Merck's Vioxx Pain Lingers

Potent Medicine

Instead, Merck found itself celebrating a turnaround after Vioxx hit the drugstores.

The Wall Street Journal gushed. During 2000, the newspaper reported, Merck increased its revenue more than any of its peers. It grew profits more than most, the paper stated, even as it increased research spending and expanded its sales force -- which heavily marketed Vioxx -- by nearly a third.

Merck's stock, the newspaper added, surged 26% as the broader market slid.

That year, Merck exceeded the performance targets linked to annual bonuses. The company raised Gilmartin's salary by $100,000 to $1.3 million. It increased his bonus by twice that amount to $1.7 million. It based the multimillion-dollar compensation package, in part, on the company's "earnings-per-share growth, sales growth ... and continuing strong progress in research."

But one of Merck's own executives specifically credited Vioxx for the company's newfound success. Edward Scolnick, Merck's research director at the time, told The Wall Street Journal that Merck would have been a "very different company" without the blockbuster drug. He confessed that he had worried for years whether Merck -- faced with patent expirations on many popular drugs -- could even survive as an independent company in the end.

Ultimately, Scolnick portrayed Vioxx as the company's savior.

"He didn't need a committee to tell him that [Vioxx] had the potential to be a blockbuster -- and a critical bridge out of Merck's patent problem," The Wall Street Journal reported in early 2001. "Merck's success demonstrates that in the drug business, as in Hollywood, one big hit can sway the fate of an entire company."

By then, Merck's stock had just passed its peak. Fears about Vioxx had started to mount. But Merck kept defending -- and promoting -- its prized painkiller until the very end.

Don Strong, an Oklahoma City attorney handling thousands of Vioxx cases, insists that Merck placed profits ahead of safety in the process.

"For a corporation," he said, "it's really easy to make that choice."