Module 3 Questions Essay

Words: 1304
Pages: 6

1. Are drug companies that test experimental drugs in foreign countries acting ethically? Drug companies that test experimental drugs in foreign countries are not acting ethically. Testing of experimental drugs should be done in the country where the drugs are being manufactured. The major ethical dilemma is that the foreign countries that these clinical trials are not fully educated on the risks and understand what they are getting themselves into. In the article, many things stood out that these countries may not know what they are signing up for. Doing these clinical trials in foreign countries, drug companies are “exploiting the healthy who are strapped for cash and the sick who seek cheap or free remedies.” (Netto, Health-Asia:
Thus, resulting in companies focusing on money over human health.

3. Is it ethical for companies to decline to sell a useful drug because they can make more money marketing drugs that are more widely needed? Is it ethical for companies to decline to sell a useful drug in a foreign country because they can make more money marketing the drug elsewhere? No, it is not ethical for drug companies to decline the sale of useful drugs because they can make more money marketing other drugs that are more widely needed. A drug that can be useful should ethically be available to a society regardless of the profits they could make with more widely needed drugs. Utilitarianism can apply to this because in rule utilitarianism actions are right if they produce maximum happiness and wrong if they do not. The actions of rule utilitarianism are not individualized, rather held to a moral code or rules set that will produce maximum happiness (Shaw & Barry, 2013, p.77). The moral code and guidelines would be for drug companies to allow the drugs that can be useful to people to be sold and distributed in the society. It would be wrong to not sell a useful drug because of the financial gains the company would make. It is also unethical for companies to not sell a useful drug in foreign countries because they can