Merck & Co., plagued by lawsuits over its drug Vioxx, and recently accused of tampering with that drug's safety data, is desperately looking for new blockbuster products. One place they are conducting their search is in the largely overlooked market for vaccines.
Three New Vaccines
Merck hopes to turn its fiscal fortunes around with the help of three new vaccines in the FDA regulatory pipeline:
Gardasil
Gardasil is the biggest potential sales generator of the new products, especially if U.S. health officials put the vaccine on lists that recommend *** and adolescent immunization schedules. Such lists are often used by state and local governments to mandate vaccinations before school admission.
However, some conservative groups have opposed making Gardasil mandatory, even though doing so could help prevent an estimated 500,000 annual worldwide cases of cervical cancer, on the grounds that it could inadvertently promote teenage promiscuity.
Good Publicity
Few companies traditionally put money into vaccine production, because there are low profit margins and high product liability risk. Merck, however, needs to improve its public image as well as its bottom line, and vaccines often generate good publicity.
Merck is frantically looking for a home run, since it has lost tens of billions of dollars already and potentially could lose even more in the future over its well-publicized legal wrangling with patients over the health-harming Vioxx, and also with Zocor running out of patent protection.
However, what you and many other consumers may not recall -- and what Merck is probably betting on -- is news of a scandal I posted earlier this year involving the mislabeling of hepatitis B vaccines for babies that weren't thimerosal-free. Merck continued to supply the infant hepatitis B vaccine, which was contaminated with thimerosal, a mercury preservative, for two years after announcing that it had eliminated the toxin from the vaccine.
I find it rather ironic that Merck is attempting to reinvent its image as a maker of scandal-plagued, deadly drugs by turning to vaccines -- which are, of course, scandal-plagued, deadly drugs. But of course, drug companies like Merck frequently adopt malevolent behavior that compromises human health and safety. I guess the leopard isn't going to change its spots ...