Circumstances Case

Circumstances:

The case study is set in 1978 at a time when Merck, a pharmaceutical giant, is grossing nearly 2 billion dollars of revenue annually and investing heavily in the research and development of new pharmaceuticals that will ensure the firm’s profitability for years to come. While testing a new antiparasitic drug for cattle called ivermectin, a senior researcher discovers that there is a strong likelihood that the drug could be developed to treat River Blindness in humans. River Blindness is a public health epidemic that causes physical and socioeconomic strife for up to 340,000 people in the Third World. The discovery created a dilemma for the head of research labs at Merck who now had to decide whether to invest in the further development in the antiparasitic for humans, which would not be able to generate enough revenue to pay for itself, or whether to focus development resources on more potentially profitable projects instead.

Ethical Issues:

The ethical issues that are raised are on two fronts. First there are the ethics to do what is the best interest of the company, with respect to company profits and future viability, and then there are the ethics of social responsibility. What does society demand from corporations? What, if anything, does a corporate giant owe to humankind? Investing in the further development of ivermectin for humans not only uses development resources for a product with very little potential profitability, but it also poses a potential risk of undercutting the revenue from cattle drug version.

The Ethical Model:

Absolutes:

- No one group of people is better than another, including first world or third world societies.

- There is no universal duty to save.

- Values are subjective and must be determined and supported by the organization.

- Ethics are moral, but morals are not necessarily ethics. Personal morality supersedes ethics.

Legal:

What is presented in this scenario is a decision to be made, or rather a dilemma. There are no apparent laws that were broken, nor are there any apparent laws that could be broken regardless of the decision that is made.

Moral Philosophies:

Teleogical:

If the head of lab research decides not to pursue any further research and development for the antiparasitic, then he would be avoiding financial risk for Merck. It could be a smart business decision that is good for Merck shareholders, but certainly one that is not good for those who could suffer from River Blindness. That being said, it is not quite so black and white as it may initially seem, as there