IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buetqu/v15y2005i04p549-575_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Drugs: An Ethical Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • De George, Richard T.

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry has in recent years come under attack from an ethical point of view concerning its patents and the non-accessibility of life-saving drugs for many of the poor both in less developed countries and in the United States. The industry has replied with economic and legal justifications for its actions. The result has been a communication gap between the industry on the one hand and poor nations and American critics on the other. This paper attempts to present and evaluate the arguments on all sides and suggests a possible way out of the current impasse. It attempts to determine the ethical responsibility of the drug industry in making drugs available to the needy, while at the same time developing the parallel responsibilities of individuals, governments, and NGOs. It concludes with the suggestion that the industry develop an international code for its self-regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • De George, Richard T., 2005. "Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Drugs: An Ethical Analysis," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(4), pages 549-575, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:15:y:2005:i:04:p:549-575_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1052150X00007843/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Salla Laasonen & Martin Fougère & Arno Kourula, 2012. "Dominant Articulations in Academic Business and Society Discourse on NGO–Business Relations: A Critical Assessment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(4), pages 521-545, September.
    2. Eng Cheah & Wen Chan & Corinne Chieng, 2007. "The Corporate Social Responsibility of Pharmaceutical Product Recalls: An Empirical Examination of U.S. and U.K. Markets," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 427-449, December.
    3. Claus Frederiksen, 2010. "The Relation Between Policies Concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Philosophical Moral Theories – An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 357-371, May.
    4. James Huebner, 2014. "Moral Psychology and the Intuition that Pharmaceutical Companies Have a ‘Special’ Obligation to Society," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 501-510, July.
    5. Margaret Oppenheimer & Helen LaVan & William Martin, 2015. "A Framework for Understanding Ethical and Efficiency Issues in Pharmaceutical Intellectual Property Litigation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 505-524, December.
    6. Michael Buckley, 2013. "A Constructivist Approach to Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(4), pages 695-706, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:15:y:2005:i:04:p:549-575_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/beq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.