That’s the allegation made by two Illinois doctors, who say they received anonymous letters chastising them and their wives for supposedly drinking too much at a dinner sponsored by Merck reps, who retained a speaker to discuss the drugmaker’s Zostavax vaccine for shingles, according to The Springfield Journal-Register.

And the letters may have been designed to silence the docs’ questions about the vaccine’s price and side effects, according to a lawyer who spoke with the paper. So far, though the docs - Carl Lawyer and Paul Smelter - haven’t received what their lawyer, Charles Watson, calls a satisfactory reply. The wives, by the way, are said to be health-care professionals as well, but not physicians and their line of work isn’t specified.

In court documents, the couples say handwriting on the anonymous letters “is similar to” the handwriting of Beth Kallal, a local Merck rep, and the docs are considering filing a defamation lawsuit, but haven’t done so yet, Watson tells the paper. Kallal has filed court papers denying any involvement with the letters. The couples’ assertion about her potential involvement with the letters is “based on a few incredibly tenuous and speculative conclusions,” the response says, according to the paper.

Kallal was one of several Merck reps at a dinner that Merck hosted for the couples Jan. 10, according to the documents. The other Merck reps were Casey Jacobs, Adil Ranes, Alex Ginos and David Finney, the documents say. The dinner was designed to “educate” the docs about Zostavax, the documents say, and featured an expert in infectious diseases from Rush University in Chicago.

In an affidavit, Lawyer said he asked the expert about potential cardiovascular side effects from the drug, but the expert wasn’t able to address his question. Lawyer also said Smelter told the speaker Zostavax would be too expensive for some of his patients. Zostavax, which is covered by some health insurance plans, costs $150 to $190 per shot, the paper writes.

A few weeks after the dinner, the docs received copies of an anonymous letter that apparently referred to the dinner and had been mailed from Springfield, according to the documents. The letter, which ends with the typewritten words, “a concerned Representative,” contained info that the couples say is “false, defamatory and otherwise professionally and personally extremely critical of” the physicians and their wives.

According to the documents, the letter “makes an accusation of excessive consumption of alcohol with the specific statement, ‘They (Dr. Lawyer and Dr. Smelter) and their spouses will order huge amounts of expensive alcohol, sometimes even ordering bottles (hoping to take them home).’”

Lawyer said in his affidavit, “I have not consumed an alcoholic beverage, at any time, in over 30 years.”

Asked if the letter might have been sent to persuade the doctors not to criticize Zostavax, Watson tells the paper that “one could reach that conclusion.” But he says the couples won’t not comment otherwise on the documents.

The documents ask that Kallal and Forest Laboratories rep Timothy Lyons be ordered to provide information about the letter. Watson says the couples decided to seek info from Lyons because drug representatives who work in the Springfield area are “a fairly tight community of people.” Lyons hasn’t responded to the request and he didn’t return a phone message from The State Journal-Register. Merck’s media relations office also didn’t return a phone call from the newspaper.