Drug Advertising
Ethics in Drug Advertising
The marketing through direct-to-consumer drug advertising is a controversial topic. The basis of the ethical reasoning related to this manner is what role the patient should have in their treatments. If patients have the ability to diagnose their own afflictions then such advertisements might offer practical insights to the range of treatments that are available to the patient. However, most individuals would be much better off following the advice of a medical professional than to be convinced by a promotional message that they might be suited for some form of pharmaceutical treatment. Yet drug advertising clearly works as the numbers of patients and prescription drug users dramatically increase with each marketing campaign. This analysis will consider the ethics involved with direct-to-consumer marketing from a few different angles.
Discussion
Most of the discussion about ethics and the social responsibility of marketers has been descriptive and focus on the way marketers behave or fail to behave (Robin & Reidenbach, 1987). There is a significant amount of space in which different opinions about the . Others feel like the information provided should be factual in nature and not make an emotional appeal to attempt to sway consumers to purchase their goods if they are not a potential beneficiary of the type of drug being marketed. Other feel that there should be no drug marketing whatsoever and the patients should work with their doctors to determine to appropriate treatment for their affliction and thus no direct marketing is necessary.
The deontological approach considers decisions based mainly on the duties of an individual and the rights of the other; this means that an individual's behavior or decisions can be considered wrong even if an acceptable outcome happens to manifest (Wodak, 2007). This approach considers intentions more important than whatever the outcome may be. Therefore if a marketer is set out to sell as many pharmaceuticals as possible, to even those who might not need to take them, then this is obviously problematic from the deontological approach. Although from the business side, the intention is to maximize sales and revenues and there is a responsibility to the company's investors and stakeholders to do so, there is a line crossed with direct…
However, there are often no rules, or weak ones, and that can create an ethical dilemma on the part of marketers. They must decide for themselves what lines they want to cross, and set their own codes of ethics. Where rules only provide guidelines, these can be open to interpretation. As we have seen with the area of marketing to children, however, the marketing industry has kept ahead of the
" Another member of these matchmaking sites argued that it is illogical for any of these companies to spend several hour of their employee's time to lure someone into paying $30 membership fee [Santo, 2005]. It is indeed a sorry state of affair because false advertising does more than just rob people of their money; it also gives unfair advantage over competitors and simply betrays the trust of millions of people
The concentration on action and violence draws larger audiences, yet is not effective in selling products Pechmann, Levine, Loughlin, Leslie, 2005). Researchers have also found that the brains of pre-adolescents and adolescents have low levels of inhibitory control and therefore pursue reckless and risky activities due to their judgment not being fully developed (Cauffman, Steinberg, 2000). Adolescents who have seen reckless and risky behavior online or on television advertising are
Ethical Dilemma The first question that we are to consider asks us to address many of the actual issues that come up in the course of medical decisions, and not simply in terms of cancer treatment. It is often the case that parents and children will not agree over a proposed treatment for the child; the ethical conflicts that can follow such a disagreement can be extremely traumatic. This is especially
Patients have a right to know if their doctor's decision to prescribe a certain medication has been influenced by free lunches or other perks, rather than that doctor's objective overview of prescribing information. In fact, the real ethical issue presented in the underlying case is not that the doctors are accepting gifts from the pharmaceutical companies. Drug companies did decide to some degree of self-limit in their gifts to physicians.
Ethical Analysis of Merck and Vioxx How could Merck management have handled the research, development and marketing of Vioxx in a more ethically responsible fashion, if at all? On September 30, 2004, Merck & Company declared the drawback associated with Vioxx, its extremely profitable pain reducer for osteoarthritis victims, from the marketplace. This particular move came only 7 days after scientists within the company discovered in a medical trial that subjects who
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