Drug giant Merck compiled a “hit list” of doctors to “discredit” in order to stop criticism of their drugs, according to evidence released from the Vioxx drug trial in the US.

The evidence contains email correspondence between employees listing the doctors that had condemned Merck’s Vioxx drug.

In reference to the physicians, one employee suggested that they might have to “seek them out and destroy them where they live”.

Employees discussed ways of influencing doctors who were outspoken regarding the ineffectiveness of their anti-inflammatory drug, Vioxx.

Background information was gathered on 36 physicians and suggestions were made as how to silence more vocal critics.

If their tactics were unsuccessful, legal action was then intimated that would ban the doctor from talking about the specific drug in any future medical presentations.

A Merck spokesperson said: “Merck believes in scientific debate, and there was and still is a vigorous debate in the scientific and medical communities about Vioxx and other pain relievers.

"Merck also believes that it has a right to participate in that debate, and has often sought to provide doctors, among others, with access to scientific data that would answer their questions. These communications and Merck’s other communications about Vioxx were based on sound science.”

Merck, who last year turned over $23.9 billion (£15 billion), has also been accused of producing fake medical journals as a marketing tool.

In April of this year, Scientist.com reported that the Australian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, published by Elsevier, was actually funded by Merck yet had no sign of company sponsorship.

A spokesperson from the Child Health Safety Blog commented: “Wakefield [the UK doctor that spoke out against the MMR jabs] said it pretty well when interviewed by CBS TV news: 'This is not conspiracy. It is corporate policy'. The Department of Health expects parents to trust their children's health safety to these companies.

“The medical professions have based their entire ‘scientific’ approach to treatment of you, me and our families on 'evidence based medicine'— i.e. what is published in medical journals. How much of that can be trusted and how can you tell what to trust and not?”

Merck withdrew Vioxx in September 2004 after a number of patients suffered from circulatory problems after taking the drug. The plaintiff in the Vioxx trial was awarded $47.5 million (£30.5 million) after taking Merck to court in 2007, having suffered a heart attack while on the drug for knee pain.