The Ethics of Gift Giving in the Pharmaceutica Industry: Annotated Bibliography

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Preface:

In the Pharmaceutical Industry an ethical dilemma has arise over the years of gift giving from the drug companies to the doctors they encounter during their drug promotion visits. The medical sales consultants influence doctors to purchase their drugs and other medical items by giving them prestigious gifts to intrigue them to choose their company over their competitors. The purpose of my studies is to analyze gift giving in the industry and determine if the action is ethical or unethical. My data was compiled between February-March 20014, and consisted of four sources, which are all website articles written by professionals in the medical field.

First Bibliographic Citation:

Averill, Sarah. "Is It Ever Okay to Accept Gifts From 'Big Pharma'?" Medscape. Medscape, 25 Feb. 2011. Web. 11 Mar. 2014. .

Rhetorical Situation:

Sarah Averill wrote this website article February 25, 2011, for the purpose of providing information to readers about the ethical issue behind gift giving. She also wanted provide readers with evidence on why gift giving in the pharmaceutical industry is unethical.The audience of this article are people in the medical field and a general audience of people who work and faces the dilemma of gift giving.

Summary:

In “Is it Ever Okay to Accept Gifts From ‘Big Pharma’?, Sarah Averill, St. Joseph’s Hospital and SUNY Upstate Medical University, provided information on why it is unethical for physicians to accept gifts from drug companies and consultants. Averill claimed that it is unethical to accept gifts from consultants because it influence prescribing habits by the physicians. She stated “ Did a fruit smoothie actually motivate them to writ...

... middle of paper ...

... and policies should be developed to prevent it. Ken Johnson angle of vision is that gift giving should be allowed in the industry but with conditions. This article helped me with my research question because it provided two claims that were opposite from each other. One provided me with the positive effects of gift giving and the other the negative effects. By getting both sides argue I was able to see that gift giving can be ethical and unethical under certain circumstances. They nothe deal with gift giving and provided me factual evidence that are supported by primary sources. It strengths are that it is unbiased, it gives the cons are pros, their claims are supported by evidence, and they provided me with information that deals with my topic directly. The weakness of the article is it did not go in depth that much, and it could have provided more information.

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