Legal Environment 5th Edition by Jeffrey Beatty,Susan Samuelson

Exercise 8

Justify your answers to Questions 1 and 2 using the ideas presented in this section. Utilitarians might respond to this scenario by saying, "A profitable drug company will stay in business longer, develop more useful medications, and benefit more people in the long run. Alpha is under no ethical obligation to make either policy change." A Kantian thinker might argue, "Alpha has a duty to help people when it is able to do so. It should reduce the price to all patients and provide free drugs to those who need it." And John Rawls might say, "Remember that you could have been born an HIV-positive child. But, also, it is important that pharmaceutical companies have an incentive to produce life-saving drugs."