In September 2004, Merck & Co. Inc. initiated the largest prescription drug withdrawal in history. After more than 80 million patients had taken Vioxx for arthritis pain since 1999, the company withdrew the drug because of an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. As early as 2000, however, theNew England Journal of Medicine published the results of a Merck trial which showed that patients taking Vioxx were four times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke as patients taking naproxen, a competing drug. Yet Merck kept the product on the market for four more years, despite mounting evidence from a variety of sources that use of Vioxx was problematic. Not until 2004, when Merck was testing whether Vioxx could be used to treat an unrelated disease, did Merck decide to withdraw Vioxx, after an external panel overseeing the clinical trial recommended stopping it because patients on the drug were twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke as those on a placebo.
Merck’s voluntary withdrawal of Vioxx is emblematic of how most organizational disasters incubate over long gestation periods, during which errors and warning signs build up. While these signals become painfully clear in hindsight, the challenge for organizations is to develop the capability to recognize and treat these precursor conditionsbefore they tailspin into failure. Research on the topic provides... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
Get a premium subscription today to read this and all MIT Sloan Managmeent Review articles.
More Info.
Buy this article. Purchase one or more copies of this article as a PDF.
Subscribe today to read the most recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
Upgrade to premium
Current Subscribers: Do you subscribe to MIT Sloan Management Review? Register for online access.
- Register for free access to recent articles and the current issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Subscribe and read articles from the past three years online.
- Premium subscription—access to the entire archive of articles.
