“I have no idea on this Earth what made me decide to look up Vioxx on the computer. It was almost like I was led to it or something told me to do it,” said Carol Ernst, the widow of 59-year-old Robert Ernst, a former marathon runner who died in 2001.
She continues, “All I typed in was ‘Vioxx.’ You would have thought Merck or something like that would be the first item, but the first one that popped up was that 11 deaths in Great Britain were being linked to Vioxx.”
A search engine proved influential in this landmark lawsuit, one of 4,300 against pharmaceutical giant Merck, makers of the drug Vioxx, which has been linked to a number of drug-related deaths.
Read the rest in this compelling article in the Houston Chronicle. Oddly enough, it was a radio ad which eventually led Mrs. Ernst to file her lawsuit. Guess the medium’s still got a little life left in it after all.
By the way, news like this is what makes our article on the importance of buying branded keywords so relevant. Not saying things would have been different if Merck had more of a presence when Mrs. Ernst had been conducting her online searches, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt…
