A pharmaceutical company develops a new asthma drug. After lengthy testing the drug is approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration and the company begins to sell the drug. Within nine months the company receives letters from two different families claiming that the new drug has severely injured the lungs of two patients using their product. At the same time an independent testing company announces that in their tests the drug is helping 400,000 patients to live more active lives. The company projects that it takes at least another three years to make back the money it expended in research and development. This drug will only be profitable thereafter. (a) What is the company's ethical problem? (b) What are some of the ethics' traps [as described in the text] the company could fall into? (c) Evaluate what the company could do/should do by applying (i) John Stuart Mills' Utilitarian analysis and (ii) Immanuel Kant's Deontological approach.
. A pharmaceutical company develops a new asthma drug. After lengthy testing the drug is approved by the Federal Food and Drug Administration and the company begins to sell the drug. Within nine months the company receives letters from two different families claiming that the new drug has severely injured the lungs of two patients using their product. At the same time an independent testing company announces that in their tests the drug is helping 400,000 patients to live more active lives. The company projects that it takes at least another three years to make back the money it expended in research and development. This drug will only be profitable thereafter.
(a) What is the company's ethical problem?
(b) What are some of the ethics' traps [as described in the text] the company could fall into?
(c) Evaluate what the company could do/should do by applying (i) John Stuart Mills' Utilitarian analysis and (ii) Immanuel Kant's Deontological approach. Apply any other ethical framework you think helpful for extra credit.
(d) If you were employed by the company, what would you want the company to do?
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