The editor of a leading international medical journal joined in an attack on the US federal drugs regulator yesterday over its handling of research into the health risks of the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx.

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said that Dr Steven Galson, acting director of the Food and Drug Administration's centre for drug evaluation and research, had telephoned and e-mailed him last autumn to criticise a paper submitted by Dr David Graham, one of the regulators' own scientists.