Merck & co ethics

This disease mostly affects individuals that live in third world countries and before the infected individual becomes permanently blind, they suffer from terrible itching that is so bad that it has even caused blindness in some people. Merck Research labs is a medical research organization whose mantra has been alleviating human disease and suffering the world over. The founder of the company has always believed that the company's primary goal was to make medicine for the people and never for the profits. However, researching new drugs was a laborious endeavor that that involved spending millions of dollars in research on leads that a majority would end up in failure. The discovery and development of Ivermectin was very expensive and could now be used as an anti-parasitic for animals (Bollier & Weiss, 1991).

This therefore means that among a variety of solutions for an ethical dilemma, the one which results in the most happiness for the most amount of people is the most ethical. Consequences in this school of thought can be defined as the action itself as well as all the outcomes that result from that action. In the case of the moral dilemma faced by Dr. Roy Vagelos, consequentialism/ utilitarianism dictates that the moral decision to be made is one that causes the most happiness of the most number of people. While it might seem easiest to assume that the ethical decision for the company to make is to manufacture the drug for human consumption and find a way of distributing it to populations in third world countries.

Reasonable Consequentialism is the ethical ideology that for an action to be ethical, one must come to a reasonable conclusion about the consequences beforehand. This means that as long as one does a reasonable job of making an estimate, the action would be considered to be ethical, regardless of whether the actual consequences of the action are reasonable. Dual Consequentialism Dual Consequentialism: this is the idea that the word right in an ethical sense is rather ambiguous. This is because it has two components; morality and objectivity. An action can be objectively right if it has the best consequences. Taking this into consideration emphasizes the importance of using consequentialism and or utilitarianism to decide moral predicaments. Another reason why Merck should use consequentialism to make the decision is that it can be applied ubiquitously.

All decisions are measurable and can have numerical values assigned to them. For example, making the decision to manufacture the drugs for infected individuals could be quantified in terms of the people that have been cured. Alternatively, if the company decided not to manufacture the drug, the consequences can be quantified in terms of profits made. • investing into additional research for the product was a gamble and there were no guarantees that the investment would pay off. • Any negative consequences associated with resulting human trials would taint the company's image as well as affect sales for the drug. Choice Two Choice two would be not investing in the drug at all. In this case the company would play it safe, avoid the risk of investing millions in a drug that had slim chances of economic viability.