[SaneVax: Although the recent class action suits against Merck were filed on behalf of the United States government as the largest purchaser of mumps vaccine and insurance providers, one has to wonder what the cost was for the millions of children who received the faulty product. What is the cost to those who thought they were vaccine protected and ended up contracting mumps at a later age, when the consequences were potentially much greater?]
Class Says Merck Lied About Mumps Vaccine
By Reuben Kramer
PHILADELPHIA (CN) – Merck has known for a decade that its mumps vaccine is “far less effective” than it tells the government, and it falsified test results and sold millions of doses of “questionable efficacy,” flooding and monopolizing the market, a primary caregiver claims in a federal antitrust class action.
Alabama-based Chatom Primary Care sued Merck on Monday, the week after the unsealing of a False Claims Act complaint two relators filed in 2010.
Those relators, Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, were Merck virologists who claim in their unsealed complaint that they “witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine’s efficacy findings.”
Krahling and Wlochowski claimed Merck’s scheme caused the United States to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization.”
“As the largest single purchaser of childhood vaccines (accounting for more than 50 percent of all vaccine purchases), the United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck’s fraud,” according to the 2010 False Claims Act complaint.
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