Humeston was a healthy man hurt by Vioxx

When you or a family member is ill and takes a medicine, you better make sure that you have a record of what drug was taken, in what amount, and how frequently, because that is exactly what a lawyer might ask you if you ever need to sue the drugmaker for a personal injury. At least that is what Merck's legal team has asked Mike and Mary Humeston. The major point of contention is not if Vioxx causes heart attacks or kills; it is if Humeston took enough of it to trigger his'.

In moving testimony from Mary Humeston, she recounted how the heart attack has left Mike Humeston a different person and their relationship is no longer full of the passion that they had prior to it. "He was a big boy, he used to take care of himself," she said. She was so concerned that her testimony might hurt him, that she asked her husband to leave the courtroom for the duration of her testimony.

Merck has also been trying to show that Mike Humeston was already at risk of a heart attack and Vioxx had nothing to do with it, but doctors think otherwise. Dr. Graham Wetherley, the cardiologist at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, who treated Humeston when he arrived in the emergency room after the heart attack, thinks that he has the arteries of a marine. Humeston was a fit man and followed the healthy lifestyle that any typical retired marine would have.

Related article: Merck's repeated requests for mistrial denied by Judge Carol Higbee