Ethical Dilemma of the Drug Company - Assignment Example

The second possible action to take in this dilemma is to follow the advice of the instructor but go ahead to inform the human subjects about the negative results that some samples of the data had shown.

The third possible cause of action in this ethical dilemma would be to abide by the advice of the instructor and disregard, in my final analysis of the data, the 5% of the sample that had shown a negative response to the drug being tested. In this case, I would not disclose to the 5% of the people who responded negatively to the drug, that the drug possibly made them develop some medical problems. One of the stakeholders in this dilemma is the management and the shareholders of the drug manufacturing company that had funded this research.

Disclosing the 5% negative response of the drug being tested could lead to big losses to the shareholders of the company because the drug being tested could be regarded unfit for human consumption. The second stakeholder in this dilemma is human research subjects. Failure to disclose the true results of the research could make some of the study subjects who had shown evidence of developing medical complications due to the drugs, not seek medical care. The third stakeholder in the ethical dilemma is me, the ethical decision maker.

The ethical decision that I would make in this dilemma would determine whether I have acted professionally or not. This would affect my career. The supervisor is the fourth stakeholder in this dilemma. The decision that I would take in this case would, undoubtedly, affect the supervisor: adhering to the supervisor’s advice would mean that the supervisor would be considered successful in this research while defying the advice of the supervisor would imply that the supervisor is not successful in this research.

The choice of the first possible action in this dilemma would be perfectly in line with the ethical guidelines for statistical practice. One of the ethical guidelines for statistical practice is observing professionalism and avoiding deceptions and other unethical behavior in statistical analysis. Including the 5% of the sample would mean that the drugs have some health problems and this could mean big losses to the shareholders of the company. The choice of the second course of action in this dilemma would be informed by the ethical requirement to protect the interests of the study subjects.

This action would be advantageous to the human study subjects and it would not affect the shareholders of the company negatively. The choice of the third possible action would be informed by the need to guard the privileged information of the management of the company that had funded the research.  

Although this action would be disadvantageous to the shareholders of the drug Company, this course of action, however, is the best and the most professional since it is perfectly in line with the ethical guidelines for statistical practice. The choice of the other two actions would violate one or two of the provisions of the ethical guidelines for statistical practice.