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....