Attempt All the case
Case - 1
GlaxoSmitbKine, Bristol – Myers Squibb, and AIDS in Africa 1
In 2004, the United Nations estimated that the previous year 5 million more people around the world had contracted the AIDS virus, 3 million had died, and a total of 40 million people were living with the infection. Seventy percent, or about 28 million of these, lived in sub – Saharan Africa, where the epidemic was at its worst. Sub – Saharan Africa consists of the 48 countries and 643 million people who reside south of the Saharan desert. In 16 of these countries, 10 percent are infected with the virus, in 6 other nation, 20 percent are infected. The UN predicted that in these 6 nations two – thirds of all 15 – year olds would eventually die of AIDS and in those where 10 percent were infected, half of all 15 – year – olds would die of AIDS.
For the entire sub –Saharan region, the average level of infection among adults was 8.8 percent of Botswana’s population was infected, 34 percent of Zimbabwe’s, 31 percent of Lesotho’s, and 33 percent of Swaziland’s. Family life had been destroyed by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of married couples, who left more than 11 million orphans to fend for themselves. Gangs and rebel armies forced thousands of orphans to join them. While crime and violence were rising, agriculture was in decline as orphaned farm children tried desperately to remember had to manage on their own. Labor productivity had been cut by 50 percent in the hardest – hit nations, school and hospital systems were decimated, and entire national economies were on the verge of collapse.
With its huge burden of AIDS illnesses, African nation desperately needed medicines, both antibiotics to treat the many opportunistic diseases that strike …….
nounced in 2003 that it would try to collect from governments the funds needed to bring antiretrovirals to at least 3 million people by the end of 2005.
Questions
1. Explain, in light of their theories, what Locke, Smith, Ricardo, and Marx would probably say about the events in this case.
2. Explain which view of property-Locke’s or Marx’s- lies behind the positions of the drug companies GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb and of the Indian companies such as Cipla. Which of the two group-GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb on the one hand, and the Indian companies on the other –do you think holds the correct view of property in this case? Explain your answer.
3. Evaluate the position of Cipla and of GlaxoSmithKline in terms of utilitarianism, right, justice, and caring. Which of these two positions do you think is correct from an ethical point of view?
Case - 2
Playing Monopoly: Microsoft
On November 5, 1999, then the richest man in the world, learned that a federal judge, Thomas Jackson, had just issued “findings of fact” declaring that his company, Microsoft, “enjoys monopoly power” and that it had used its monopoly power to “harm consumers” and crush competitors to maintain its Windows monopoly and to establish a new monopoly in Web browsers by bundling its Internet Explorer with Windows. On the day the judgment was issued, Microsoft stock began its decline. The decline was hastened by an announcement in February 2000 that the European Commission, which enforces European Union lows on competition and monopolization, had been investigating Microsoft’ …….
Meanwhile, some government had stopped purchasing Windows and had instead adopted Linux, a free “open source” operating system. Among these were Italy, Germany, Great Britain, France, India, South Korea, China, Brazil and South Africa. Several Companies, including Amazon.com, FedEx, and Google, had moved to Linux. A study by Forrester Research found that 72 percent of companies it surveyed were increasing their use of Linux, and over half of them were planning to replace Windows with Linux.
Questions
1. Identify the behaviors that you think are ethically questionable in the history of Microsoft. Evaluate the ethics of these behaviors.
2. What characteristics of the market for operating systems do you think created the monopoly market that Microsoft’s operating system enjoyed? Evaluate this market in terms of utilitarianism, rights, and justice (your analysis should make use of the textbook’s discussion of the effects of monopoly markets on the utility of participants in the market, on the moral rights of participants in the market, and on the distribution of benefits and burdens among participants in the market), giving explicit examples from the operating systems industry to illustrate your points.
3. In your view, should the government have sued Microsoft for violation of the antitrust laws? In your view, was Judge Jackson’s order that Microsoft be broken into two companies fair to Microsoft? Was Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s November 1, 2004 decision fair? Was the April 2004 decision of the European Commission fair to Microsoft? Explain your answers.
