How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching and Counseling in Difficult Circumstances | Page 133

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A core task for risk communicators is to learn how to disagree empathically.
When the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx was pulled from the market in October 2004 because of cardiac risk,
pharmaceutical company executives immediately started trying to differentiate Vioxx from their other antiinflammatory products that were still on sale. Here are two quotations, both aimed at protecting other products
by disagreeing with the public’s tendency to paint with a broad brush. The second one used empathic language
that acknowledged the way many laypeople saw the situation; the first one didn’t. (Which perspective is turning
out to be more accurate medically, the public’s or the pharmaceutical industry’s, is a separate issue.)
“It is important to note that the results of clinical studies with one drug in a given class are not necessarily
applicable to others in a class.”
– Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratories
“It’s hard to comprehend how two drugs in the same class could be so different. But th W