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Ethical issues in the pharmaceutical industry
Ethical issues in the pharmaceutical industry
Ethics in the pharmaceutical field
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Ethics and law do not always go hand in hand. Not every law is ethical, and even if a law is considered ethical on its surface, it may result in unethical outcomes. "Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.” The pharmaceutical industry confronts several dilemmas every year. Most of these dilemmas revolve around money or whether or not to sacrifice now for a bigger payoff in the end concerning money and/or lives. Pharmaceutical companies tend to use shortcuts that create ethical problems. Drug companies have spent millions/billions of dollars in research, and they obviously want to see favorable results during the testing stage so they know that they didn't spend all that money for nothing. The companies usually are the ones who influence what, when, how and who tests their drugs. This gives them an influential leg up on the negative outcomes. Sometimes, drug companies have even resorted to testing on individual without their approval. The pharmaceutical industry spends money to make money, but the majority of people who are sick tend to reside in third world countries that cannot afford to pay the premiums that the drug companies charge. Sometimes, this can result in drug companies not pursuing a drug that could save millions of lives just because they wouldn't be able to make a profit. Immanuel Kant believed that humans should not be treated merely as a means to an end. If humans are treated this way they are being utilized merely as objects, which deprive them of their humanity. Pharmaceutical companies have goals. They want to improve the lives of the humans that they "serv... ... middle of paper ... ...s ethical dilemmas every day of their lives, and the best that one can do is to work towards high standards that benefit the general good of the community. Works Cited Miller, Roger LeRoy., and Gaylord A. Jentz. "Chapter 2." Business Law Today: The Essentials : Text & Summarized Cases : E-commerce, Legal, Ethical, and International Environment. 9th ed. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2011. 43-55. Print. "Pharmaceutical Corporations and Medical Research — Global Issues." Global Issues : Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All — Global Issues. 2 Oct. 2010. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. . Velasquez, Manuel. "What Is Ethics?" Santa Clara University. 2010. Web. 12 Feb. 2012. .
Miller, R. L., and Cross, F. B. (2013). The legal environment today: Business in its ethical, regulatory, e-commerce, and global setting. (7 ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system are not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in order to cure their ailments. For instance, they may present symptoms that are perfectly harmless, and lead potential citizens to believe that, because of these symptoms, they are "sick" and in need of medication. In some instances, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States misleads both the public and medical professionals by participating in acts of both deceptive marketing practices and bribery, and therefore does not act within the best interests of the consumers.
Why do consumers purchase specific drugs for various ailments, sicknesses or diseases they might have? Why do physicians prescribe certain drugs over competitive drugs that may be available to the public? Why is it that most of us can easily name specific drugs that fit the many ailments of today’s society? On the surface the answer might be as simple as good TV advertising or radio commercials or even internet adds. The truth of matter is the major pharmaceutical manufacturers own the patents on these drugs and this gives them all of the marketing budget and muscle they need to promote the drug and control the pricing. The incentives for larger pharmaceutical companies are very enticing and as a result, they don’t mind spending the time in clinical trials and patent courts to get their drugs approved. Some will even get patents on the process by which the drug is manufactured, ensuring that no competitor can steal the drug or the process. This protects their large financial investment and nearly guarantees a large return for their investors. Many consumer rights groups claim this is nothing more than legalizing monopolies for the biggest manufacturers.
Pharmaceuticals are arguably one of the most contentious of all goods and services traded in the market. While medicines are as much a necessity as foods and water, they require more technical expertise and official approbation in the manufacture. Above all, they carry a moral weight that most market products do not (The Economist, 2014). This idea of moral can be linked to the recurring debate over whether a good health (which is represented by medicines, in this case) should be considered a basic human right, or just a normal commodity. A large portion of such controversy actually lies in an existence of drug patents: should we promote for longer-lasting patents or should we have their duration shortened?
FDA, so many people were harmed. Even other countries versions of the FDA approved it which
The largest issue is that pharmaceutical companies have a “blank check” from consumers, and for this to change an outside force must
There is a general disconnect between health care ethics and Big Pharma. Pharmaceutical companies do not run on a healthcare model designed to help patients, but on a business model intended to maximize profit. Medical ethicist Harriet Washington writes of how 10 percent of all medical research is dedicated to 90 percent of the world’s ailments (p. 314). Pharmaceutical companies invest such a small percentage of their efforts into research, because there are no lofty profits to be had, investing in medicines that protect patient welfare.
Wang, F. F. (2010). Law of Electronic Commercial Transactions: Contemporary Issues in the EU, US and China (Routledge Research in Information Technology and E-commerce Law). Routledge.
Phatak, A. (1998 йил 01-01). The pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. Retrieved 2012 йил 19-01 from Indian Journal of Medical Ethics: http://www.ijme.in/064cr131.html
ensure that all drugs are not harmful to be consumed or used by humans (Murnaghan, 2013). Hence, it improves the wuality of a human 's life. However, in a
Each task or daily work done requires ethics. Not only made in terms of business, teaching, learning and etc., but need ways to do the job according to the job description set. Ethics is a way of handling the job, rightly or wrongly done. Have errors or mistakes of human understanding that ethics are focused on factors regulations or laws alone. Ethics generally refers to behavior, morals and the way a person does things. However, ethics and law are closely aligned. In which case, the ethical rules set for each task performed. When someone does not follow the stated ethics, fleeced or do the wrong way to solve the task. Then how to understand that ethics and laws related to each other.
This might depend on whether the drug in question is a product of legal research to produce a legitimate medicine or if it is the product of a bathtub chemist in a black market where consumers simply will not buy drugs that do not produce the desired effect. The industry, with all the corporate power of research facilities and marketing campaigns behind it, can often be ambiguous where cause and effect are concerned. It has been accused of fabricating “disorders” that can be treated by expensive drugs discovered during research and offering incentives for clinicians to diagnose and prescribe accordingly. Hara refers to this difference in perspectives as the “technical and social determinist models” and suggests that the truth lies somewhere between the two (2003, pp. 8-10). One thing is clear, though, according to
It is important to first understand the difference between law and ethics. Ethics examines the values and actions of people. Often times there is no one right course of action when one is faced with an ethical dilemma. On the other hand, laws
In the legal system and real world, people are faced with many decisions and or situations. Most people probably do not give a second thought, or bat an eye, as to the type of decision or situation they are making or are in. The first category thought about is legality and the second is ethicality. Most people think that if it’s illegal, it’s unethical, and if it’s legal, it is ethical. This is not always the case. As shown in Counsellor at Law, sometimes these categories do not overlap as initially thought.
Stead, B. A., & Gilbert, J. (2001). Ethical issues in electronic commerce. Journal of Business Ethics, 34, 75-85.