While the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986 recognized that vaccines DO cause disease, it was enacted in order to REDUCE the financial liability of vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits.

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Merck says it cannot yet reasonably estimate the amount of the Vioxx liability in order to take reserves.

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Surprisingly, the luxury-goods business is having a strong year, largely thanks to demand in China, the Gulf and other emerging economies. (Indeed, things have been so good that perfume-makers face a new product-liability problem in Russia, where oligarchs' girlfriends buy dozens of bottles in order to bathe in a fragrance, unaware that this can be deadly.) Japan, which experienced similar excesses in the 1980s, still accounts for around a quarter of global luxury-goods sales.

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