Fresenius Kabi Drug
Company: Sues States Over Using their Drugs for Lethal Injection
Introduction
Fresenius is a drug
company that is suing multiple different states over the usage of the drugs
that they don’t agree with. This drug company was founded in 1912 107 years ago
in Germany and has many different branches around the world including the
united states. There website states that they are a company that makes products
that has a philosophy about "caring for life" and that they are
“committed to putting essential medicines and technologies in the hands of
people who help patients and finding the best answers to the challenges they
face”. Which is exactly why when the company found out their drugs where being
used to execute prisoners in the united states they knew they needed to do
something. The drug company made it clear that they don’t want states using
their products to carry out death sentences and have created a lawsuit to try
to avoid this. They’ve imposed super strict limits on who can buy the drugs
used for lethal injections, asked states to return some chemicals and, in one
case, completely stopped making a drug to keep it out of the nation’s death
row. The company’s goal is to not have their medicine used to kill prisoners
because they fear the damage to their reputation that is caused by having
medicines associated with death instead of life.
In the end the prison
systems continued to get the drugs despite the companies attempts on stopping
it therefore they made a lawsuit to retaliate this. Supporters of capital
punishment accuse the drug companies of forcing states to use inferior
execution options and of using the court battles as a way to stop executions —
or at least delay them just long enough for the drugs to expire. The drug
company Fresenius Kabi filed a federal lawsuit last week seeking to block
Nebraska as well as Nevada from using what the company says it believes are two
of its drugs to execute different prisoners from both of these states. The
company said it took no position on the death penalty but “opposes the use of
its products for this purpose and therefore does not sell certain drugs to
correctional facilities.” In court papers, the company accused Nebraska of
obtaining its drugs “through improper or illegal means” because of the
restrictions it has in place making it extremely hard to acquire the drugs. A
federal judge ruled against the drug company’s lawsuit. Attorney General Jeff
Landry issued a statement saying the drug company “stood between victims’
families and justice” and added “No family should be deprived of their hard-won
justice and closure because of the hypocritical actions of this drug peddler.”
Ethical or Not?
In order to see if this
case was ethical or not, we will compare it to various different theory's we
have learned in class during the semester.
Utilitarianism
The
first being utilitarianism which is that you should maximize happiness in
yourself and others. for this case I believe someone who studies utilitarianism
would look at this and say it is not utilitarian for this situation. I believe
this because in order for something to be seen as utilitarian both sides must
be happy or pleased with the outcome with what occurred in this case one side
was left angry where the other side is happy. The happy side being the prison
systems and the mad side being the drug company.
Kantianism
The second theory we
will look at is Kantianism which is the belief that rational decisions need to
be ethical. In this case I believe Someone who has
studied this theory would agree with the fact that the court made the right
decision for the people of the United states but not the company. They made the right reasonable and logical decision
by allowing the prison system to use these drugs so they had the ability to
execute prisoners. These various different prisoners who were on death row did
a crime bad enough that they were sentenced to death and affected various
different family’s and even communities. The
reasonable and logical action to be taken was to have the company lose the
lawsuit.
Individualism
The third ethical theory we will use to compare the case is
Individualism which is the goal to maximize profits for stakeholders and do
anything you can to achieve this. For this case I do believe the company did everything
in their power to maximize the company’s profit for the stakeholders. They did
this by doing everything in their power to keep their companies’ good image and
brand from being tarnished. The company believes
that people would think that their products are only sold to execute prisoners
and that they profit off death. If people see their company as a brand that
profits off death, they might look elsewhere which would cause the company to
lose profits in return. If the company was to lose profit this would obviously
anger the people who have money invested. So, to try to avoid this they made
the lawsuit hoping they would stop the prison systems from using their drugs
for execution.
Virtue
theory
The final ethical theory we will discuss
is Virtue Theory which is the belief that breaks down into four different
aspects which are courage, honesty, Temperance, and justice or fairness. For
this I feel as though someone who studied this case would believe that this is indeed
Virtue theory. The first value that is
in this theory is courage which is the willingness to take a stand for the
right idea and actions. The company was doing
this by making lawsuit and trying to protect their
brands image which I’m sure they thought was the right action to take. Although
some might not agree with this the company in this stance was showing courage
and standing up for what they thought was right. The second value that is part
of this theory is honesty in all aspects of business including their employees,
customers, and other businesses. They also
showed this by being honesty about what they were doing and why they wanted
this lawsuit to be successful. Which was in order to try to save their brands
reputation from being ruined due to the connection their drugs have to the
death penalty. Temperance or otherwise defined as seeking reasonable
expectations and desires when dealing with business. They showed temperance by
seeking for a fair and reasonable way to stop their drugs from being used in a
way they do not approve or like. They took strides to get this desire by
creating the lawsuit to ban their substances from being used in the prison
systems. The final aspect of the virtue
theory is justice which Fresenius Kabi did seek for in this case. They felt as
though they were being served an injustice due to the fact they were
essentially being forced to allow business or organizations the ability to use their
products even if they didn’t want to do. This can be shown when they lost the
lawsuit and the United States prison systems where allowed to use the company’s
drugs even when they clearly stated they did not want this to happen.
Justified
Ethical Evaluation
In my personal
opinion I feel as though the Fresenius Kabi was indeed in the wrong and I would
have agreed with the other side in this case. They
were working in an extremely selfish manner in which they only cared
about what happened to their companies imagine and how they would look to the
people who would purchase their products. I believe they did not look at the
other side of the situation and to what there effecting with the lawsuit they
started. One huge thing being is the justice that is obstructed due to their
lawsuit and other ways of keeping the drugs out of the prison systems
Conclusion
In
conclusion Fresenius Kabi could not prevent their drugs from being used in the
death penalty process via lawsuit. But however, they can work to repair their
company’s image that they feel has been hurt due to this. The ethical thing to
do would have been pulling their drugs from the shelves or allowing the
executions to go through. I found this case ethical in two of the ethical
theory’s which where Kantianism, Individualism, and Virtue theory. However, I
do not think this case was ethical when looking at through a utilitarianism
view point.
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