends are disconcerting, the number of events are small.” This is familiar verbiage to anyone following public health officials as they talk about the one-size-fits-all health mandates: safe and effective is the frontline defense of these mandates. When that defense is pierced “disconcerting but small” is the backup defense.

The lie that a treatment is “safe and effective,” always seems to be replaced by the claim that horrifying side effects are “disconcerting but small” in frequency. Ultimately, the truth prevails, but only after many are killed and injured by the treatment. Only those who wrongly put their trust in liars are ever the victim, which carries some poetic justice and a lesson to be cautious around untrustworthy serpents. Trusting a serpent is a fatal mistake in its own.

Those who dare reveal such information publicly are lifesavers, for they speak truth to those who will listen. They are also labelled pariahs and risk career, wealth, and wellbeing. There is a cost to standing against corruption. In all eras there has been a cost. If there were not, corruption would never exist, for the remedy to corruption would come so cheaply.

In their timeline coverage of the events around Vioxx, National Public Radio (NPR) reports: “As of November 1, 1999, 79 patients out of 4,000 taking Vioxx have had serious heart problems or have died, compared with 41 patients taking naproxen.”¹

Taking the experimental Vioxx is nearly twice as dangerous for the heart as taking naproxen. Naproxen is available in generic form. Vioxx was marketed as a safer though more expensive replacement.

It was not safer, but it was more expensive.

The fact that this reporting came from NPR is quite significant. NPR has long been derided for its extreme political bias. Much of its coverage of politicians came with a strong liberal bias. NPR could often be found attacking the enemies of their favorite politicians, while leaving their favorite politicians untouched. At the time of the Vioxx scandal however, NPR was, at least, still doing critical reporting on pharmaceutical companies — a true public service.

This independent coverage by NPR and its critical take on drug companies was recognized as a flaw in the system by the powers that be. No news organization was to exist that behaved this way, let alone a government funded news organization.

By the end of the first year of the Obama Administration, 2009, this matter had been handled and it would theretofore be nearly impossible to find any reporting from NPR that was critical of the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to that, NPR had been a true treasure on pharmaceutical industry coverage. Government media was put in order by the pharmaceutical interests and related interests. The few publically and privately owned media institutions that were unbiased were at that same time put in order as well.

The New York Times was also once such an institution. The medical safety and vaccine safety wing of the Democrat Party had formed and solidified by the 2004 presidential primaries and had been a force to be reckoned with by the 2008 presidential primaries. Such views were surgically removed from friendly media, hardly given a voice in the main stream from 2009 to the present. How this could have happened is not the question as much as the question is “How could we have kept trusting them?”

Once the Vioxx scandal had become too public to ignore, the prominent medical journal, The Lancet finally chimed in. The Lancet estimated 88,000 had heart attacks and 38,000 died from Vioxx. Other researchers estimate the real numbers were more like 500,000 deaths from Vioxx. It was, more dangerous than naproxen, and even far more dangerous than the commonly used aspirin.

Not only had this drug been the darling of the pharmaceutical industry and the darling of the medical research establishment, doctors loved it too. Twenty-five million Americans received Vioxx prescriptions after being told by their doctors that it was safer than the alternative. Being safer than the alternative was the whole reason for Vioxx’s existence. Their patients foolishly believed their doctors’ sales pitches.

And the media loved Vioxx. It had an average television advertising budget of $100 million each year. This may explain why, to this day, the American media has remained nearly silent on the topic of Vioxx.

No real inquiry from the media ever took place. No true demand for reform ever took place. Instead, the media obediently told a story of how badly this caught up with Merck in court. That was a total lie

In November 2007, Merck paid a whopping $4.85 billion to settle the personal liability lawsuits of approximately 47,000 plaintiffs and 265 potential class action cases. It was, at the time, believed to be the largest drug settlement ever. Remember even the establishment Lancet said 38,000 people died, though not each one of those people went to court seeking recompense. The true death count is far larger than this, but even using that number the details of the settlement are shockingly small. The settlement was not as big of a deal as the media claimed. This did not stop the media from making a huge deal of what a shocker this settlement was and how severe it was.

$4.85 billion divided by 47,000 plaintiffs comes out to $103,191.49 per family before lawyers’ fees, expenses, and taxes. Are we really to believe $103,191.49 per person and no jail time is a reasonable resolution for a company that knew for 5 years that they would kill people and did exactly that? Merck may even have ended up ahead. It was making $2 billion per year on Vioxx at the time of the drug recall.

One murder can be enough for cross-border manhunts to occur alongside large media trials with grand public outrage. Multimillion dollar wrongful death suits follow. Yet 38,000 deaths resulting in no jail time, virtually total silence from watchdogs on the particulars of the matter, tiny per death settlement fees, no jail time for a murderer, no reform, no company even put out of business.

Some point out that with the new class of Covid shots, manufacturers are exempt from liability. In the example of Vioxx, pharmaceutical companies were practically exempt from liability already. They went through the world providing inherently dangerous chemicals to people while claiming them to be safer than what the people were already using. They lied to people, telling them that if they switched they would live longer, healthier lives. The exact opposite was true. The people who believed them were cheated out of precious health and life. No one has gone to jail and Merck has had very little financial impact from the mass killing of so many Americans.

The issue at hand here, though, is not three heart attacks, 38,000 additional causes of heart disease or death, 500,000 dead, $4.85 billion, a media that lies to you, doctors that lie to you, a pharmaceutical establishment that lies to you, US Government watchdogs that lie to you. It is not about covering up data to make money. It is not about corruption at The New England Journal of Medicine or in the research community as a whole.

Those issues take years to resolve.

The real issue is this: you cannot trust these institutions to put your child first. They do not care about you. They do not care about your family. They do not care about your child. Quit pretending they do. Make them 100% irrelevant in your decision making process.

If you absolutely cannot ignore entities like these, and you must take them into account, perhaps you can garner this lesson from the Vioxx story: you are often far better off doing the exact opposite of what drug makers, the US Government, the media establishment, doctors, and the medical journals advise.

You do not need to change the world. You do not need to change the way your neighbors think. You do not need to move government. All that is nice. But the priority is protecting yourself and your family from these lying sociopaths.

That can be done right now.

That can be done with every decision you make.

Say “No!” to all these nonsense one-size-fits-all public health mandates that they want to push upon you and your family.

I wish this were not the world we lived in. It is.

There should be dozens of widely published conclusive studies about how bad face masks are, widely covered in the media. There should also be total outrage at all levels of government that mask mandates still exist either in the public sector or private sector. Hundreds of public health officials in each state should be put on trial and prevented from ever holding a position of public confidence again.

That is not the time we live in, but we may get there.

The research leaves many questions unanswered about why anyone would be so foolish with such clearly dangerous public health approaches and so tyrannical as to force them upon everyone in society. The rest of this book analyzes the available science to demonstrate that the face masks are not safe for you, your child, or anyone else, and that no person, and certainly no child, should be compelled to wear a face mask.

1. Prakash S, Valentine V. Timeline: The Rise and Fall of Vioxx. NPR. 2007. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

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The bestselling book "Face Masks In One Lesson" by Allan Stevo describes how to never wear a face mask again. The follow-up to the book, "Face Masks Hurt Kids," describes why to never wear a face mask again. We must defeat the awful, narrative around the mandates. 

Examples of how face masks hurt kids will be posted to the Lockdown Land Substack each morning by 6am Eastern until the narrative around this ineffective and harmful medical intervention has shifted. Face masks are, in fact, not just harmful to children. Face masks are harmful to everyone. Thank you so much for helping me circulate this research.