This morning, Merck announced that Kenneth Frazier, 55, will become its next chief executive starting January 1.

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Instead of settling, Merck Chief Counsel Kenneth Frazier has vowed to fight every case on its merits.

FORBES: Forget Vioxx?

"Our commitment to defending these cases one at a time remains the same, " said Merck chief counsel Kenneth Frazier in a prepared statement.

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With this announcement, both Pfizer and longtime rival Merck, which just named its former chief counsel and then marketing head Kenneth Frazier to the chief executive job, are under new leadership.

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Merck's general counsel, Kenneth Frazier , said in a conference call that he didn't have a reliable tally, but that it was his "strong belief" that most of them involved use for much fewer than 18 months.

FORBES: Offensive Medicine

Kenneth Frazier , Merck's general counsel, indicated that Vioxx would be more like Propulsid and less like fen-phen. (Frazier mentioned these medicines explicitly during his presentation.) Vioxx has only been generically linked to heart attacks, and it will be more difficult to prove the drug caused them.

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But global sales of Zetia and Vytorin were down 12% and 18% from the prior-year quarter, with growth in other countries making up for falling sales in the U.S. Kenneth Frazier, Merck's global head of human health, said on the conference call that new prescriptions of the drugs had dropped 8% since the heart valve results.

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