4. Who, if anyone, is harmed by the kind of market that Microsoft’s operating system has enjoyed? Explain your answer. What kind of public policies, if any, should we have to deal with industries like the operating system industry?
Case - 3
Gas or Grouse?
The Pinedale Mesa (sometime called the Pinedale Anticline) is a 40-mile-long mesa extending north and south along the eastern side of Wyoming’s Green River Basin, an area that is famous as the gateway to the hunting, fishing, and hiking treasures of the Bridger-Teton wilderness. The city of Pinedale sits below the mesa, a short distance from its northern end, surrounded by hundreds of recently drilled wells ceaselessly pumping natural gas from the vast pockets that are buried underneath the long mesa. Questar Corporation, an energy company with assets valued at about $4 billion, is the main developer of the gas wells around the city and up on the mesa overlooking the city. Occasionally elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and other wildlife, including the imperiled greater sage grouse, descend from their habitats atop the mesa and gingerly make their way around and between the Questar wells around Pinedale. Not surprisingly, environmentalists are at war with …..
In a preliminary report on the study, the Bureau of Land Management said there was “no conclusive data to indicate quantifiable, adverse effects to deer” from the drilling. The Upper Green River Vslley Coslition, however, sued the bureau for failing to adhere to its own rules when it allowed Questar and other companies to drill on mule deer range on the mesa during winter and for failing to conduct an analysis of the potential impact before granting the permits, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. As of this writing, the suit has not been resolved.
Question
1. What are the systemic, corporate, and individual issues raised in this case?
2. How should wildlife species like grouse or deer be valued, and how should that value be balanced against
the economic interests of the of company like Questar?
3. In light of the U.S. economy’s dependence on oil, and in light of the environmental impact of Questar drilling operation, is Questar morally obligated to cease its drilling operation on the Pinedale Mesa? Explain
4. What, if anything, should Questar be doing differently?
5. In your view, have the environmental interest groups identified in the case behaved ethically? `
Case - 4
Becton Dickinson and Needle Sticks
During the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic posed peculiarly acute dilemmas for health workers. After routinely removing an intravenous system, drawing blood, or delivering an injection to an AIDS patient, nurses could easily stick themselves with the needle they were using. “Rarely a day goes by in any large hospital where a needle stick incident is not reported. “ In fact, needlestick injuries accounted for about 80 percent of reported occupational exposure to the AIDS virus among health care workers.2 It was conservatively estimated in 1991 that about 64 health care workers were infected with the AIDS virus each year as a result of needlestick injuries.3
AIDS was not the only risk posed by needlestick injuries. ……
Continuing to find itself locked out of the market by Becton Dickinson’s contracts with Premier and Novation, Retractable sued Premier, Novation and Becton Dickinson in federal court alleging that they violated antitrust laws and harmed consumers and numerous health care workers by using the GPO system to monopolize the safety needle market.19 In 2003, Premier and Novation settled with Retractable out of court, agreeing to henceforth allow its member hospitals to purchase Retractable’s safety syringes when they wanted. In 2004, Becton Dickinson also settled out of court, agreeing to pay Retractable $ 100 million in compensation for the damage Becton Dickinson inflicted on Retractable. During the 6 years that Becton Dickinson’s contracts prevented Retractable and other manufacturers from selling their safety needles to hospitals and clinics, thousands of health workers continued to be infected by needlesticks each year.
Questions
1. In your judgment, did Becton Dickinson have an obligation to provide the safety syringe in all its sizes in 1991? Explain your position, using the materials from this chapter and the principles of utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring.
2. Should manufacturers be held liable for failing to market all the products for which they hold exclusive patents when someone’s injury would have been avoided if they had marketed those products? Explain your answer.
3. In your judgment, who was morally responsible for Maryann Rockwood’s accidental needlestick: Maryann Rockwood? The clinic that employed her? The government agencies that merely issued guidelines? Becton Dickinson?
4. Evaluate the ethics of Becton Dickinson’s use of the GPO system in the late 1990s. Are the GPO’s monopolies? Are they ethical? Explain.
