Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14558

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Huckman M.
Merck Goes Back To School
CNBC 2008 Oct 30
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27456710

Full text:

As a reporter, you never know when or where you might stumble on a story-or at least a blog entry.

There I was yesterday guest lecturing for an old friend’s TV-news production class at my alma mater. So, while at the USC Annenberg School of Communications, I picked up a copy of the “Daily Trojan” just to check out the student paper I once had to work at for a semester back in the day.

As I’m paging through the edition I quickly take notice of a series of ads that appear with factoids about HPV, the sexually transmitted virus that a lot of college girls get. There’s no mention of Gardasil-Merck’s HPV vaccine. But sure enough, on the last page, in the last ad, there’s a little Merck [MRK 28.72 -2.41 (-7.74%) ] logo in the upper right hand corner. The ads simply send people to www.hpv.com and advise young co-eds to go to the student health center for more info, er, buy Gardasil.

No doubt, this campus outreach, which I’m sure isn’t exclusive to USC, is part of MRK’s ongoing effort to increase use of the expensive three shots among 19- to 26-year-olds. It’s a segment of the population the company has repeatedly acknowledged it’s been having trouble selling the product to.

Source: Daily Trojan
Merck Advertisement

Last week the Centers for Disease Control announced that it has found no evidence that Garsasil causes some of the severe, scary side effects that have been detailed in recent media reports and all over the internet. Some of that information has been circulated by conservative groups opposed to the vaccine who think it promotes promiscuity.

In the third quarter Merck said it sold more than $400 million worth of Gardasil. It’s a big, important, relatively new product for MRK, but sales of Gardasil haven’t been growing as fast as they had been.

By the way, notice I resisted all of the easy jokes about Gardasil being advertised in a paper called the “Daily Trojan.” Fight On!