Vytorin Data Vexes Schering-Plough

Sir Richard Peto, an Oxford cancer expert hired to analyze the results before their release to regulators, celebrated that achievement as a "positive result" with "medical relevance" for crowds of high-risk patients. Peto also downplayed the cancer cases that arose in the SEAS study as a likely fluke of chance.

"This isn't the sort of pattern one would expect to see," he declared. However, "when you look at a dozen tests, you're quite likely to get something improbable -- and you have to allow for it."

If Vytorin truly posed a cancer risk, Peto insisted, the drug would likely target a specific area and cause an increase in cases over time. But even in the SEAS trial, he stressed, those patterns never surfaced.

Therefore, Peto is calling for two major studies of Vytorin -- known as SHARP and IMPROVE-IT -- to continue forward as planned. Peto insists that those two large-scale trials will better determine if Vytorin poses a real cancer risk.

Indeed, Peto -- who is personally involved with SHARP -- is trying to shift attention away from SEAS to the other studies already. Time and again, he argued that the ongoing Vytorin trials offer "no credible evidence" of increased cancer risks.

"I think we should not be diverted by fears of cancer," Peto stressed. "It matters that we have drugs that seriously lower cholesterol -- because they will seriously save lives."