assignment:
Each of your replies should be at least 200 words. As such, the replies must have citations and references in APA notation. Your list of references for each reply should include all of the course material that has informed your reply, in addition to any research that you have obtained on your own.
Your replies should focus on the specific examination presented by your fellow student and these should include an examination of whether or not the characteristics of the ethical theory and/or economic system were identified well, and whether or not their application and analysis were also carried out successfully. Providing such an examination is not an attack on your fellow student but an attempt to work together with your fellow student toward the better understanding of the ethical theories employed, as well as their application.
1. For this week post, I selected the case of the pharmaceutical company Merck & Company. In this case, P. Roy Vagelos former Research Director and later CEO at Merck made the call to produce and distribute the drug Ivermectin at no cost to anybody that needed it. Ivermectin is a drug used to treat onchocerciasis (River Blindness). this disease is transmitted by the black mosquito and attacks the skin and eyes. Untreated this disease can result in blindness or even death. At the time of the decision the drug Ivermectin was a great product to kill parasites in animals but since it was ineffective on hook worms and tape wars it was no test or further researched as a product for human's consumption (Annual Reviews. 2012). The issue that I want to present in this case is that before the drug was administered to the first group of people in Dakar Senegal it had not been tested on humans. This constitutes yet again the used of underprivileged people to conduct the human test of a drug. In the united states, the human test of any drug is closely regulated by the Food and Drug Administration(FDA). The FDA regulation governing human drug testing are covered under the Code of Federal Regulations Title 21. One of the section of Title 21 which I think is important and completely essential for a person to consent to be a part of a drug test is Sec. 50.20 (General requirements for informed consent). This section requires the company to provide people enough information to enable them to make an educated decision on whether or not participate in a drug test.
I believe that the decision made by P. Roy Vagelos is morally bad. Since this case involves a pharmaceutical company and a lot of us have blind faith when it comes to doctors and medication. I will use the Deontology moral standard to validate my moral position of this case.
There are two principles of Deontology that I would like to apply to this case.
1. Doing what can be universalized: if it is morally good for Meck to use human for testing without providing them ample information to enable them to make an educated decision on whether or not participate in a drug test. It is ok for a car company to trick people into becoming crash test dummies or for the government to test different types of weapons on the population without informing them.
2. Not treating persons as means to and end but only as ends in themselves: in this case, people were used as the means for testing the drug. Maybe the goal was to cure the disease but the outcome of the drug use was unknown at the time of issue.
For these two main reasons, I believe that Meck's actions were morally bad (Zúñiga&Postigo 2015).
References
Annual Reviews. (2012, February 3). A conversation with P. Roy Vagelos [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/-fRpgGkgA-c
Zúñiga y Postigo, G. (2015). The moral good in three traditional ethical theories [PowerPoint Slides].
2. Identify the problem:
I would like to discuss the problem of employment discrimination at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Employment discrimination is: "the type of discrimination referring to prejudicial treatment of people in hiring, promotion, and termination decisions" (Fieser, J., 2015). The Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & rubber Company case was one brought upon the company based off of intentional discrimination whereas the business was paying female employees less than their male counterparts. This later led to the implementation of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 which "restarts the clock on the deadline for suing each time the employee affected by an allegedly discrimination pay decision" (Bader. H., 2013).
Law affecting the operations of the business:
The main law that covers this type of issue is Title VII of the Labor Law-which is "the main federal anti-employment-discrimination statute" (Brake, D. L., & Grossman, J. L., 2007). This statute was enacted to prevent companies from discriminating in at all levels of an organization. Fairness and equality are of the upmost importance.
Moral position to defend:
In my opinion, there shouldn't be a question here; as human beings we should be treated equally. If a woman is doing the same job as a man, with the same qualifications, and they complete the job with the same degree of efficiency they need to be paid the same amount of money. I understand there are other factors that play into the overall determination of pay but it should be comparable nonetheless. It is my moral position that discrimination needs to be a thing of the past and we move past it, treating everyone as equals regardless of the race, religion, gender, disability, or anything else that makes us an eclectic nation.
Ethical theory to employ:
Again, I believe Deontology is the theory to employ in this situation. Equality and fairness are moral standards we are born with, discrimination is a learned behavior. It is best to remember to follow the golden rule, treat others the way you would like to be treated and do what is objectively right.