What are some of the ethical issues involving pharmaceuticals?
Many issues. The biggest issue, to me, is the kinds of drugs that get researched. It takes at least $1 BILLION to research a new pharmaceutical compound. If you are a pharmaceutical company, and you have no motivations other than money (i.e., no government incentives to research the most needed drugs) you are going to research whatever will make you the most money. You will want to research drugs that lots of people take for a very long time (antidepressants, hair loss medicine, blood pressure medicine, etc). You won’t want to research drugs that a few people will take for a short time – new antibiotics for people with multiple drug resistant infections. Another issue is experimental drugs. A lot of sources, including our current administration, are encouraging cancer patients to consider new, experimental drugs as a first choice for treatment. This is very wrong. If you have cancer, you should try proven treatments first; then, if they fail, you could try experimental drugs which may
