Feeling no pain

Big news does not always lead to a big opinion. Friday’s $253.4-million judgment against Merck over the risks of its Vioxx painkiller, for example, was splashed across the nation’s front pages, but it has yet to register too deeply on editorial pages.

The New York Times tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to get worked up about the case today, saying that the drug maker “deserves some sympathy, but not a lot, for the staggering loss it suffered last week.” The jury may have had “an extremely flimsy scientific basis” for its verdict, says the Other Times, but the company should not have been “promoting drugs to millions of people who don’t need them.” USA Today is similarly flummoxed (is there a drug for that?), saying that it would be “unwise to draw too many conclusions from one verdict.” Uncertain readers in search of clarity had to rely on Monday’s Wall Street Journal, which asserted with its usual certainty -- and unimpeachable logic -- that the judgment is “bad news for the millions of Americans” who need the drug.

The Washington Post is also concerned about a broken legal system, drawing attention to the poignant case of a black woman in Georgia who was convicted and executed in 1945 for murder and pardoned just last week. “It is tempting to believe that these tragedies don’t happen anymore,” the Post says. But “Americans who believe the death penalty is foolproof are simply kidding themselves.”

Michael Newman