Case - 1
GlaxoSmitbKine, Bristol – Myers Squibb, and AIDS in Africa 1
In 2004, the United Nations estimated that the previous year 5 million more people around the world had contracted the AIDS virus, 3 million had died, and a total of 40 million people were living with the infection. Seventy percent, or about 28 million of these, lived in sub – Saharan Africa, where the epidemic was at its worst. Sub – Saharan Africa consists of the 48 countries and 643 million people who reside south of the Saharan desert. In 16 of these countries, 10 percent are infected with the virus, in 6 other nation, 20 percent are infected. The UN predicted that in these 6 nations two – thirds of all 15 – year olds would eventually die of AIDS and in those where 10 percent were infected, half of all 15 – year – olds would die of AIDS.
For the entire sub –Saharan region, the average level of infection among adults was 8.8 percent of Botswana’s population was infected, 34 percent of Zimbabwe’s, 31 percent of Lesotho’s, and 33 percent of Swaziland’s. Family life had been destroyed by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of married couples, who left more than 11 million orphans to fend for themselves. Gangs and rebel armies forced thousands of orphans to join them. While crime and violence were rising, agriculture was in decline as orphaned farm children tried desperately to remember had to manage on their own. Labor productivity had been cut by 50 percent in the hardest – hit nations, school and hospital systems were decimated, and entire national economies were on the verge of collapse.
With its huge burden of AIDS illnesses, African nation desperately needed medicines, both antibiotics to treat the many opportunistic diseases that strike …….
nounced in 2003 that it would try to collect from governments the funds needed to bring antiretrovirals to at least 3 million people by the end of 2005.
Questions
1. Explain, in light of their theories, what Locke, Smith, Ricardo, and Marx would probably say about the events in this case.
2. Explain which view of property-Locke’s or Marx’s- lies behind the positions of the drug companies GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb and of the Indian companies such as Cipla. Which of the two group-GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol-Myers Squibb on the one hand, and the Indian companies on the other –do you think holds the correct view of property in this case? Explain your answer.
3. Evaluate the position of Cipla and of GlaxoSmithKline in terms of utilitarianism, right, justice, and caring. Which of these two positions do you think is correct from an ethical point of view?
Case - 2
Playing Monopoly: Microsoft
On November 5, 1999, then the richest man in the world, learned that a federal judge, Thomas Jackson, had just issued “findings of fact” declaring that his company, Microsoft, “enjoys monopoly power” and that it had used its monopoly power to “harm consumers” and crush competitors to maintain its Windows monopoly and to establish a new monopoly in Web browsers by bundling its Internet Explorer with Windows. On the day the judgment was issued, Microsoft stock began its decline. The decline was hastened by an announcement in February 2000 that the European Commission, which enforces European Union lows on competition and monopolization, had been investigating Microsoft’ …….
Meanwhile, some government had stopped purchasing Windows and had instead adopted Linux, a free “open source” operating system. Among these were Italy, Germany, Great Britain, France, India, South Korea, China, Brazil and South Africa. Several Companies, including Amazon.com, FedEx, and Google, had moved to Linux. A study by Forrester Research found that 72 percent of companies it surveyed were increasing their use of Linux, and over half of them were planning to replace Windows with Linux.
Questions
1. Identify the behaviors that you think are ethically questionable in the history of Microsoft. Evaluate the ethics of these behaviors.
2. What characteristics of the market for operating systems do you think created the monopoly market that Microsoft’s operating system enjoyed? Evaluate this market in terms of utilitarianism, rights, and justice (your analysis should make use of the textbook’s discussion of the effects of monopoly markets on the utility of participants in the market, on the moral rights of participants in the market, and on the distribution of benefits and burdens among participants in the market), giving explicit examples from the operating systems industry to illustrate your points.
3. In your view, should the government have sued Microsoft for violation of the antitrust laws? In your view, was Judge Jackson’s order that Microsoft be broken into two companies fair to Microsoft? Was Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s November 1, 2004 decision fair? Was the April 2004 decision of the European Commission fair to Microsoft? Explain your answers.
