John Naish
Bitter pills: fraud and bribery
It seems an odd paradox that a sector dedicated to saving lives and improving health seems so habituated to pulling dodgy tricks, but once again the pharmaceutical industry has been caught with its hand deep in the ethical cookie jar.
So serious were the misdemeanours this time that the American drugmaker Pfizer has had to agree to pay $2.3bn (£1.4bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the US Department of Justice.
The company was found to have illegally promoted four drugs as “off label” therapies for conditions where such treatment had not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. A subsidiary of Pfizer pleaded guilty to misbranding drugs “with the intent to defraud or mislead”.
On top of the flagrant misrepresentation, Pfizer was accused of another notorious old drug-company trick: bribery. The civil settlement also relates to allegations that its representatives paid cash and offered lavish hospitality to healthcare providers to encourage them to prescribe four of the company’s drugs. These were Bextra, an anti-inflammatory drug, Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug, Zyvox, an antibiotic and Lyrica, an epilepsy treatment.
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Leo Hornak
Is it too late for thrift?
In this month’s Prospect podcast (also available on the right of this page), our resident philosopher Nigel Warburton examines the ambiguous role of thrift in defining the good life. As Warburton argues, the idea of thrift “hangs awkwardly between profligacy and miserliness,” making it one of the few virtues best practiced in moderation.
Distinguishing an appropriate levels of thrift is something our society still struggles with. In our handling of the environment and use of natural resources, we have surely been guilty of profligacy. At the same time, our treatment of the most vulnerable is often miserly in the extreme.
As we attempt to recover from an era of economic extravagance, is an instinct for thrift something we now need to cultivate? Or is it already too late: is our only hope now to spend our way out of recession?
You can subscribe to the podcast by clicking on the RSS link on the right of this page, or via itunes. As ever, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Will Irwin
Morals from monkeys?
Each month in the magazine, philosopher AC Grayling answers a question sent in by a Prospect reader. This month Richard Wilkins, of Watford, asks: “Can ethics be derived from evolution by natural selection?”
Given that human beings have evolved by natural selection (with genetic drift and some other factors perhaps assisting), and are ethical creatures, it follows ab esse ad posse that ethics can be derived from evolution by natural selection.
That, though, might not be to answer the purport of the question, which asks: would natural selection be sufficient to produce creatures with a consciousness of ethical principles and a tendency to wish to observe them and see them observed?
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