Merck owes its victory in a recently concluded Vioxx trial in New Jersey largely to the testimony of J. Michael Gaziano, a Harvard cardiologist who expressed his doubts that Vioxx, and not stress, triggered the 2001 heart attack in Frederick "Mike" Humeston, who argued otherwise. It turns out that Gaziano's brother, Todd, a prominent constitutional law scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, DC, has also sat on the defendant's side of a civil courtroom.