4. Who, if anyone, is harmed by the kind of market that Microsoft’s operating system has enjoyed? Explain your answer. What kind of public policies, if any, should we have to deal with industries like the operating system industry?
Case - 3
Gas or Grouse?
The Pinedale Mesa (sometime called the Pinedale Anticline) is a 40-mile-long mesa extending north and south along the eastern side of Wyoming’s Green River Basin, an area that is famous as the gateway to the hunting, fishing, and hiking treasures of the Bridger-Teton wilderness. The city of Pinedale sits below the mesa, a short distance from its northern end, surrounded by hundreds of recently drilled wells ceaselessly pumping natural gas from the vast pockets that are buried underneath the long mesa. Questar Corporation, an energy company with assets valued at about $4 billion, is the main developer of the gas wells around the city and up on the mesa overlooking the city. Occasionally elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and other wildlife, including the imperiled greater sage grouse, descend from their habitats atop the mesa and gingerly make their way around and between the Questar wells around Pinedale. Not surprisingly, environmentalists are at war with …..
In a preliminary report on the study, the Bureau of Land Management said there was “no conclusive data to indicate quantifiable, adverse effects to deer” from the drilling. The Upper Green River Vslley Coslition, however, sued the bureau for failing to adhere to its own rules when it allowed Questar and other companies to drill on mule deer range on the mesa during winter and for failing to conduct an analysis of the potential impact before granting the permits, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. As of this writing, the suit has not been resolved.
Question
1. What are the systemic, corporate, and individual issues raised in this case?
2. How should wildlife species like grouse or deer be valued, and how should that value be balanced against
the economic interests of the of company like Questar?
3. In light of the U.S. economy’s dependence on oil, and in light of the environmental impact of Questar drilling operation, is Questar morally obligated to cease its drilling operation on the Pinedale Mesa? Explain
4. What, if anything, should Questar be doing differently?
5. In your view, have the environmental interest groups identified in the case behaved ethically? `
Case - 4
Becton Dickinson and Needle Sticks
During the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic posed peculiarly acute dilemmas for health workers. After routinely removing an intravenous system, drawing blood, or delivering an injection to an AIDS patient, nurses could easily stick themselves with the needle they were using. “Rarely a day goes by in any large hospital where a needle stick incident is not reported. “ In fact, needlestick injuries accounted for about 80 percent of reported occupational exposure to the AIDS virus among health care workers.2 It was conservatively estimated in 1991 that about 64 health care workers were infected with the AIDS virus each year as a result of needlestick injuries.3
AIDS was not the only risk posed by needlestick injuries. ……
Continuing to find itself locked out of the market by Becton Dickinson’s contracts with Premier and Novation, Retractable sued Premier, Novation and Becton Dickinson in federal court alleging that they violated antitrust laws and harmed consumers and numerous health care workers by using the GPO system to monopolize the safety needle market.19 In 2003, Premier and Novation settled with Retractable out of court, agreeing to henceforth allow its member hospitals to purchase Retractable’s safety syringes when they wanted. In 2004, Becton Dickinson also settled out of court, agreeing to pay Retractable $ 100 million in compensation for the damage Becton Dickinson inflicted on Retractable. During the 6 years that Becton Dickinson’s contracts prevented Retractable and other manufacturers from selling their safety needles to hospitals and clinics, thousands of health workers continued to be infected by needlesticks each year.
Questions
1. In your judgment, did Becton Dickinson have an obligation to provide the safety syringe in all its sizes in 1991? Explain your position, using the materials from this chapter and the principles of utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring.
2. Should manufacturers be held liable for failing to market all the products for which they hold exclusive patents when someone’s injury would have been avoided if they had marketed those products? Explain your answer.
3. In your judgment, who was morally responsible for Maryann Rockwood’s accidental needlestick: Maryann Rockwood? The clinic that employed her? The government agencies that merely issued guidelines? Becton Dickinson?
4. Evaluate the ethics of Becton Dickinson’s use of the GPO system in the late 1990s. Are the GPO’s monopolies? Are they ethical? Explain.
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