Problem
In recent years, several medical manufacturers have been in the news, accused of setting high prices for important medications including insulin, epi-pens or certain cancer drugs. These stories can easily mirror Lawrence Kohlberg's original moral question as stated below:
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963)
Now comment on this real life situation: Martin Shkreli was CEO of a company that manufactured Daraprim, a lifesaving drug, for a cost of $13.50 per pill. Mr. Shkreli and his board set the cost per pill to be $750. Did Mr. Shkreli morally wrong (immoral) to set the price so high? What level of moral thinking are you using to justify your answer? Does it change your mind to know that the drug was necessary and the only drug that, in some cases, could save the life of pregnant mothers, AIDS patients and cancer patients? Does your opinion change to know that the federal government prosecuted Mr. Shkreli, found him guilty of larceny, fined him $64 million dollars and sentenced him to seven years in prison?
What other moral dilemmas have you seen in the news? What stage of Kohlberg's moral theory (preconventional, conventional or post conventional) could you use to explain whether these situations are "right' or "wrong".
Remember in this discussion to be respectful of the views of others and to use this as a thought experiment to think about moral thinking versus argues a political point or a particular opinion.