Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson has created an ethics panel, led by renowned ethicist Art Caplan. >>>
Company Creates Bioethics Panel on Trial Drugs
Johnson & Johnson has appointed a nationally known bioethicist to create a panel that will make decisions about patients’ requests for lifesaving medicine, responding to an emotional debate over whether companies should allow desperately ill people to have access to the drugs before they are approved…
…the bioethicist, Arthur L. Caplan of New York University, who has written extensively about the issue of experimental drug availability — known as “compassionate use” — would oversee an independent panel of doctors, ethicists and patient advocates …
Interestingly, Caplan isn’t being paid for the work he’s doing. Questions for the business ethics student:
1) Why would he do, if they’re not even paying him? (Don’t people like to get paid for their work?)
2) Why might Caplan insist on not being paid, even if J&J offered to pay him?
3) Isn’t ethics “everyone’s” job at a company like J&J? Ethics experts like Caplan don’t (or shouldn’t) claim always to know what’s right. So what value do you think someone like Caplan might bring to the table?
Brought to you by:
Business Ethics Highlights 
Recent Comments