Feb
20
When you think of big drug companies, what image comes to mind? Is it an image of a company that is out to save the world by curing all of the horrible diseases? I don’t think that is the picture that most of us would paint. I think that most of us probably see these companies as examples of corporate greed. These companies make billions and billions of dollars off of their products. And usually if you can not afford their medications then you simply do not have access to the cure.
Well one of these drug companies is a little different in my opinion. Back in the late 1990s a company called Merck gained FDA approval for a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug called Vioxx. This drug was prescribed to millions of arthritis patients worldwide with wonderful results. Unfortunately as the years passed it was realized that this drug may be contributing to heart attacks and strokes.
Did Merck wait for the FDA to step in and do something? No they didn’t! Despite the fact that taking this drug off of the market voluntarily would cost them millions of dollars in profits, they chose to do the right thing. Vioxx was taken off of pharmacy shelves in late 2004 because the executives at the pharmaceutical company that sold it decided to do the right thing.
