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In 1997 , The Foundation commissioned a survey of the Philadelphia region 's 102 collecting institutions . An internal Merck study that ended in 1997 suggested Vioxx could cause a reduction in prostacyclin in the urine . Merck stock rose 3.8 percent to $ 29.48 after the verdict . The eyewitness , the sketch that has been saved since 1979 and police chief John Bolgar who arrested Watts in October of ' 79 driving a tan car like the one Foy saw in the alley . " Four months later , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote to Merck President Raymond Gilmartin and told him the promotional campaign was misleading.The claim that Vioxx " has a ' favorable cardiovascular profile ' is simply incomprehensible , " said the letter from Thomas W. Abrams , director of the Department 's Division of Drug Marketing , Advertising and Communication , which monitors pharmaceutical advertising.Last year , after Vioxx was pulled off the market , senior FDA epidemiologist David Graham published a treatise in Lancet that said " 88,000 to 140,000 excess cases of serious coronary heart disease probably occurred in the USA over the market life of rofecoxib , " or Vioxx.When trials show that a new treatment " confers a greater risk of a serious adverse effect than a standard treatment , we must be much more careful about allowing its unrestrained use , " Graham wrote.Under cross-examination , Lucchesi — who was on the stand when the documents were presented on an overhead projector — read fine print at the bottom of the study that said the opinions were not necessarily those of the FDA.The documents swung the tenor of what started as a good day for Merck , with Lucchesi acknowledging he had misspoken on the stand earlier.He told jurors he had not reviewed a document attached to a 1997 e-mail message from a Merck scientist that he said on Friday showed Merck had tried to alter the design of an upcoming study by giving aspirin to patients on Vioxx to protect their hearts . Her husband , a Wal-Mart produce manager , also ran marathons and was an occasional personal trainer.Ernst 's lawsuit is the first of more than 4,200 Vioxx-related state and federal lawsuits across the country to go before a jury.Reicin reiterated what other current and retired Merck executives have said during the trial : Safety was paramount in 58 clinical trials involving 10,000 patients conducted before Vioxx won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to go on the market in 1999.But Carol Ernst 's lawyer , Mark Lanier , singled out several of those studies , challenging their results because so many were small and involved patients taking Vioxx for days or weeks rather than years.Specifically , he noted a study in 1997 where an outside scientist noted Vioxx could possibly cause blood clots that may lead to heart attacks or strokes because it inhibited an enzyme that thins the blood . " The Texas jury ( verdict ) may have triggered a new strategy , which is , let 's settle the most obvious cases because you do n't want to keep losing case after case because that feeds into itself , " Shah said.He noted that pharmaceutical company Wyeth also insisted it would not settle any lawsuits after it pulled its diet drugs Pondimin and Redux from the market in September 1997 over links to heart valve damage . The lower figure assumes Ernst 's $ 21,700 salary at Wal-Mart would remain stagnant .