28 septembre 2005 22:03
Update 7: Vioxx Plaintiff Testifies About Illness
Update 7: Vioxx Plaintiff Testifies About Illness
09.28.2005, 07:14 PM
A postal worker who blames his heart attack on Vioxx on Wednesday emotionally described how he went from feeling "bulletproof" to unmanly after his 2001 heart attack.
Occasionally fighting back tears, Frederick "Mike" Humeston, a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran, said he began taking the Merck & Co. painkiller two months earlier.
Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, withdrew Vioxx from the market last September after its own research showed the popular arthritis drug doubled risk of heart attack and stroke after 18 months' use. Humeston's case is one of about 5,000 pending Vioxx product liability lawsuits.
Humeston, a decorated veteran from Boise, Idaho, took Vioxx for lingering pain from a war wound to his knee. He testified he had the heart attack as he sat in an easy chair after work eating cookies and drinking milk - soon after he took two 25-milligram Vioxx pills.
"I got a real hard pain just below my sternum," he testified. "It's unlike any pain I've ever felt. It's a hard, crisp pain and it doesn't back off."
He took three aspirins and had his wife, Mary, take him to the hospital. Since then, he said, his loss of stamina has left him unable to hike, do yard work or tinker with cars.
"I'm not man enough to drag my own bags across the airport," he testified. "I was bulletproof before."
Humeston, a ruddy, white-haired man who walks with a limp, also described trying to build a fence near his house and having to stop because he tired quickly. His 21-year-old son, Seth, who is to testify later, finished the fence as a Father's Day present.
Humeston, a mail sorter, said he has also suffered from depression since the heart attack. Asked if it had affected relations with his wife of 31 years, he said: "The specter of death is not an aphrodisiac to me."
On cross-examination, Merck attorney Christy Jones used Humeston's medical records to bolster Merck's case that Humeston had a cardiac problem dating to the 1970s and the heart attack might have been caused by job stress.
In 1973, he was treated at the Miami Heart Institute for heart palpitations, and in 1981 he was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse, a minor heart problem that can let a little blood flow backward.
He also was treated for anxiety attacks in the 1980s, according to Jones, who questioned Humeston about each incident. He had difficulty remembering, but didn't refute her.
Jones questioned whether he took Vioxx on the day of his heart attack, suggesting he would have run out of pills from his last Vioxx prescription well before the heart attack if he'd taken two a day.
He said he used them only as needed.
Jones also showed him a record of prior medication use from his hospital stay after the heart attack. Next to the entry for "last dose" of Vioxx was a question mark. Humeston said he didn't fill out the form, which was signed by his wife.
Meanwhile, Merck lawyers filed a motion requesting a mistrial, citing testimony last Thursday by a plaintiff's witness they said unfairly inflamed the jury.
State Superior Court Judge Carol E. Higbee took no action on the motion and made no mention of it Wednesday.
"She needs to give the adversary time to respond," said spokeswoman Teresa Ungaro, manager of the court's civil division.
