Do pharmaceutical companies have any moral responsibility to ensure their products are not consumed illegitimately?

Week 7 ethics discussion post

Weekly Discussion Guidelines

You cannot just login, post several times in one day, and be done. Think of this as a discussion that we may have in the classroom, except that we are doing it online over a week. You are expected to respond to the discussion prompt with your initial post by 11:59 PM on Day 4. After submitting your initial post, provide 2 response posts, on 2 separate days. For example, if you submit your initial post on Day 4, you will submit a response post on 2 different days after Day 4. All posts need to be submitted no later than Day 7.

All posts should be thoughtful, respectful, and add substantive value to the discussion. One or two sentences is not a substantive response. All posts should be written using full sentences in paragraph form. The use of philosophical concepts, wherever relevant, is highly recommended to earn full points. Please provide both in-text citations and post-text references. Do not bother claiming that you did not provide in-text citations and post-text references because everything came from your head. You are required to include textual evidence for your claims.

Discussion Prompt

Select one of the three prompts below to respond to in your initial post this week. You are encouraged to respond to peers that explored the prompts that you did not.

Prompt #1

Is it ethical for companies to require employees to take a polygraph test before they are hired or promoted? Would your answer be different if the company made products from a secret formula that competitors have so far been unsuccessful in imitating? What benefit do companies accrue if ethics is made a part of their corporate culture?

In resolving this dilemma, apply:

Utilitarianism
Deontology
Your own ethical reasoning on the issue
(USLOs 7.1, 7.2, 7.3)

Prompt #2

Sometimes liquor and tobacco companies create ads that link the consumption of its goods with popularity, love, friendship, and financial success.

Do you think this is ethical?
Would your answer change if the company engaged in some Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by occasionally publishing an ad that stressed the importance of consuming their product responsibly?
Be sure to include the perspectives of social contract theory and virtue ethics in your responses.
(USLOs 7.1, 7.2, 7.3)

Prompt #3

Opioid addiction continues to be a cause for national and global concern. Each year, hundreds of thousands wind up in the black market to be sold illegally. Some government organizations, such as a congressional crime committee, believe that pharmaceutical companies cannot be blamed if their products are used illegally.

Do pharmaceutical companies have any moral responsibility to ensure their products are not consumed illegitimately?

How would you recognize an ethical pharmaceutical company – what are its characteristics?

Which organization should be held morally culpable for solving this issue?

Be sure to include the perspectives of social contract theory and virtue ethics in your responses.

Does the program convincingly tackle the full range of issues involved in assessing the corporation’s ultimate impact on its local,regional,national,and global communities?

Ethics at Work

Does the program specifically and effectively address the dangers of unethical leadership, of possible misbehavior among the corporation’s most senior executives?

Does the program take into account the dangers of organizational behavior, as well as individual misdeeds?

Does the program convincingly address the needs and concerns of rank-and-file employees of the corporation?

Does the program convincingly tackle the full range of issues involved in assessing the corporation’s ultimate impact on its local,regional,national,and global communities?

Discuss the effect of customer-centric initiatives on Ghanaian banking customers’ attitude towards banks than corporate philanthropy.

Bank customers

Given that banks are important players in the financial sectors of developing economies in
Africa and that banks have, for example in Ghana, been identified as adopting corporate
social responsibility as a means of strengthening their reputation and improving
relationships with stakeholders (Hinson, 2011), this study investigated stakeholders’ preference and response to CSR from the perspective of consumers of the retail banking sector in Ghana. Specifically, the study was focused on the following:

1. Ghanaian bank customers’ preference with regard to customer-centric CSR initiatives,corporate philanthropy and community volunteering;

2. Discuss the effect of customer-centric initiatives on Ghanaian banking customers’ attitude towards banks than corporate philanthropy

3. the effect of customer-centric initiatives on Ghanaian banking customers’ attitude towards banks;

4. the effect of corporate philanthropy on Ghanaian bank customers’ attitudes towards banks;

5. the effect of customer-centric CSR initiatives on the behavioural intentions of Ghanaian bank customers; and

6. the effect of corporate philanthropy on the behavioural intentions of Ghanaian bank customers.

Which of the views do you think carry perhaps the strongest argument,with all points considered?Why?

Sexual Morality

Now read the background on “Sexual Morality” on pages 536 through the first top column of page 541.

Pay close attention to the perspectives pertaining to pornography as well as campus sexual assault.

Which of the views do you think carry perhaps the strongest argument,with all points considered?  Why?  (Note: Think from a philosophical point-of-view.)

How could you apply categorical and consequentialist moral reasoning to the ethical questions the application raises?

In Discussion Forum 6, post your response to the following discussion question. Make sure your initial post is substantive (200 to 300 words).

You can use the three attachments as the sources.

Consider the following questions:

What do you see as the most important ethical issue raised by a specific application of artificial intelligence (e.g., self-driving vehicles, social bots, autonomous weapons)?

Who could potentially benefit from this application of AI? Who might be harmed?

Why would it be important for policies to be put in place in order to mitigate harm?

