In an article about the FDA and its internal conflicts, a Stanford professor is quoted as saying he was threatened by a Merck veep that if he spoke out about Vioxx, his academic career could become much more difficult:

Dr. Gurkirpal Singh, an adjunct clinical professor at Stanford University, said at the hearing that Merck scientists had tried to intimidate him after he publicly raised questions about the effects of Vioxx.

Dr. Singh, a rheumatologist and science officer of the Institute of Clinical Outcomes Research and Education in Woodside, Calif., said: “I was warned that if I continued in this fashion there would be serious consequences for me. I was told that Dr. Louis Sherwood, a Merck senior vice president and a former chief of medicine at a medical school, had extensive contacts within academia and could make life very difficult for me at Stanford and outside.”

Now, here’s my question: who’s the doc at Stanford that Sherwood thought would be willing to damage Singh’s career?

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