The Importance of Corporations in the World

THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATIONS IN THE WORLD

DIANELYS BIARRETA

MBA502 ETHICS IN BUSINESS

PROF. LUIS VIDAL

February 02, 2018

Pharmaceutical Industry

Many people of authority see the interaction between the healthcare industry and pharmaceutical companies as either good or evil. Rarely is anything in life is black and white, however, and in this case, the middle ground is being neglected. The debate centers primarily on money. For the consumer side it is a field full of people playing with your money and wellbeing.

Ashley Wazana, MD, of McGill University, published a review of articles dealing with pharmaceutical marketing to physicians. The studies on attitudes used self-reporting surveys and found that residents and physicians similarly believed that pharmaceutical representatives provided accurate information about their drugs, but the medical professionals were wrong in their beliefs that representatives could provide accurate information on established or alternative drugs. Lewis, W. R. (2007, February 02).

Most physicians approached the interaction with healthy skepticism and believed that representatives prioritize product promotion above patient welfare and are likely to use unethical practices. A study that examined costs pointed out that physicians in academic or hospital-based practice settings had significantly lower prescribing costs than physicians in nonacademic and nonhospital practices. In addition, the only study that looked at rational prescribing habits noted that younger physicians were more rational in their habits than older physicians.

What this showed was just how bad the big pharmaceutical companies are trying to bias and corrode the physicians prescribing habits to push higher revenue for them. Big Pharma’s top eleven corporations generated net profits in just one decade from 2003 to 2012 of nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars, but at what cost? Law, J. (2012).

While the pharmaceutical industry is essential to medicine and has produced crucial drugs that have saved countless lives, eight of the 10 biggest international drug companies have recently agreed to pay millions to billions of dollars to settle charges of wrongdoing, and are currently operating under so-called corporate integrity agreements — essentially, promises not to commit the same crimes again. Some have already violated earlier agreements multiple times, however, to the tune of hundreds of millions dollars. But it does not matter this has only made a small dent on what is otherwise the most profitable business in the world. Kevin Outterson, a lawyer at Boston University, says that despite the eye watering size of the fines they amount to a small proportion of the companies' total revenues and may be regarded as a "cost of doing business". @maiasz, M. S. (2012, September 17).

The three billion dollar fine on GSK represents 10.8 per cent of its revenue while the $1.5bn fine imposed on Abbott Laboratories, for promoting a drug (Depakote) with inadequate evidence of its effectiveness, amounted to 12 per cent. Laurance, J. (2012, September 20).

In my opinion the hazards are outweighing the benefits of the pharmaceutical sector. Bad thing is that we cannot do without it; it is the cornerstone of modern medicine, but the solution will have to be at the cost of some lives. Although at this rate it will probably save more lives by closing some of these down than to leave them be.

They are obviously breaking the law repeatedly, but we are so dependent on their drugs that fining them is the only slap on the wrist we can give them and this has no effect on their earnings. And not just that  but they are harming people, UK-based company GlaxoSmith-Kline (GSK) illegally marketed the antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin and withheld data on the health risks of the diabetes medication Avandia at an extremely low cost to them

But wait! There is more! (Cliché I know) Also because natural healing substances cannot be patented, Big Pharma has done its sinister best to squelch any and all knowledge and information that come from the far more affordable means of alternative health sources that explore ancient traditional cultures’ medicinal use of hemp along with thousands of other plants and roots that could threaten drug profits and power of Big Pharma and modern medicine as they’re currently practiced and monopolized.