How could you apply categorical and consequentialist moral reasoning to the ethical questions the application raises?

Do you see AI impacting your personal or professional life?

What measures should be taken to control the spread of infectious disease?How do you weigh public health and individual rights to make appropriate decisions?

What measures should be taken to control the spread of infectious disease?How do you weigh public health and individual rights to make appropriate decisions?

This issue has come up before, in the inoculation debates in 1721. It became a more serious problem in the late 19th and early 20th century as microbiologists quickly realized that many diseases (cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, diphtheria, etc.) were caused by contagious bacteria. Both the “Discussion on the Advisability of the Registration of Tuberculosis” and Leavitt’s “Typhoid Mary” discuss what powers health officials should have over the lives and rights of individuals.

These debates recurred repeatedly throughout the 20th century: can states require children to receive immunizations? Can patients with tuberculosis be confined to hospitals to receive antibiotics? (the answer to these questions is yes). They are again emerging as active policy questions: with COVID-19, will individuals be hospitalized involuntarily, can cities be quarantined? etc. Many of the most contentious past debates are related to HIV/AIDS.

The year is 1983. America (and soon the rest of the world) is in the throes of a new epidemic. Over the past few years, a series of people from specific risk groups have developed a new disease, AIDS, characterized by severe immunodeficiency and opportunistic infections. A new virus, lymphadenopathy virus, has been identified that might be the cause of AIDS; but no test yet exists to detect the virus in infected patients. Even though AIDS can be rapidly progressive, some patients can live for years after showing the first signs of the disease. This creates a dilemma for public health officials. Several people known to have AIDS, notably Gaetan Dugas, a male flight attendant from Montreal, continue to engage in high risk behavior (in his case, unprotected sex with multiple male partners).

Should public health authorities have the right to confine people, as was done with Mary Mallon, to keep them from spreading the disease? Should all patients with AIDS be reported to health officials, as has been done with tuberculosis and syphilis, do that their behavior can be monitored?

One official at the CDC is interested in your thoughts on the topic. Things are crazy here at the CDC, so keep your answer short (between 150-200 words).

When you mention specific material from the texts or use quotations, provide adequate citations (author, page number).

Do you believe the decision/action/resolution was ethical?Explain the decision-making process.

Ethical Decision Making

College life brings with it a new set of opportunities and challenges. You have entered a community of peers; some of you are living away from home without the everyday guidance and support of parents, family and friends. You are encountering a degree of diversity in everyday living to which you are probably not accustomed. And academically, expectations have changed dramatically. College faculty do not see themselves as disciplinarians and there are no school principals monitoring your activities and attendance. You are on your own, managing your time, negotiating choices and relationships, and dealing with a more complicated set of academic expectations and responsibilities. In every setting – dorm, classroom, college activities and work – you must balance your needs with obligations to yourself and to others. And this means that you are involved in ethical decision making.

In a 4-5 page essay, discuss a real situation you have encountered this semester which had an ethical component or dimension – that is, where you had to negotiate your own interests, values and needs within the context of the needs and/or expectations of others. You can use an example taken from your own experience, current events, the readings or class discussion.

Do you believe the decision/action/resolution was ethical?Explain the decision-making process.

Be sure to analyze your example within the context of the differing approaches to ethics discussed in Mill, Kant and Gilligan. How did the readings help you think about the situation from a new or deeper perspective?

How did the readings help you think about the situation from a new or deeper perspective?

College life brings with it a new set of opportunities and challenges. You have entered a community of peers; some of you are living away from home without the everyday guidance and support of parents, family and friends. You are encountering a degree of diversity in everyday living to which you are probably not accustomed. And academically, expectations have changed dramatically. College faculty do not see themselves as disciplinarians and there are no school principals monitoring your activities and attendance. You are on your own, managing your time, negotiating choices and relationships, and dealing with a more complicated set of academic expectations and responsibilities. In every setting – dorm, classroom, college activities and work – you must balance your needs with obligations to yourself and to others. And this means that you are involved in ethical decision making.

In a 4-5 page essay, discuss a real situation you have encountered this semester which had an ethical component or dimension – that is, where you had to negotiate your own interests, values and needs within the context of the needs and/or expectations of others. You can use an example taken from your own experience, current events, the readings or class discussion. Do you believe the decision/action/resolution was ethical? Explain the decision-making process.

Be sure to analyze your example within the context of the differing approaches to ethics discussed in Mill, Kant and Gilligan.

How did the readings help you think about the situation from a new or deeper perspective?

Describe what you perceive of at this point in time to be your “Ethical System” as thoroughly and precisely as you can.

Describe what you perceive of at this point in time to be your “Ethical System” as thoroughly and precisely as you can.

Pull into your description clear language about your ethical presuppositions and what their bases are, as well as what you have observed happens when any of your presuppositions are difficult to apply equally or come into outright conflict. Feel free to offer brief examples from your actual experience and emphasize situations, priorities and aspects of your personal attachments that have relationship to actual or potential roles of leadership.

As ever, it might be useful to refer to ideas, concepts or frameworks provided by the authors and readings we have encountered so far this semester.