You are an executive with a large pharmaceutical company and

You are an executive with a large pharmaceutical company and you have to decide

whether to market a product that might have undesirable side effects for a small

percentage of users.

How should you decide whether to sell the product?

How does a theory of ethics apply and how does it affect your answer?

Solution

The executive can decide whether to sell the product using these ways:

The executive can compare that what is the proportion of the users that have undesirable side effects of the product with the proportion of people getting benefitted by it.

Otherwise, he can sell the product to the limited users who do not have any side effect from it. The packaging and advertisement should contain warning about the side effect.

In this case, the executive needs to choose whether he should sell the product to the consumers or not. Although, the product might have undesirable effect on the health of a small percentage of users, however it should not be completely avoided. The company should clearly mention about the side effect of the product on the users.