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You should use the assignment as an exercise in framing and expressing your thoughts and queries about some particular aspect of what we have read , and you should also conceive of your post as part of an ongoing dialogue : respond to other posts , raise questions , add context , debate . He would n't have taken it had he known about the heart attack risk , lawyer Chris Seeger told jurors.Merck repeatedly reminded jurors that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved it as safe and effective on four occasions for use against different types of pain , the last a month before Merck recalled it.The company 's lawyers cited Humeston 's elevated blood pressure , weight and stress from an ongoing dispute he was having with his U.S. Postal Service bosses , saying they were to blame for his heart attack , not Vioxx.The night before the heart attack , Humeston was called by his personal physician in response to an office visit by Postal Service fraud investigators in which they showed him a secretly-recorded videotape of Humeston working on a car at his home.Merck 's expert cardiologist testified that that call was the " absolute trigger " for the heart attack.While Humeston made for a sympathetic plaintiff , he also was a relatively healthy one , appearing in court for nearly every day of testimony and taking the stand for one day.In the Texas case , the victim was a Wal-Mart produce manager who died after taking Vioxx ; his widow was the plaintiff.Merck 's lawyers also told jurors there was no scientific link between short-term Vioxx use and heart attacks . " Plaintiffs ' lawyers are going to have second thoughts about filing cases where the Vioxx use was short-term , " said Peter Bicks , a New York defense lawyer , who does n't work for Merck.Humeston 's attorney , Chris Seeger , acknowledged that his case may have been weakened because the 60-year-old postal worker took the drug for such a short time — and by the fact that he survived . Her husband suffered a fatal heart attack after taking Vioxx for a month.Birchfield said he is n't worried about the limited Vioxx use because he said studies do link Vioxx with cardiovascular risks after short-term use . Emerging from a variety of existing literary and rhetorical forms - - among them criminal biography , the conversion narrative , the letter , the conduct book , the diary , romance , drama , and allegory - - the novel was , before it was anything else , new . It was as if at the threshold of some golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape , as if a bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness again . No : let the miserable wrestle with his own shadows ; let him , if indeed he be so mad , clip and strain and enfold and couch the succubus ; but lt him do so in a house into which not an air of Heaven penetrates , nor a bright finger of the sun pierces the filthy twilight . Merck in August lost its first product liability case in Texas over the death of another Vioxx user , and 5,000 similar lawsuits are pending.Merck voluntarily pulled the drug from the market a year ago after its own study found that more than 18 months of Vioxx use could double the risk of heart attack and stroke.Higbee said the court had not been made aware of the nature of Morrison 's testimony in advance.The judge 's actions went beyond the request Humeston 's lawyers made Thursday to strike only Morrison 's testimony about certain animal studies.Higbee called for a brief break after her ruling .