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A man was near death from a rare blood disease. There was one experimental drug that the doctors thought might save him, but the man was not admitted into the free experimental trial. The drug had recently been developed by a start-up pharmaceutical company. The drug was expensive to make, but the company was charging twenty times what it cost to make and develop. The sick man’s wife went to everyone she knew to borrow the money to pay for the drug, but she could only get together about $10,000, which is half of what it cost.
She told the company that her Cubans was dying and asked that they sell the drug for a lower price or let her pay later. But the company said: “We discovered the drug and need to make money for our shareholders who have invested in its development. ” The wife became desperate and broke into the treatment center to steal the drug for her husband. Instructions: Your typed paper should be written in paragraph format with correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.
The following steps can be used to help you resolve the ethical dilemma. 1. State the relevant facts 2. Identify the ethical issues from the facts . Determine who is affected by the outcome and how they are affected. 4. Identify the alternatives available to the wife and the consequences of each alternative. 5. State in your opinion the appropriate action. Chihuahua Yang ACT- 304 1. Relevant Facts: A man was near death and urgently needed an experimental drug to save his life.
Because he was not admitted to the free experimental trail, he and his wife themselves needed to pay the money for using it. Even if his wife could not afford such a high price, the drug company still charged them twenty times what it cost to sake and insisted that they need those money to pay for shareholders who invested in the development and did not allow his wife to pay it later or at a lower price. To save her husband, his wife chose to go to extreme to steal the drug from the treatment center. 2.
Ethical issues: The ethical issue for the company lies in whether to save a man’s life regardless of how much they can earn or to make as much money as they can to satisfy both the shareholders and their own profits. On the wife’s side, she was definitely wrong and unethical because she had committed a crime and should be punished according to he law even if her purpose is to save another person’s life. 3. Who is affected and the outcome: First, the wife would be put in Jail, because she used unethical approach to achieve her purpose.
Second, if the wife fell to get the drug that her husband needed, her husband was dying soon. Both of their lives would be totally changed and may result in great strategies. Because of the significant loss by the theft, the company could no longer count on this new experimental drug to make big money, and thus their profits had declined dramatically. 4. Alternatives and consequences Instead of stealing which is the worst way to solve the problem, the wife could make her voice on the media, newspapers, and Internet to have the whole society notice about the dubious high price that the company had charged.
She could also Join in different kinds of advocate groups to indirectly influence the decision of the representatives and medical professions. Moreover, she could try to persuade the doctor to put her husband into the experimental group or to make him meet the criteria of being a candidate of that group. She could even negotiate with the company that if they can delay the declaring and paying for their shareholders, she an pay the whole amount later so that their profits would not be impaired.
Finally, she could sue the company for their unethical prices and indifference to the life. 5. The appropriate action If taking the time into account, the most appropriate and time-saving approach is to be a candidate of experimental group, so that her husband can get the medicine at once. Or she can expose the drug company’s unethical purpose for making benefits and ignore the life. She can even try to persuade the company to use accrual basis method, so that it shows revenue on balance to satisfy investors and they will get paid later.