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."
...
Chatom says in its antitrust complaint that Merck falsely claims its mumps vaccine is 95 percent effective.
That claim "deterred and excluded competing manufacturers," who would enter the risky and expensive vaccine market only if they believed they could craft a better product, Chatom says in its complaint.
Merck is the only manufacturer licensed by the FDA to sell the mumps vaccine in United States, and if it could not show that the vaccine was 95 percent effective, it risked losing its lucrative monopoly, according to the complaint.
That's why Merck found it critically important to keep claiming such a high efficacy rate, the complaint states.
And, Chatom claims, that's why Merck went to great lengths, including "manipulating its test procedures and falsifying the test results," to prop up the bogus figure, though it knew that the attenuated virus from which it created the vaccine had been altered over the years during the manufacturing process, and that the quality of the vaccine had degraded as a result.
