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Merck and the Recall of Vioxx
Background:
Merck and Company Inc. is one of the successful and rated as the sixth largest pharmaceutical firm in the United States. Company’s mission is “to provide society with superior products and services by developing innovation and solutions that improve the quality of life and satisfy customer needs and to provide employees with meaningful work and advancement opportunities, and investors with a superior rate of return.” Merck was a global research driven company with billions of annual sales; wide variety of employees; 12 major drug research centres in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan; and a broad range of human and animal health care products marketed in 150 countries. Company’s struggle started in 2001 because Merck had just lost patents protection on its five best-selling drugs, not including Vioxx. Merck was having trouble to come up with innovative drug, but not just the Merck, the whole drug industry was in crisis.
Vioxx was discovered in 1999 under Scolnick’s leadership, a graduate from Harvard Medical School and chief of research, a new class of painkillers to reduce pain and inflammation without any type of side effects, such as ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding.
Situational Analysis
At the beginning of 2000, concerns about Vioxx started to increase. Research results showed that even though it reduces pain with fewer side effects of ulcers and gastrointestinal but it increases twice as many cardiovascular events compare to other pain killers, such as Advil, Tylenol, Aspirin, etc. Merck was at the peak of its sales of Vioxx, company was not willing to accept any fault related to the drug, and instead told the patients to ...