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Ethical Issues Associated with Pharmaceutical Innovation

  • Chapter
Business Ethics of Innovation

Part of the book series: Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment ((ETHICSSCI,volume ^31))

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Abstract

Corporate managers responsible for the research, development, and marketing of pharmaceutical products inevitably encounter challenging ethical issues. One main reason is that, to reach the market, drugs must be studied in animals and humans, activities that have historically been plagued with ethical dilemmas about weighing the benefits and risks to subjects and the goal of advancing medical science and, in the case of human research, issues of free and informed consent. The second main reason that ethics has special relevance to the pharmaceutical industry is related to the intrinsic nature of drug products. Drugs become intensely personal when they make the difference between life and death, health and disability. The more grave the illness, the more patients care about them. Drug products are also unavoidably unsafe — no drug can be taken without some risk of harm. The diseases that have produced the need for drug therapy also make patients more vulnerable than other consumers. Fairness issues are generated by pharmaceutical products since they are often costly and therefore create access disparities. The vital importance of these products ensures that company research, development, and marketing will be closely scrutinized by governments, physicians, patients, and the press. Such scrutiny means that any lapse in corporate ethical conduct is increasingly detected and engenders a loss of public trust in the industry.

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Authors
  1. Margaret L. Eaton
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Wissenschaftsrat, Brohler Str. 11, 50968, Köln, Germany

    Gerd Hanekamp

  2. Europäische Akademie GmbH, Wilhelmstr. 56, 53474, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany

    Friederike Wütscher

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Eaton, M.L. (2007). Ethical Issues Associated with Pharmaceutical Innovation. In: Hanekamp, G., Wütscher, F. (eds) Business Ethics of Innovation. Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, vol ^31. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72310-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72310-3_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-72309-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-72310-3

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