Dalkon Shield

This case study on the A.H Robins Company originally headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. I will answer several questions in relation to the purchase, manufacturing, and distribution of the Dalkon Shield IUD. This product was the subject of thousands of lawsuits and many questions as to the unethical nature of the sales pertaining to this product. Starting in 1970 when the rights to the product were purchased for “$750,000 plus consulting fees and royalty of 10 percent on all U. S and Canadian net sales.” Ending in 1985, when the company was forced to declare bankruptcy stemming from the cost associated from the thousands of lawsuits that occurred from the use of the IUD. (Hartley, 2005)

At what point in the Dalkon Shields life did unethical practices first become apparent? The unethical practices of Robins started very early on in the process of procuring the Dalkon Shield. They purchased an item that they knew very little about and as the article; states they did not have anyone on staff that had the required credentials to be considered and expert on the IUD. The facts seems to be that the Robins company purchased, manufactured, advertised and sold a product that was known to be dangerous. They choose profit over everything else, and defended the product no matter what the evidence or experts told them.

What should have been done at that point that there were red flags as to the ethical nature of promoting this product? There should have been a hold on the product until there we able to study it in more detail and get expert opinion and recommendations. However, this would have taken time and money to make sure that the product was as safe as they were advertising it to be.  They only seemed to be concerned with being the first to market. Which is a common business practice and being the first can definitely have its advantages. However, being first to market with a defective product can be disastrous and can benefit the competition.

Can a firm guarantee complete product safety? Absolutely not, there is no way to guarantee complete product safety. All of the research, development and testing cannot cover every possible scenario that can happen with a product in regards to safety. What can be done is to make reasonably sure that with normal use of your product that there is a very high level of safety in its use. There is always going to be extenuating circumstances or the use of a product in ways that is was never intended, this you cannot plan for. A 100% guarantee of safety is simply not possible.

If I had to design a strategy for the Dalkon Shield that would have minimized the problems Robins eventually faced. My strategy would be simple, take the time to properly research, develop and test the product before it was distributed. Had this been completed, it may have minimized, or eliminated the problems with the device altogether. Secondly, they could have been receptive to feedback by consumers and medical professionals who were telling them what the issues were with the IUD and they could have worked to correct the problems instead of covering them up. If the problems were not correctable then the ethical thing to do would have been a recall and a stoppage of production.