Posted by daniel
on March 11, 2009, 2:13 am, in reply to "Re: Business ethics with doctors "
66.27.124.84
Professor Comisso, I just read the article in the New York Times regarding Harvard Medical and drug companies. I also happened to have read earlier another article in the times by Stanley Fish in which he talks about schools and neoliberalism--where free markets are seen as a good way to push progress forward. In his article he mentions something about schools and how schools that need funding accept funds from businesses and companies because it is sometimes necessary. say a public school, like UCSD, receives less money from the state because of a budget cut. the school still needs to render the same services it has always rendered, and if the demand for higher education rises, the cost of operating the school rises. the gap, as Fish puts it, has to be filled up somehow.
however, i think that ethical values can be forgotten when influenced by money. there is a certain obligation people feel after accepting a gift, whether intentional or not. there are both benefits and harms to accepting funds from companies. It benefits schools to accept funding in that the funds can open doors to discover new medicines, open new labs etc, but this is a double edged sword in that companies might want something in return, after all like they say, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
i'm not really in any position to say whether these practices should continue or not, but i feel like it is morally wrong to accept gifts from companies. because it can influence something that is supposed to be unbiased, like science. students learning medicine and science should learn what is fact, not something that is sponsored by the local pharmaceutical company.
in case you're interested in reading Fish's article, here is the link:
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/?scp=1-spot&sq=stanley%20fish&st=cse
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