The vaccine Scandal that never should have happened

New Mexico is the latest state to jump into the HPV vaccine controversy, the controversy that never should have happened. While the H-Blog has covered the political side before, this post's topic is the question, "What the hell was Merk thinking?"

They had a vaccine...against cancer. People will buy Guaradasil (the product name) guaranteed. All they had to do was sit back and collect the money a lot of money. But for some reason they decided to go out and demand the money. A decision I just don't understand. Yes, there was a competing product (Cervarix) coming down the pipe, but that product was coming behind the scenes lobby campaign or not. The best way to jump ahead of the competition would be to take an alternative route.

If Merck had announced that they had a vaccine against cervical cancer, and said "We're working with the American Cancer Society, x, y, z, other charities and a, b, c foundations to provide the vaccine free to under-privileged girls in America" they would have received some badly needed great free press, done extremely well in the public's view, promoted the vaccine for paying customers, and probably had better results on the mandatory vaccine front. You know some politician, somewhere would have said, "Hey this is great, lets make it mandatory." Merk could have played the white night the whole way through. The really weird part is that Merk knows this. They're still riding the great publicity they got when they gave away the cure for River Blindness. It's in every pr piece the release, and I think the CEO is required to discuss it in every interview.

I tried to research the number of immediate customers (middle school girls and up) that national passage of the mandatory vaccine would have created but couldn't find any usable data. I couldn't even find something to extrapolate so I can't calculate how much the number of girls times $600 that this would create in revenue, but I assume its a lot (I figure its this kind of quality research that keeps people coming back to the H-blog) and its also recurring as new girls become eligible every year. My guess is that Merk knows, saw the size of the market, saw that Cervarix is coming and wanted to get a jump on solidifying their share of the market. The problem is that they went about the exact wrong way. Now they find themselves embroiled in a lobbying scandal, they've slowed down progress on the school requirement, slowed down uptake of their drug due to all the bad press, allowed Cervarix even more time to come to market and compete, and just generally made a mess. Had they worked with a few charities and foundations, they would have had great press, got the name out, solidified the market, created the momentum for mandatory vaccination, and froze Cervarix out because they couldn't hope to recapture that moment.

I honestly think that Merk's handling of Guardasil will be a case study in business school for years to come. Not only that, but Merk has to be freaked that Cervarix will figure out the "charity" angle and completely destroy Guardasil in the market.

Nicely played.

PS. In writing this I noticed that the American Cancer Society has been oddly quiet on this front. It seems like a cancer vaccine would be something that they would be all over. Not just them, but any charity or foundation concerned with cancer or health in general. Why hasn't someone started giving this away? Why hasn't someone tried to raise a ton of money to give the drug to poor people? Its just sitting there as a great fund raising, name raising opportunity. Maybe Merk is so poisonous right now no one wants the association?