To: Anders Dejgaard From: Jennifer Tsai Subject: Ethics of offshoring Date: 05/23/2011
Critical issued of the appropriateness of conducting clinical trials in emerging countries has arisen over years. Being a leading company in biopharmaceutical industry, Novo Nordisk faces the critiques of whether it is justice to offshoring their clinical trials in developing economies. With the consistency of ethical principles brought up by Novo Nordisk, the company would be able to move their trials into emerging economies with the best interest for stakeholders. I will also propose ideas to Mr, Dejgaard for possible approach to media as well as the practices that Novo Nordisk could have changed over time at the end.
Conducting Clinical Medical Ethics I will suggest Mr. Dejaard to pull out historical data indicating that the random checks investigated from Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American and European authorities have never identified ethical problems in clinical trials in emerging economies. Second, assert the ethic codes from their company will help the publics to receive the image of Novo Nordisk has complied with the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association.
Ethical Business Media might inquiry the fairness of conducting placebo experiment in emerging countries by Novo Nordisk based on the industry trends in recent time. Mr. Dejaard could response to them that Novo Nordisk usually stay away from placebo trials, and only used in phase 1 trials which only healthy volunteers participated. Also, Novo Nordisk framed new business ethics policy in 2005 with generally accepted high standards while training managers and employees attending workshops and offering e-learning policy.
To better respond to the media, Mr. Dejaard could also indicate that Novo Nordisk will try to implement some new action plan that could benefit stakeholders as a whole in order to minimize ethical conflicts. I suggest the following action plan for Novo Nordisk to benefit them in long run.
Action Plan Enhance Auditing System To build trust for the stakeholder for Novo Nordisk, I believe the firm should develop a more solid auditing system.
