One point no-one else has raised here, is that (as far as I can tell) no employee of Merck was punished for this. How can Merck the company plead guilty to a misdemeanor, but no individual be held even partly responsible? "Under separate criminal proceedings, Merck plead guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge relating to the marketing of the drug across state lines, incurring a fine of $321.6 million." From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib .

It frustrates me that people in big companies have no deterrent from acting unlawfully. The same thing happened in Wall Street companies in the GFC.