Vioxx Example Vioxx: Ethical Questions Thesis

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However, the question remains of the need to balance the patient's desire for an active life with the risk of heart disease. What if the patient wishes to take the risk, given a relatively minor family history of heart complications? What if NSAIDs are too upsetting to his or her stomach to be bearable, or if he or she has a better response to COX-2 inhibiting drugs? So long as Merck openly disclosed the risk to consumers, it could be considered ethical. However, someone could counter that since heart attack is a 'silent' killer, but the less dangerous but more uncomfortable stomach discomfort and pain could deter individuals from substituting Advil or Motrin, leaving Vioxx as a dangerous option is still ethically tenuous, especially given the vigorous and effective marketing campaign of the corporate drug giant.

Vioxx was recalled from the market in 2004. But only months before the recall, the "FDA advised doctors to consider alternatives…when it showed the drug increased the risk of heart attack and strokes at high doses.

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In the worst period in recent time, the FDA spent 2004 trying to defend itself after more and more evidence emerged that it allows companies to keep dangerous drugs on the market by letting them suppress negative data and relying on the company's word alone to fix manufacturing flaws, as well as silencing safety alerts made by its own internal scientists" ("History of Vioxx," Arthritis Glucosamine, 2009). Even from a more self-interested perspective, keeping Vioxx on the market makes Merck as a company more vulnerable to lawsuits, spurious or not, and hampers its other research and marketing pursuits. This impingement upon potential profitability could result in sustained harm to Merck's employees and shareholders, as well as to patients. Thus, on a cost-benefit and utilitarian analysis, discontinuing Vioxx makes the best ethical and tactical business sense.

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