Most industries face pressures from various special interest sources that hope to direct or influence the business or research efforts of the industry. While some of these efforts are legitimate and just, there are also efforts made that are self-serving and unethical. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry is a very large and profitable industry, and one that, unfortunately, is subjected to corrupt and unprincipled behavior from time to time. There are different types of unethical issues that confront this industry in the course of carrying out business and conducting research. A few examples follow:
- There is a lot of money made in the pharmaceutical business. The cost of developing medications is high and it is passed along to consumers. For profit companies constantly need newer and better pharmaceuticals to meet the demand of consumers and to improve their profitability. Some of these companies are not above providing unethical cash incentives to pharmaceutical companies to develop products for their exclusive sale and/or distribution.
- Research or study that is conducted to develop a marketable product that is profitable for a company rather than to gain more scientific evidence about a pharmaceutical effectiveness can create an ethical dilemma.
- The results of research can establish how good a particular drug is, but it can also affect how valuable the product is and how profitable it will be. Pertinent information could be left out of the studies, leaving the research results incomplete, if it would cause the pharmaceutical to be less profitable.
- It is not unusual for physicians to be sought out to provide their expertise and input into the research of a particular drug. It becomes unethical when the physicians are offered significant sums of money to mold their input to satisfy the objectives of the researchers.
The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry is critical to the quality to life for everyone in this world. This industry is relied on to research, develop, and produce products that relieve suffering, extend life, assist people with dealing with challenges of everyday life, provide nourishment and dietary supplements, and many other functions. People everywhere need to be able to trust this industry to do the right thing, the thing that is in the best interest of the consumer, not in the interest of those seeking unethical personal or corporate advantages on the backs of those who depend on them.
There is definitely a rise in companies developing drugs more for profit then to help their patients. just look at all the new cancer drugs coming out that can cost up to 100,000 dollars just to prolong someone's life a few months
ReplyDeleteThese are some really interesting points, especially when you consider that drug companies are often responsible for keeping a fair amount of the population alive and healthy. The mention of the physician recommendations stuck out to me because I'm pretty sure that the practice of almost bribing them, like with vacations disguised as conferences, is still a very large part of the American medical system.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Matt, prolonging someone's life a few months who has cancer, especially if that person remains healthy and happy during that period, would be a huge medical breakthrough which may even justify that price tag. How much would you agree to pay for a few more months if you knew that you were fatally ill?
I agree with both Matt and Spencer in discussing profits related to new cancer drugs, and I think that many people have personal experiences that can relate to this issue. For Matt, I can see the point of view that the high cost of these drugs for patients with incurable forms of cancer can be hard to swallow, but prognosis for patients varies drastically at times.
ReplyDeleteAs for Spencer's point, there are HUGE medical discoveries that occur every year. Something to think about (mostly for a thoughtful point rather than for your industry), is the amount of focus that companies place on the most common forms of cancer. For example, Multiple Myeloma is a rare form of blood cancer once called an "orphan disease" because there was so little funding for its research, and life expectancies rarely went beyond three years. However through the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation that was founded in the mid-1990s, advancements in treatments have bumped up the lives of patients tremendously, in the best cases 10 years.
So you both made very true points, it may just be a matter of viewing them from two different angles. Back to the ethics -- pharma companies may be prioritizing patients' quality-of-life, or on the other hand could possibly capitalizing on the fact that every person wants to believe they can beat their disease (at a high cost financially).