Essential Moral Standards and Norms

Business Ethics

Question 1, Essential moral standards and norms

Why are ethics so important in today’s world? Without any ethical guidelines, everyone would just live his life as if nothing matters to them, just their own interests and exploiting of the weaker individuals in society. That’s why ethics are so vital for today’s life. No one is 100% ethical today and they are not only giving individuals guideline, they also relate to the business world. Ethics are even more important in relating to the business world in term of how to proceed in certain situations. In this regard, there are two new types of vaccine testing, in a developing country like India.

The Question here is therefore is it justified to test vaccines on people from developing countries? Is it in ethics and morals aspects acceptable? Oriented on the codes of conduct the World Medical Association has different views, depending on what is important, therefore they have several aims for example treatment and research. That’s why the declaration of Helsinki describes the importance of a human being life and in course of codes of conduct it stands for, that the health of a patient takes precedence of all interests (WMA 2012). Concerning the case the procedure of testing 1000 healthy people, should give information for the 20% of the side effects, to prevent the illness or better to fight against it. In this case the main aspects of moral and norms are the human rights and the safety of the patients. In spite of this topic there are different views of normative ethic, at first they will be described and the rudimental ones will be debated.

Normative ethics has a purpose and is not value free and relates therefore morality on a simple question, what the right opinion is either action or decision. There are different types of normative ethics which are divided into two segments, deontology and teleology.

According to Driver Utilitarianism which is a type of Teleology is also known as consequentialism. It describes that a human being should take actions which make him moral but there must be a balance between wrong and right actions. Not important at all is the intention of one, the only important is the outcome. It is good because it is ethical correct, that’s why the intention of consequentialism is to create as good as possible (Driver, 2009).

According to Alexander et al the theory of deontology is an approach which evaluates human beings acts and is the contrast to consequentialism which means it does not concentrate on the consequences that might follow their actions. Therefore deontology is judging people upon their actions disregarding any consequences (Alexander, 2007).

Otherwise the discourse ethics is referred to as such ethical theories which main conditional criterion obtained the accuracy of ethical statements and is based on discussion and determination acceptance of someone’s persuasion. This means that the moral actions are given by the approval of all involved (Schlesinger, 2006, 92). In this case we have different approaches in spite of the normative ethic concepts the right the decision for a good outcome should be thought. Everyone knows the risk in a vaccine test and every decision or action should be carefully considered and must be justified. Concerning to the ethics the BVVG should prefer the teleology ethic, because the only thing on what these ethic correlates to is the outcome, disregarding the consequences of the testing person. In society this solution is not really possible because of the negative publicity that it entails. All things considered morals and norms should be reasonable actions which mean that all composed should give a solution.