Business Articles in a Medical Journal

To the Editor:

The perspective about Merck recalling rofecoxib (1) should not have appeared in a medical journal. Although ensconced under a “Business and Medicine” heading, it was purely a business article having nothing to do with medicine.

The authors, from Harvard Business School, use opaque business formulations such as a “cost of capital of 11.25 percent to discount future earnings” to calculate that Merck’s post-recall stock drop was excessive given the recall’s revenue and litigation impact. Their article then rehashes tired statistics about drug development expense, analyzes Merck’s business strategy, and concludes with patient-safety platitudes.

Where is the medicine? Similarly analyzing a multinational shoe company would be equally relevant to physicians: all patients need shoes, and poorly fitting shoes in diabetics cause considerable morbidity and sometimes mortality.

The Journal’s increasing preoccupation with business is classic mission creep, and incurs opportunity cost: uneven translation of research results to the bedside is a major failing of today’s medical system. High impact publications such as the Journal poorly serve our profession when they divert precious pages to Wall Street intrigues.