The Merck & Company, Inc is an established company that specializes in manufacture of drugs for humans, animals and the environmental health products. They divisions have specialized tasks such as research division, Animal drugs division, human drugs division and so on. Since the establishment of the Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, the division of Merck that specializes with research activities, the rule has been that approval for the development of a product for market purposes is decided by the head of the research division. This meant that scientists were funded by Merck to conduct preliminary and extensive research to develop products but the approval involved a certain process. This was as a result of the costs and time viability of researching a breakthrough which was deemed a long process that could not be handled financially or decision wise by a large team of researchers.
In 1978, Vagelos was the head of research at Merck. During this time, Vagelos had to make several decisions regarding research of new products since new products meant the future success of the company. Vagelos was entitled to make decisions on the progression and funding of the program depending on its beneficial perspective without overlooking the need for health of human population. Programs that were considered to be of little financial benefits tended to be overlooked by most research and drug manufacturing companies especially on rare diseases and diseases that affected people in poor countries or regions. This necessitated the US Congress to pass a legislation that would encourage research for rare diseases or those that affected people in poor regions. The legislation offered tax exemptions among other incentives. Vagelos was therefore tasked with making the decision on whether funding or not funding the research and development of a drug to cure river blindness was not only viable financially but ethically in order.
Thesis: Medical research managers are motivated more by financial benefits of a program as opposed to concern for human health.
In the modern business environment, success is not a compromise. It must be achieved whatsoever the surrounding conditions. Medical research involves a lot of capital investment and time to develop a new product. Research managers therefore have a hard task of ensuring that the costs incurred in such research must been justifiable once a new product is launched into the market. The managers must therefore put into consideration the potential of the market in which the product will meet once completed. This has turned out to be the biggest incentive to entice researchers into engaging in successful research. This paper will focus on depicting that: Medical research managers are motivated more by financial benefits of a program as opposed to concern for human health. It will argue that medical practitioners are wrong in taking such an approach. In fact Immanuel Kant (1798) deontology insists on “acting in accordance with and for the sake of duty.” He believed that “inclinations, emotions and consequences should play no role in moral action”
Organizational ethics call for the need to respond to an aspect that has potential benefits to the organization business wise. Business ethics is not just the ability to distinguish what is good or bad in a business situation. In medical research, business ethics focuses on the health benefits of research to the larger human population as opposed to the financial benefits due to the organization. The medical practitioners are tasked with the responsibility of ensuring a health society including conducting researches that ensure continued health now and in the future. It is assumed that researchers in this field should consider financial benefits due from a research as the last thing in their minds.
As John Stuart Mill (1890) suggests, ‘an ethical action is one that provides the greatest good for the greatest number’. This shows how wrong it is for medical; researchers to put financial benefits due to the organization and themselves alone over the health of individuals whom they are supposed to serve. In the modern business world, it emerges therefore that individuals are led more by self interests and personal desires or those of the organizations they are involved in with little concern about the society. The pressure under which managers are placed in order to deliver forces them to make decisions that have more focus on profit maximization at the society’s wellness expense.
It is therefore the responsibility of the leaders and managers to not only seek personal wealth but also society good. In fact Plato warns such a mindset would be the cause of ‘social and personal disintegration, injustice and tyranny.’ Therefore the organizational values are set and implemented from the top. It is the top leadership that should show the direction towards which organization is headed. Leaders should thus be aware that societal good should not be overridden by personal benefits. They should ensure that such is the culture enshrined within those they supervise. This will instill in them the culture of business ethics which will run from the individual perspective to an organizational approach as Kant observes.
Marx’s suggestion that business and ethics cannot exist on a similar platform are quite out of order as Marx himself in his works Capital realized that ethics and business can interact harmoniously and used this notion to help overthrow capitalism. This embraced socialism which meant that the common good of the society should always override personal benefits or gains.
Organizational values are not static in nature and they should define the organization and its workers. Reflecting on the case of river blindness in the article Merck & Company, Inc.: Having the Vision to Succeed by Stephanie Weiss and David Bollier, it would be in bad light if Vagelos would decide against, Dr. William Campbell's research findings on financial background. The consequences would be dire. Dr Campbell and others who were aware of the impending revolution would blame Vagelos and once this spill to the public, the blame would be directed to Merck as a whole. The image of the company would be ruined for good once people realize that the company sacrificed societal well being for monetary value. Adopting John Locke’s view in which he embraces ‘free markets’ is in some way against the ethics of health care practitioners. Locke suggested that once individuals create a business entity they have every right to do as they would wish with the same as long as it does not contravene any ones rights. But the assumption that the rights of a particular individual go beyond those of the society creates a society where no particular individual cares for one another. (Matthew H. Kramer 1997) This would create a very dangerous and disintegrated community, a situation attested by Plato in his works.
Would the researchers survive in a disintegrated society? Would their businesses survive in such a society? Would they derive happiness for causing this disintegration? These considerations absolutely mean that researchers need to focus on the good of the community beyond monetary rewards in their works. It is only a stable society that can offer them a chance to achieve financial success. Their biggest responsibility is thus the well being of the societal. The benefits will be reflected in their finances in the long run. This is what the organizational values must embrace.
In the event that Merck declined to continue with the research on river blindness as a result of the poor financial returns then the company would be contravening its own mission “To discover, develop and provide innovative products and services that save and improve lives around the world.” Merck would be placing itself in a position where it can be claimed to be contributing indirectly to the destruction of the same lives it purports to save and improve. Being a player in the field and with the capacity to contribute to the well being of the community and ignoring the same fact is an indirect way of destroying the lives. Even without a direct or short term solution, Merck should instead involve itself in providing hope to the people whose predicaments have a clear attachment to the services the company offers.
