Merck & Co. Inc.'s scientists in its research division in West Point and elsewhere have pulled off some amazing feats. In 1987, they developed Mectizan for a terrible disease called "river blindness" in Africa. Strictly in financial terms, the drug has earned little or nothing for Merck in the conventional sense. Merck almost certainly knew before marketing the drug that there would be no real profit in selling it in impoverished Africa, but it kept going anyway. If Merck had shelved the drug, like GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. and others had to do with with their own low-profit breakthroughs, Mectizan might have become another example of the pitfalls, not successes, of the profit imperative. Remember, this was long before the Gates Foundation was around to help save the drug companies from themselves.
So Merck's marketing division pulled off a stupendous feat of its own. Completely apart from the drug's clear health benefits, the company seems to have treated Mectizan as a charity vehicle and milked it for all it's worth. It has set up and funded sophisticated donation programs and public-health efforts to distribute its drug, and donated the product to the cause. Mectizan has become the basis for corporate promotions, good press and even Merck's routine assertions that it pursues human health above all. We remember hearing Merck's executives try to defend company's handling of Vioxx by trotting out Mectizan, of all products, as if that would prove the company's inner goodness.
In P.R. terms, Mectizan has become an enormous, if immeasurable, asset for Merck. Now on Mectizan's 20th anniversary, Merck is sinking an additional $25 million into this asset. Merck, the World Bank and other aid agencies have announced a joint campaign to raise $50 million to eliminate the disease - half coming from Merck, on top of Merck's donation of the drug itself. By Merck's own reckoning, it has donated $2.7 billion worth of Mectizan since 1987. Forget the tax deductions: Imagine if every drug company had such an asset.
