Drug Testing Ethics

M3 Original Assignment

Are drug companies that test experimental drugs in foreign countries acting ethically?
To answer this question, it is worth looking at why a drug company would experiment in a foreign country before even examining the negative impacts in doing so. Testing drugs internationally is done because it is cheaper and far easier to endanger trial patients in a foreign country. Now when exploring the reasons for the need to test at all, an act utilitarian may surmise that because these tests are inevitably targeted toward benefitting the greater good, the drug companies are justified in doing what is necessary to successfully conduct experimentation. However, what the act utilitarian may neglect to realize is that these trials
The specificities in the development of a law may leave exploitable loop-holes and means by which seemingly legal circumvention can take place while still remaining within the confines of legality, though not necessarily morality. If a pharmaceutical company was to be immune from legal recourse in the form of lawsuits, they would be free to market potentially harmful drugs. Understandably there is always the inherent risk of using a drug and the effects therein; however it should be among the drug company’s primary objectives to ensure that it generally does more good than harm. The idea is Rawlsian in nature in that it requires the drug company to imagine a circumstance where they may be the unknowing consumer of a potentially dangerous drug. (Shaw & Berry,
If a company can subsist more so by marketing a widely needed drug versus a niche drug that may be useful but not necessarily in high demand, they are simply exercising their right to survive as an organization. Libertarian in nature, the idea of the free market is that a company is granted the ability to profit so long as it falls within the legal guidelines of the country it operates within. Because the company neglects to produce one or a series of drugs, it opens up a supply gap for another company to fill and thus profit in their own way. In this regard, the fluidity of the free market may absolve the company of any accusations of ethical shortcomings. Similarly, declining marketing a drug in a foreign country because it would prove more profitably elsewhere relies on the balance of the free market, however the intent seems far less ethical as it presents itself as more of a scheme for profit maximization, where it isn’t monetary necessity driving the decision, its profiteering. (Shaw & Berry,