Utilitarian Ethics And Profit-Driven Decision-Making

In this paper, I will present utilitarian ethics and its influence on profit driven vs. moral driven decision making. I will demonstrate why it is morally just to choose the R&D plan that promises total profits of $750 million and can be expected to save roughly 10,000 lives per year over a period of at least ten years (Option A), over research that promises total profits of $1 billion and can be expected to save roughly 1,000 lives yearly for at least ten years (Option B). I will argue that pharmaceutical companies should always take the moral approach, Option A, to R&D because it will maximise the aggregate wellbeing of society.

While many argue that the goal of the pharmaceutical company is to maximise profits, I will argue that the goal

Utilitarianism justifies the choice of maximising lives over profits; the morality of an action is solely dependent upon the consequences of the action. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory: what makes something good are the consequences it has on someone’s life, the externalities to society with equal consideration of interests. No one person’s preferences or wellbeing is greater than another’s. For example, a rich boy and a poor boy are both offered a cookie, however there is only one. Although society might view the rich boy’s happiness as preferential because of his socioeconomic status, their utility will have an equal contribution to aggregate utility. What matters is the consequence of the actions. One will get the cookie which contributes to the aggregate wellbeing of society, the other will be neither better nor worse off because his state does not change. Thus, one boy has a positive impact on the aggregate and the other has no impact. Utilitarianism is not concerned with them quarrelling beforehand but simply the utility gained from the decision. Moore suggests that the world provides three intrinsic goods that happiness and utility depend upon – pleasure, friendship, and aestheticism. Proper actions increase the world’s supply of these three goods and should be the primary choice of action in moral decision making. The remainder of this paper will examine each of these in relation to R&D decision