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Merck execs get a jury of peers

"Sometimes you can improve two lives with a single perscription." Because grandma wants to die, and the kid wants her money.

Whenever a verdict that makes no sense is handed down, one's instinct is to think that the jurors were stupid. It usually isn't true; the facts are often complicated and the reported version of the case is frequently different from what the jury saw. Rarely are we given concrete proof that the jury was a collection of unforgivable morons. Enter the latest Vioxx jury.

[Juror Marie Kerr, a 51-year-old administrative assistant,] said she wasn't moved by a Merck document titled "Dodgeball" that Mr. Seeger portrayed as a way to teach sales representatives how to avoid questions about heart attacks. "We've all seen games like dodgeball at our work," she said...

Apparently Marie Kerr is an administrative assistant at Abu Ghraib.

Vickie Heintz, a 40-year-old juror, said she felt Mr. Seeger "cherry picked" a few select emails and tried to impugn the company with them.

I agree. We should thank Merck for all of the emails that didn't talk about ways to avoid letting people know that its product kills people.

Ms. Heintz said she wasn't bothered by Merck's aggressive marketing of Vioxx or documents that showed the company calculating the loss in profits if the warning label was changed to reflect increased risk of heart attack. "Medicine is business," she said. "If I had a business I would calculate what the loss of one of my big products would mean...This is about making money. Merck doesn't do this because they are flower people."

This is great news for the murder-for-hire business.

Another juror, Patricia Harley, 44, said: "If someone peeked through all my emails, forget about it."

Patricia Harley has killed 18 people and can't help but brag about it. She was absolved by Ms. Heintz because - in addition to the confessions - there were 2000 emails of funny cat pictures.

Which reminds me: If you haven't yet read the internal Merck memo reprinted in Harper's, we highly recommend it.

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Previously on Stay Free! Daily: Could Vioxx come back from the Grave?