A blockbuster painkiller was rolled out by a Big Pharma company that knew it would raise the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death. They sold it anyway.The drug was Vioxx, marketed by Merck in the late '90s as a safer alternative to ibuprofen.What came out in litigation, according to cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, is that Merck's own chief scientist knew the danger before the drug ever reached a patient.To paraphrase the internal emails, Malhotra says the attitude was: "it's a shame about th