Merck

When Raymond Gilmartin, CEO of Merck & Company, and his top few Merck executives first marketed a drug to help with arthritis pain called Vioxx in 1999, they ignored several ethical questions that should have been answered. After a small internal study in 1998 revealed a higher number of cardiovascular problems in patients taking Vioxx, they still chose to market the drug and get FDA approval to begin selling the drug anyway. They felt that because the study only included 978 patients it did not show accurate results and was not statistically significant. Merck launched sales for Vioxx in 1999 and spent $160 million to advertise Vioxx in television campaign ads in 2000. Because of these ads Merck’s sales of Vioxx increased 360% in one year (Weiss, 2006). Now when sales increased, Merck launched another study on Vioxx. This time the study included 8,000 patients and the patients were tested for any gastrointestinal problems as well as cardiovascular problems. Test results showed that Vioxx was relatively easy on the stomach but again showed that patients who took Vioxx for 18 months or longer are at a higher risk for heart attack or stroke than those not taking Vioxx but Merck once again chose to ignore these results and kept selling their highly marketed arthritis drug Vioxx. Since Merck launched several studies on Vioxx, it shows that they knew that their drug caused cardiovascular problems and they were continually looking for other things to blame then the drug itself. Finally after many accusations that Vioxx was responsible for many heart attacks and strokes in patients using Vioxx from 1999-2004, Merck voluntarily withdrew Vioxx from the market (Weiss, 2006). Merck could have chosen to keep Vioxx on the market and just re-label the drug with a warning label stating the risks and side effects of taking Vioxx for an extended period of time but Merck CEO, Raymond Gilmartin released a statement saying that pulling the drug was the responsible action to take. So to me the critical issue in this case is, why market the drug Vioxx in the first place knowing the risks involved in it for the patients who are going to be taking this drug' The obvious answer is money, of course, but how can you put a dollar sign on someone’s health and perhaps even their life. Merck took the time to train their sales force on how to answer questions when asked about the health risks involved with taking Vioxx. A company that takes the time to do this is more or less admitting guilt and yet continued to keep marketing Vioxx until they had no other choice but to withdraw the drug from the market. Merck CEO, Raymond Gilmartin, is one of the top stakeholders in this case and he stood to gain money and fame for being the one to market a drug to ease arthritis pain. Merck’s executives and other employees were also stakeholders in the case and they again gained money and tried to keep their jobs. The FDA was a stakeholder who could get bad publicity for allowing such a drug to be marketed. The physicians who prescribed Vioxx for arthritis relief also had a stake in this case because they could be included in any possible lawsuits that came about from side effects in their patients. The patients are key stakeholders in the case because they put their trust in the physicians and the FDA to keep them safe. I think that Merck and the FDA should have done more aggressive studies on Vioxx before marketing the drug to the public. If these studies still showed the cardiovascular risks after extended use then they should have put a warning label on Vioxx as soon as they started selling it to the physicians and patients. That way the company still could have sold the drug to make profits and the patients could have gotten relief from arthritis pain but been warned to watch for cardiovascular problems before it was too late. I used the Virtue Ethics approach to determine my decision because if Merck would have warned the patient right from the start, the patient could have decided if the help from the drug was worth the risk of the side effects from the drug and the company would still make money. References 1) Business Ethics: Stakeholder & Issues Management Approach Weiss, Joseph W, 2006