Associated Press, "Did Merck target doctors critical of Vioxx? Plaintiff's lawyer alleges company circulated list of 'physicians to neutralize'"

          Merck & Co.'s marketing team targeted doctors viewed as unfriendly toward Vioxx to bring them into the fold, neutralize or discredit them, the plaintiff's lawyer in the nation's first Vioxx-related lawsuit to go to trial alleged Tuesday.
          Nancy Santanello, head of Merck's epidemiology department, was questioned about an internal list of 36 doctors identified as "physicians to neutralize" in an e-mail circulated two months after the popular painkiller went on the market in 1999.
          "Attached is the complete list of 36 physicians to neutralize with background information and recommended tactics. You will notice that some have already been 'neutralized,'" the e-mail said. It also said a previous e-mail had a subset of the 36 physicians "we would like to get involved in Merck clinical research" and that the e-mail's recipient should "be aware of our most challenging (and also most vocal) national and regional physicians."
          Santanello said the term, "neutralize" was a marketing strategy to educate doctors about Vioxx.
          "I'm not a marketing person. What the marketing people do is ask the scientists to meet with the physician and explain the data to them," she told jurors.
          Santanello is Merck's corporate face among the company's team of lawyers and continued absorbing verbal punches from Lanier regarding the ethics of Merck's marketing and commitment to safe drugs.
          The prosecuting attorney pressed her about written recommendations to gain each doctor's support for Vioxx. In one case, the document said, "Show me the money" and then noted Merck had provided him with $25,000 to support a program to examine treatment of arthritis. In another case, the document said "discredit" next to the name of a doctor allegedly deemed unwilling to be swayed.