Unethical Drug Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry Research Paper

Unethical Drug Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - Research Paper Example ned the motives of Big Pharma as they market drugs without adequate regard to the effects that such marketing practices have on the patients and consumers. In their pathological pursuit of profits, drug companies have indeed thrown caution to the winds and have sacrificed ethics at the altar of profits. This paper examines the unethical drug marketing strategies used by Big Pharma by analyzing them from the perspective of utilitarianism and deontology. The emphasis in this paper is on finding out if the drug marketing strategies are justified according to the philosophical theories discussed and whether they satisfy the minimum requirements for ethical behavior. Note that there is no special emphasis on whether these strategies are completely overboard. Instead, the analysis is around whether they meet the basic criterion for ethical behavior and good conduct. The five tactics used by drug companies to market their products can be categorized according to the potential for harm that they cause to patients. This categorization would yield that the following is the order (from the least harmful to the most harmful): physicians targeted promotion, DTCDA, unethical recruitment of physicians, researchers’ conflicts of interests, and data manipulation in clinical trials (Chiu, 2005). Considering the fact that the intended beneficiaries of these strategies who are the patients stand to suffer the most because of these tactics, it is worth asking whether the drug companies have the interests of the shareholders alone in mind when they resort to these practices. The fact that they favor the interests of the few (shareholders) at the expense of the many (the patients) clearly indicates that their marketing strategies are not conscionable from either a utilitarian or deontological point of view. This would be discussed in detail in the succee ding paragraphs. Suffice to say that drug companies are indeed crossing the line as far as ethics and unethical behavior is concerned