Medical Fact of the Day

04/09

In 1997 a 63 year old primiparous woman gave birth. She went through an in-vitro fertilisation program with a donor embryo and semen from her 60 year old husband. Whilst the ethics of in-vitro fertilisation of post-menopausal woman are debatable, the fact that the woman deliberately deceived the clinic when understating her age by ten years only adds to the complexity of the issues. In September 2004 Merck & Co announced that it was withdrawing Vioxx from the market. Up until that moment this COX-2 inhibitor had been marketed extremely successfully as an effective agent in the treatment of arthritis with miminal side-effects or complications, particularly gastrointestinal haemorrhage. New data from a clinical trial revealed that Vioxx was associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction and stroke.

Information written and provided by Professor Peter Devitt

Peter Devitt is Head of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery at the Royal Adelaide
Hospital and Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the
University of Adelaide.  

He has a major interest in undergraduate and postgraduate education and has written several textbooks for students.  He is enthusiastic of on-line learning and self-assessment and undertakes research and publishes in these areas.