Mathew Herper is the journalist from Forbes who first questioned the delayed results from the Vytorin trial ENHANCE in a November 19, 2007 article with the headline The Vytorin Question.
Two days later New York Times picked up on the story and the rest is history. Congress got involved and pressured Merck and Schering-Plough (the two companies copromote Vytorin), not to change the primary endpoint of the study and to release a summary of the data that showed Vytorin worked no better than generic Zocor.
Merck stock promptly dropped 19% from its one year high and Schering-Plough stock went into a free fall, dropping 42% from its prior 52-week high.
So what really happened here? Were Schering-Plough and Merck equal partners or did one of the companies force the other one to come clean?
We may never find out the full story, but there are some indications that Merck may have forced Schering-Plough to go along with what would prove to be a fatal blow to Schering-Plough stock value.
Merck had much less to lose than SGP, since Merck is less dependent on Vytorin. That makes Merck a more likely organization to have pushed for release of the uncomfortable data.
But there are more traces pointing to Merck as the company that took the initiative to do the right thing in past news articles.
When Forbes announced that Merck And Schering Backtrack on December 11, 2007, and that they would not change "the main goal of the study" it was not Schering-Plough that made that announcement or the Schering CEO or research head that was made available for an interview. The disclosure was made by Merck research head Peter Kim.
Kim said, "We have made the decision that, while we greatly respect this expert panel, that we are not going to change the primary endpoint for the study."
We all know that Fred Hassan doesn't mind talking to the media but his people stayed away from the limelight and simply posted a Q&A.
Merck stock price, badly wounded by the Vioxx debacle, had managed to completely recover before the Vytorin data was released, and it would be logical to assume that Merck badly wanted to avoid another situation like Vioxx.
So did Merck or Schering-Plough take the lead in releasing the data that killed Schering-Plough's stock?
The upcoming Congressional investigation may clarify what really happened.
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