Case 6.4 Drug Dilemmas Essay

Words: 1443
Pages: 6

Case 6.4: Drug Dilemmas

The cost of new medical drugs seems to be accepted by many people who use them. These pharmaceutical companies increase their profits more and more each year because many people assume that it does cost a lot of money for research and development. Where in reality, they are only spending about 15% of their profit margins on research and development alone. A huge percentage of these drugs are actually tested in other countries where people are more willing to do trials with these drugs because they cannot afford them. Not only are there more people who are more willing to try them, but also there is less regulation and oversight when it comes to testing. Conducting these clinical trials overseas not only saves

For this rule to be universally acceptable, the man would have to be willing to accept it if he were a woman, something he would presumably be unwilling to do." (Shaw 64) In this case, if the pharmaceutical companies were people of a third world country who has very little to no money and were placed in a new drug trial for the main benefit of these companies to make profit, they too would want the opportunity to have access to these drugs when it hits the market. Since, these companies fail to actually provide the tested with these drugs after approval, the maxim of not providing these drugs are universally unacceptable. For this particular act we may conclude that the act is morally wrong. Similarly we come to the question, "Are these test subjects being exploited and being taken advantage of?". We may now base our moral reasoning across Kant's second Categorical Imperative again stating, "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end”. Reflecting upon the reasoning as to why these pharmaceutical companies do there testing offshore is merely because; it's cheap, no regulations, less requirements, less oversight, and there are more people who are willing to perform these trials due to their economic status per se. The maxim of using these people clearly displays that these people are simple used as a means to an