BUSINESS ETHICS

Star Alpha Medicines Case Study

Business Ethics and Society

Star Alpha Medicines Case Study

Introduction

In today's world exploiting the use of drugs made by pharmacist and then selling them off to consumers under “Off-label” conditions has been one of the common issues being carried by pharmacist industries.

In SAM's (Star Alpha Medicines) case study, who tend to be one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world has been promoting the use of drugs to treat patients facing dysfunctional sex, depression in children and obesity. These drugs are being prescribed to consumers without any legal approval or instruction labeling of British Pharmacopoeia (BP) for its use, which also means that the drug won't have any specific details regarding the use and dosage of the prescribed medicine (Dresser, 2009, pp. 481).

Identification of the Case

Indeed the operations carried by the company mentioned above in the case are unethical and could lead to consequences that may have effect on the company's reputation and also from societal point of view, if a patient using the drug suffers from any unwanted disease or side effects may increase the chances of lawsuits against the company.

According to theory discussed in “Ethics in Pharmaceutical issues” (Noordin, 2012, pp. 84), pharmacist are responsible for giving relevant information for dosages and proper use of the medications prescribed which should ensure efficacy and dispensation of the desired product along with manufacturing details and standard quality. Pharmacy business is not just about distribution and dispensing of drugs just for the sake of achieving higher sales or experimenting medication practices to observe results, it involves ethical and moral principles to be followed. The business has major political and societal influences which under goes certain legislative tools to carry its operations, these governmental rules and changes vary from country to country which should be adopted to refrain from any unethical involvement.

A case that would enlighten the theory discussed above would be “The case of Fen-Phen”, a pharmacist company in 1997 was sued for multi-billion dollar for prescribing “Off-label” medicines to patients which resulted in devastating outcome, some patients heart valve was severely damaged using phentermine hydrocholoride and fenfluramine hydrochloride drugs that were meant to treat short-term obesity problems. These medicines were marketed without FDA's (Food and Drugs Administration) approval for remarkable weight-loss effects in various publications (Chen, 2009, pp. 1097).

Discussion

The theory defines the legislative procedures in detail for the use of drugs and medicines, company selling off label medicines may be heavily charged against their unethical activities or their reputation would take effect in the long-run. There are 3 basic issues discussed in business ethics that cover variety of topics (Potter, 1972, pp. 100) :

Systematic Issues: Relates to social, legal and economic issues.

Corporate Issues: Deals with practices, morality of activities, and social practices.

Individual Issues: Includes morality of decisions, actions or character of individual.

For this case, SAM is experiencing all these problems at different levels. Systematic issues are causing a breach of legislation of pharmacy. At the corporate level, marketing the off-label drugs are being approved from inside the ...