Dr. Julie Gerberding, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has joined Merck & Co. as president of its vaccines division.
The Dec. 21 announcement comes just 5 months after the drug maker unexpectedly announced that the previous head of its vaccines unit, Margie McGlynn, planned to retire. She left in November, after running the vaccines divisions since 2005 and spending 26 years in different positions at Merck.
By hiring Dr. Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 to 2009, Merck is getting a high-profile physician with a public health pedigree at a time when drug makers are increasingly pressed to justify the costs of their vaccines and find politically digestable ways to extend these products to developing nations.
During her tenure, Dr. Gerberding shepherded the agency through dozens of emergency response initiatives for several closely watched health crises, including the investigation into anthrax attacks that killed five people in 2001; the H5N1 avian influenza; the global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS); and various episodes of food poisoning.
“As a pre-eminent authority in public health, infectious diseases and vaccines, Dr. Gerberding is the ideal choice to lead Merck's engagement with organizations around the world that share our commitment to the use of vaccines to prevent disease and save lives,” said Richard Clark, Merck's chief executive, in a statement.
By contrast, Ms. McGlynn's background was largely in sales and marketing. A pharmacist by training, she joined the drug maker in 1983 as a sales representative, later becoming a product manager and a senior vice president at Merck-Medco, the pharmacy benefits manager that the drug maker eventually spun off, before she took over the vaccines division in 2005.
Two years later, she oversaw the launch of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine, Gardasil, which the drug maker hoped would reinvigorate a corporate image sullied by accusations that Merck failed to fully acknowledge links between its painkiller Vioxx (rofecoxib) and heart attacks and strokes. Vioxx was withdrawn from the market in 2004.
During her tenure, she shepherded CDC through anthrax attacks, the avian flu outbreak, and SARS.
Source DR. GERBERDING