Merck & Co. Inc.: communication lessons from the withdrawal of Vioxx James S. O’Rourke IV O n the afternoon of Friday, September 24, 2004, Joan Wainwright, Vice President of Public Affairs at Merck & Co., Inc., sat in the jury waiting room in a Baltimore, Maryland courthouse. ‘‘One last time,’’ she thought, as she checked her Blackberry for e-mail, just to see if there were any last-minute issues to address before the weekend. It was 3:00 p.m., eastern daylight time. An urgent message asked her to call Merck’s General Counsel. Wainwright asked the court bailiff for permission to use the phone and quickly returned the call. What she learned was not good: the latest clinical study on Merck’s blockbuster arthritis drug, Vioxx, had produced strongly unfavorable results. The Data and Safety Monitoring Board recommended stopping the Vioxx study with eight weeks remaining, citing an increased risk of heart attack and stroke in patients taking the drug[1]. Following the court’s adjournment for the day, Wainwright rushed home to participate in a 5:00 p.m. conference call with other Merck executives. The conference call discussed scenario planning, leaving Merck with two viable options: leave Vioxx on the market with a ‘‘black box’’ warning or pull the drug. While Wainwright spent the weekend contemplating the logistics of communicating the company’s decision to many different audiences, Merck’s Chief Executive Officer, Raymond Gilmartin, assigned Dr Peter Kim, the company’s Research and Development Chief, full authority to make a decision on Vioxx based on patient safety[1]. Regardless of the decision Dr Kim would soon make, Joan Wainwright knew that life in the near term would change dramatically for the public affairs team at Merck. Merck & Co., Inc With a lineage that can be traced as far back as 1668, Merck & Co., Inc. began as a modest chemical firm opened by Frederic Jacob Merck in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1891, George Merck brought the company to the US and set up shop in New York. Originally established as a fine chemicals supplier, Merck began to conduct pharmaceutical research by the early 1930s[2]. Today, Merck & Co., Inc. is a global research-driven pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of human health products. They employ 70,000 people in 120 countries and 31 factories worldwide, and sell their products in more than 200 countries[2]. What is Vioxx? Developed in a Merck research facility in 1994, Vioxx (known generically as rofecoxib) is one among a class of drugs called Cox-2 inhibitors. This class of painkilling drugs was developed to reduce pain and inflammation in the human body. Cox-2 inhibitors compete with another class of drugs known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that are DOI 10.1108/02756660610677092 VOL. 27 NO. 4 2006, pp. 11-22, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0275-6668 j JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY j PAGE 11 James S. O’Rourke, IV is Professor and Director based at the Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.