Moral Reasoning Exercise
Length: 700-800 words
Make sure you answer every part of each question. Remember to provide sufficient detail in Section C to give a clear indication of your overall position with regard to the cases and the principles you endorse. This is a short answer assignment. You do not need to answer the questions in the form of an essay. Please include a bibliography with the main sources from the question and any additional sources you reference directly. Include citations in the body of the assignment where appropriate.
Answer ALL the questions from sections A, B and C (questions 1-6)
Section A
Read the following news items and answer the questions:
“GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3bn in US drug fraud scandal”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/business/glaxosmithkline-agrees-to-pay-3-
billion-in-fraud-settlement.html?_r=0
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18673220
1. What are the main ethical issues raised by GlaxoSmithKline’s decision to promote and market drugs for unapproved uses? Do you think that such practices are morally permissible or unethical? Provide detailed reasons to support your conclusions.
2. Do you think it was morally acceptable for GlaxoSmithKline not to release relevant research data and to make unsupported safety claims for one of its diabetes drugs?
Is there a moral difference between merely failing to provide relevant information and actively making false claims about the safety of a drug? Give reasons for your answer.
3. GSK’s activities were found to be illegal. Would it make a difference to your assessment of the case if such activities were not against the law? Why/Why not?
Section B
Watch or read the transcript of the following program and answer the questions:
Globesity: Fat’s New Frontier.
https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2012/s3547707.htm
Additional information about Mexico and obesity:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/mexico-obesity-taxes-junk-foodsugary-
drinks-exercise
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-sugar-tax-mexico
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/03/coca-cola-drops-controversialchristmas-
video-set-in-indigenous-mexico
4. Do large food and beverage companies have any moral obligations or responsibility to consider the consequences for public health of marketing and distributing certain kinds of food and drink products? Why/Why not? Answer this question using examples from the documentary to support your conclusions.
5. The program describes a range of marketing techniques used by food and beverage companies in different countries: the marketing of soft drinks to schools in Mexico; the door to door selling of snack foods fortified with micronutrients and marketed to low income families in Brazil; a snack food boat that visits small villages along the
Amazon to promote and sell food and drinks. Do you find any of these marketing techniques morally problematic? Explain in each case, why or why not.
Section C
6. Compare your responses to the two cases. Do you apply the same principles and standards of conduct to pharmaceutical companies as you do to food and beverage companies? Explain why or why not making sure you identify the morally relevant differences or similarities between the two cases to support your conclusions?
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