The Belmont Report And Ethical Consequences

I think that it is paramount, when discussing policies or programs that can have significant ethical consequences, that you rank the three P's as follows: principle, power and profit. When these P's aren't taken into consideration, in the right order that is, we witness acts such as those mentioned in the lecture. This week's lecture highlighted 'The Belmont Report' which holds the ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence and justice, as what should guide researchers ethically. When you sit down and take a look at power, profit and principle, ask yourself, which of these would take these three ethical principles into account? Surely, profit wouldn't mind if someone's liberty is being infringed upon, much like power thinks little
of people being treated fairly, let alone equally. Hence, it comes as no surprise to me, that when looking at any event that could have significant ethical consequences, that we should rank our priorities as such - principle, power and profit. As Matthew mentioned in his own thread, "For example, the recent controversy behind Martin Shkreli. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and made the ethical decision to raise the company's drug, Daraprim, from $13.50 a pill to $750 (Long and Egan, 2015)." this is a clear example of a money hungry and power hungry egomaniac, who decided to inflate the price of a life-saving medication, simply because he could, solely because there was no one who could stop him, because he knew that people would have to conform to this new price.