Synthesis on the Ethical View of Peter Singer Towards Ben Goldacre

Peter Singer and Ben Goldacre

The Ethical View of Peter Singer Toward Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre's book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (2013) is an important testament to the concerns of modern day medicine. There are several problems discussed in the book, one of which is the sponsorship of trials into new medicines. To that end, Goldacre writes that these medications are not tested by independent groups or scientists, but rather by the people and companies from which they are manufactured (xi). This is a serious issue from an ethical standpoint, of course, which is something noted by Peter Singer in his work Practical Ethics (2011).

While Singer does not specifically address Goldacre or big pharma, he does address many of the issues that Goldacre also focuses on. For example, how Goldacre would be against drug companies because of the way those companies avoid what is truly ethical and end up only doing what is best for themselves. While the idea that these companies would look out for themselves would make sense, companies have an ethical responsibility to look out for the people who are receiving the products they are creating (Singer, 12). However, the trials for the medications Goldacre references are designed poorly, and the patients that are used are not actually representative of the body of patients one would expect to see if the drugs were in wide usage for a specific medical condition (Goldacre, xi).

In his writings, Goldacre went so far as to say these tests were completed on "small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients" (xi). The patients are not the only issues, however. There are other concerns that have to be addressed with these particular drug trials, and one of the most significant ones is the technique by which the information from the trials is analyzed. Singer would also not see these techniques as ethical, because they are used only to benefit the drug companies and not the patients. In addition, the way the drug trials are handled could be considered to be deliberately misleading, which is the complete opposite of what companies should be offering to their customers.

Singer knows that companies should be focused on their customers, and not just as a source of income (15). Instead, these companies should be considering what their patients need and what will actually help those patients, as well as the doctors who treat them. Instead, the techniques that are used to process and analyze the information from drug trials are flawed by their very design, and greatly exaggerate the treatment benefits that are received from any of the medications in the trial (Goldacre, xi). It is not surprising, therefore, that every one of the trials provided to doctors by these companies produce results that are in favor of the manufacturers of the drugs. That is not to say that all the trials show positive results, however. There are plenty of trials conducted by drug companies that provide negative or even unpleasant results (Goldacre, xi).

The journals and academic papers that are alleged to be objective are problematic, though, because they are often written by people who work for the drug companies, and that is not disclosed (Goldacre, xi). There are only positive results listed, instead of an honest mix of what is really found to be the case with the drugs. This is not entirely surprising, especially when looked at based on the work of Singer. The preference-utilitarian ethical principles used within it help address the concerns that Goldacre discussed in his writings. In short, Singer argues that people focus on the things that matter to them, and their actions are focused on things that promote their own interests (13).

This is clearly the case with the drug manufacturers, because they work to promote their interests to doctors and patients, without really taking into account what the patients and doctors will get from the exchange. Even if doctors or patients are harmed by what the drug companies do, the main issue is about the companies themselves and if they are getting what they want out of the exchange (Singer, 14). They should, in theory, be focused on how to help the patients become healthier and how to help the doctor provide the best quality of care to his or her patients. Instead, they are looking out for their own interests in that they suppress information that does not bode well for them and exaggerate information that makes them look good to the doctors and patients.